#TLDR by Hakim Bellamy

In a random sample
of 100 suicide notes
researchers have not found
the word “suicide.”

In a more simple sample
of people who have sampled
suicide, and lived to tell about it
researchers found
and lost
the word “suicide.”

In an inconvenient sample
of friends who let friends drunk text
it was discovered
that 81% of them disapproved of e-mails
that were too long.

Screw spelling,
give me a hammer
to my head.
Fingernails instead of foreplay.

Cut to the chase.
In fact, cut the chase.
Cut to the cortège and motorcade.

In the age of unread fine prints
and even finer princesses
Where one’s literacy is no longer big enough
and neither is anything else.

Where time is short
and e-mails are no longer novel…

Where this poem
should have been done by now.

Where a serious conversation
consists of,
at least two people
sitting next to one another
looking
each other
in the phone.

Wouldn’t you rather be a letter
than just a l.e.t.t.e.r.?

Wouldn’t you rather be a song
than a scream?

Would you rather be a pie
than a piece a….

Our circle of conversation
has become the finish line
of a transaction,

We used to be whole.
There use to be a person
on the other side of that phone.

There used to be a person,
on the other side of that note.

And if you read this far
you’d know
there used to be some one.
on the other side
of this poem.

I like to believe that
my poems, are a string
of receipts.
Documenting
my time spent
on this planet.

Part paper trail
of my net worth,
part net
between me and the cement
as I ponder out the window
of everything I’ve built
myself to be.

In a natural selection
of random people
dying alone…

75% percent of suicides
are unaccompanied
by a note.

Unassisted.
So long.
Solo.

And I tried to borrow her pen
to write this,
so she wouldn’t write that.

But she did anyways…
In hopes
that we wouldn’t be
too busy.

In hopes
that we wouldn’t be
too fast.

In hopes
that it wouldn’t be
received…

as a life too long
did not

read.

(c) August 13th, 2015 Hakim Bellamy

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Community Publishing will be publishing Hakim Bellamy’s Samuel’s Story, a multimedia children’s story featuring the music of DJ Flo Fader and the illustrations of Melvin Mayes.

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