EXCERPTS FROM "EXCERPTS FROM THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR THE ATTEMPTED-SUICIDE MACHINE" (SOON TO BE SELF-UNPUBLISHED):

IV.

prescription medicine did me no good.  nor did meditation.  not religion nor drinking nor casual sex nor narcotics nor primal screaming nor plaintive moaning nor the i ching nor atlas shrugged nor valley of the dolls nor home footbinding nor hitting inanimate objects with a hammer nor taxidermy via freeze-drying nor ambient karaoke sessions nor committing suicide by proxy by hiring a lookalike and undermining his self-esteem until he leapt satisfyingly under the wheels of an oncoming truck nor fixing the thursday night bingo games at the local retirement complex by giving everyone identical cards and hoping for a really slow riot to break out nor teaching four-year-olds obscenities in aramaic and sending them into bible school with explicit instructions to answer every question with one of them nor wiring up the cat and piping seventies porn soundtracks through him nor bringing gigantic red pencils to tea party rallies and copy-editing their signage nor attempting to achieve hands-off orgasm during job interviews nor shaping expired produce into lawn ornaments nor making my pores whistle nor praying to alan thicke nor spraindancing nor auto-felching nor merkin-perming nor sleep-tweezing... none of them worked.  so i sighed, rolled over and got out of bed.  i'll try again later.

XVI.

with my penultimate breath, i emitted a feeble cry for help.  no one knew what to make of it.  crowds gathered, quorums were formed, discussions raged on into the night.  finally, a mental-health professional was enlisted.  he listened impassively to the collected evidence, occasionally nodding and drawing pensively on his pipe.  finally, he declared simply that it was clearly a cry for help.  with my last remaining breath, i disagreed.

XXX.

i used to be an activist.  

now i'm a passivist.

XLVI.

somewhere around the sixteenth hour of our mass bender - we referred to it as a "party," but let's be honest here - the room suddenly stilled.  all was silent.  then the air - that thick fog of smoke both legal and illicit that passed for air in that room, i should say - seemed to part.  it was not a hallucination; we all saw it.  angel?  alien?  we knew not what.  but he hung there in the room, smiled benevolently, and began to sing.  it sang the most beautiful melody any of us had ever heard.  all activity stopped.  some of us wept.  the rest just sat there slack-jawed, stunned by its transcendent beauty.  it continued singing.  then continued some more.  it just wouldn't fucking stop.  after a while, the weeping ceased.  some of us broke our paralysis and tried throwing things at it.  but i guess it was transparent or something and in our condition our aim wasn't too good to begin with.  eventually, we all just got up and left, went down to wendy's and ordered a bunch of stuff off the dollar menu. when we got back, it was gone.  but the whole place smelled like boiled eggs.  and the tv and a bunch of our wallets were gone too. the party kinda went downhill after that.

Z.

i was the voice of a generation, but they dubbed over me.