Twentysomething was nothing. A decade of pain. So many heartbreaks that the superglue tube has dried and encrusted the tip. Eighty proof concoctions mixed with cocaine and heroin shot from a sniper’s rifle into the main vein. Speed balling at supersonic speeds over the Grandest of Canyons until the rock’s bottom breaks my fall. A decade I cannot let go of in fear that now I can no longer live forever young, but ten years that would and should have killed most. But here I am. Still standing crooked with a serpent’s spine.

And now I am too old to die at 27 like all of my rock and/or roll heroes. I let that year of life float away like a plume of intoxicating smoke into a still night sky.

If only I could meet the maker like Mrs. Sylvia Plath. But now they only manufacture electric ovens.

Eternally 33 could be the club specifically set aside for suicidal and depression inducing poets. A club for us who could not play an instrument, sing on key, or any other talent deemed worthy by an illiterate society. But a club for those who could write words that meant more than their dictionary definition.

Maybe my most prophetic poem will be a suicide note punctuated by a shotgun blast.

Or by my funeral birthday cake’s candle blown out by the wind.