...of a pre-suicide

Must look like a question mark. Head wont raise. Hanging like a melon. Krist, what the hell must I look like bent in half with a gun barrel in my mouth? Animals dont sit around with a gun barrel in their mouths. They live as long as they can. Follow their instincts and instincts tell them to live. They dont think. Dont ponder or contemplate. They dont think and just live. I think therefore I die. But Im not dead. Im sitting here with a gun barrel in my mouth… not an oboe, not a recorder, nor a clarinet or even a penny whistle. I have been sitting here so long with this in my mouth its an extension of my tongue. I have been sitting here with this in my mouth so long it has effected a genetic change. What might take endless generations and centuries has been accomplished in the wink of an eye. If I were to sire a child at this very moment its natural tongue would segue into hollow tubing of gun metal. No way of knowing how long it would be. Inches… feet… who knows? All of it might not fit into the mouth. It might hang pendulously, clanging, perhaps, against the childs chest. What if I stay like this indefinitely, would the metallic extension of the tongue be attached to a hand? Would it look as if the hand were reaching into the mouth or reaching from the mouth? What sort of hideous monstrosity would be created? How would it eat? How is it possible to chew with your tongue hanging from your mouth or a gun barrel inserted into your mouth? Could it speak? Can I speak now? I can’t understand what Im saying. I know what I want to say, but am I actually saying it? So it can be understood? If no one hears me am I speaking? Is my head hanging lower? Who can answer this for me? Who am I asking? I talk and talk and talk but say nothing. My head rumbles with words yet I am silent. I am tortured and agonized by words yet I remain mute. If the words were coming from outside I could parry them as with a foil and laugh and thrust, but I am immobilized by the words resounding and reverberating and slashing and stabbing in my head. Is it really the words that weigh me down so that my hand hangs ever further down my chest, the barrel going deeper - no, the barrel can not go deeper as the hand too goes lower, as it must. How deep can the barrel go before it is thrown out by retching? That can not be allowed. The barrel must always be strategically fixed in the mouth so even an accidental triggering will leave the back of my head embedded in the wall…

[Waiting Period, Selby Jr., H.]