Jack's Death

Jack sat staring
at this eyedropper of acid
he’d bought seven nights ago

it was a lucky find;
a matter of chance
he’d passed the pockmarked
fellow on his way
to record shopping
last Tuesday

*     *     *

he had locked up his car,
dodged the traffic
across to the park

when he got there he heard
‘blotter’ whispered
from the bushes to his right

tucked inside was a pockmarked
man, dressed in rainbows,
who pulled him inside
by his tweed

for the trickle
in the Visine bottle,
Jack lost some pot
and they sat and squatted,
respectively,
smoking themselves

after a good twenty
minutes of leaves rustling dryly,
Jack suggested
they wet their eyes

they did and the innards of those
bushes became fantastic things:
ocean bubbles,
tongues, ten-gallon hats,
nuclear waste
and the Pope
until the sun came up

the pockmarked man emerged
from his rainbows,
climbed to the very top of the
nearest-tallest-thinnest tree
and hitched onto a passing cloud

*     *     *

the next Tuesday, Jack
bargained with himself
for a minute or two
before dropping the
rest of the acid

now this was Jack’s eighth fry
and something must be
unlucky
about the number eight;

because as the room
melted customarily
around him,
the shorted desk lamp
remained the only rational object

so he started towards it;
nothing could pull him
and he ended up
burnt crisp—
his body gnarled;
blood-shocked eyes
staring sideways
at the pile of flies

*     *     *

but before you move along
with your life,
consider:
Jack was like the rest of us,
trying to rid the boredom,
finally, from his life,
but his Ticket ran out

that’s all anybody can really do
until the end comes for them—
how sickeningly sobering

but not for the dead.