3.02.2007

Where the suicider really goes

"...that we men are in a kind of prison and that one must not free oneself or run away...and would you not be angry if one of your possessions killed itself when you had not given any sign that you wished it to die, and if you had any punishment you could inflict, you would inflict it?"

"by all means O Socrates" replied Cebes

Plato Phaedo 62b-c
cf. Plato Phaedo 108-115

In the dream of the mind of the suicider
he goes to gardens lush with quince and tangerine
hashish pipes and orthodox harlots sucking his cock
but in reality his blood flows through the sands
of his arab land to a great cavern below
A black Stygian flow into a great hollow
in the sulphurous air the dripping of black oil
off limestone stalagtites of Cyclopean dimension
dropped into the pool he settled to the bottom
where he lay in suffocating torment in a hydrocarbon form
the loud accusations of those he had taken with him
locked up with him in this black hell yelling at him
the burden of their charges echoing through the vast limestone chamber
until he is triangulated, echo-sounded, found and sucked out
through the obtrusive head of a searching mechanical serpent
and pumped a thousand miles to the refinery
where he is burned down to half his weight through
torments of hellfire and distilled into petroleum
that is pumped into aerosol sprays and ignited
into a spark-flash of light and energy, incinerated
by the pistons and cylinders of the engine that
runs the mechanical serpent
that feeds the beast
that he had tried to slay

He perdures now as CO2 vapor in the atmosphere,
without self-awareness and heating the planet.