Wednesday
Aug202008
Please, Let Me Die!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008 at 07:20AM 
(London-1830) Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you my friends, my lovers and my family for traveling out on this cold night to celebrate my 37th birthday.
For weeks, many of you have been asking me what I wanted on this most momentous of days. I played coy and said nothing, because I wanted us all to be together before I said the following…What I want for my birthday. What I want above all else, is for you people to please, please let me die!
Stop rescuing me! Stop giving me the antidotes to the poisons I swallow. Stop clotting the veins I slice wide open. Stop stealing the rope I want to wrap around my neck. Just stop!…You're ruining my plans.
People, how can I become a great poet, if I am forced to live a long life? Anyone who’s anyone knows that a great poet must die young. I don’t belong here with you. I belong with my brothers Keats, Byron and Shelly. Like them, I must be cut down in the midst of my beauty and vigor. My reputation as a great poet depends on it!
Look, I’m not stupid or crazy. I know that my poetry is not so great. It's about a 6. But if I go to my eternal rest early that 6 can be flipped into a 9. Do you cretins get it now? Yes? Good, because I've just had a big steaming cup of hemlock. And like Plato I shall soon shed this mortal coil...What? So it was it Socrates who took the hemlock, big damn deal! That doesn't matter. What matters is that young girls will study me in college and that none of you bastards save me…I’m getting weak…Here it comes. Good-bye losers, hello greatness!
Jonathan Lewis didn't die that night or the 100 other nights he attempted suicide. His friends, his lovers and his family saved him every single time, every single time until the day Lewis snapped and killed them all with his quill. Then, thinking he was finally alone, he again took the hemlock, only to be saved by the police. Lewis was promptly arrested, convicted and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 1881 at the very unpoetic age of 88.
Reader Comments (3)
Bummer for him. Left him way too much time to jump the shark.
lighten up already. jeeesh.
is that really how poets spoke english in the 1800's?