Relief on the Eve of the End of the World

December twenty-twelve and if the Mayans got it right

I can stop fretting about my bi-polar suicide

attempts. I'm happy now, thinking of disaster (outside

myself!), the unequivocal joy

of swift and certain annihilation. Gone the agonizing

dilemmas of just how to do it (gun, blade, pills, gas…

rope, bridge, booze, risky sex or radio in the bath)…I'd

considered both razor and rat poison, an anchored dip

in the frigid black lake at midnight. Meteor,

earthquake, asteroid. Hail big as the moon (come soon!).

Take my mom, too….she owes me money, whoa,

this is getting good---so many problems solved

in the blink of an eye. DEAR WORLD, if you read this

(hopefully in some exotic poetry magazine) we have survived. I remain, no doubt, screwed-up as always

and fantasizing my own demise. Me, me, me,

on a globe of you. Forgive my narcissism, petty thieveries.

Come Valentine's I'll be jolly again, really manic,

Hell-bent on chocolates and red-velvet cake,

my mind a complicit marshmallow (taking my meds),

little zombie me swimming in all the hearts I can handle.

--Kallima Hamilton