Addicts come and addicts go,
Taking horse and doing snow,
Smoking black and snorting white,
Taking shit, they’re up all night.
Glad I am not one like they,
For I sleep nights and up all day,
But for their pain I sympathise:
I see it in their sunken eyes.

Druggie John was just nineteen,
The sickest dropout I have seen,
And with a needle to his wrist,
He yelled ‘I want not to exist’,
He took his life, those years ago,
And saved himself a life of woe,
And though he caused us all much grief,
We understood him, underneath.

“I’m glad he’s dead”, I heard it said,
As I lay, still, upon my bed.
Those words went round inside my brain,
What friends had said: “It is a shame”.
Druggie John is dead and gone,
He told me once: “I can’t go on,
I know I have to die real soon”,
And so he did, in early June.

Other friends too have died quick,
Some unhappy, others sick.
Some have died in car crashes,
Bloody messes, dirty smashes;
Others died at their own hand,
Suicide that’s carefully planned.
Others died of shock or fright,
Some at day and some at night.

So I walk the cemetery,
On my own, no commentary,
Only thoughts, the clouds and I,
Thinking: “one day too, I’ll die”.
Such a thought does give me peace,
Soothes my muscles, give me ease,
And when there’s thunder in my head,
I think how one day I’ll be dead.

The graveyard is the place to walk,
To be alone and not to talk,
To get out of society,
Away from notoriety,
Away from gossip, prying eyes,
Cruel suspicion, dirty lies,
So if, like mine, your life’s unfair,
Please join me and I’ll take you there.


© 2001 Matt Everett