SPIT!

Bungee-Jumping

When I jumped off the ledge
I prayed for my wings to turn to heavy metal
so that when I hit the ground my body would break.
Like a b-boy ending his routine in a suicide,
I landed straight on my back;
smack!;
Cracked
thirty-three bones -
my arms and legs fractured crooked into a Swastika,
but I am no Hitler so,
Lord, please forgive me.
I just needed to escape this gas chamber called my life.
Tired of that reoccurring dream where I would open countless fortune cookies
only to find razor blades next to fortunes reading,
"your wrists' new best friend."
And since I was never good around blood
I needed to find another way -

Always wanted to be an Olympic diver,
elegantly falling and painting my path with a blur of
twists and somersaults,
like children decorating June nights with glow sticks,
entering the water perfectly perpendicular and as quiet as a pin.

So that Fall in Brooklyn
the roof of my six-story building transformed into a plank,
an escape exit from my pendulum of an existence I spent inside a bed
transitioning from sleep
to consciousness
only to be reminded of why I was asleep in the first place.
For one month
I did not leave that bed.
I did not eat.
I did not shower.
I did not change the sheets.
I just lay there until the mango odor of my dreams
were replaced by the mildew, stench of depression.

Mother,
what did you expect,
bringing this seed you call son
into this rat-infected, concrete museum
filled with wax figurines imitating human beings?
They call themselves New Yorkers…
If they only knew trees can no longer produce oxygen
once they are transformed into dollar bills.
It's no wonder I find it so hard to breathe in this city…
so after finding courage at the bot-
tom of my third bottle of Chianti Classico
I decided to stop trying and…
…
…
…
Smack!

I remember waking up in the hospital bed, thinking
God must have smelled the S.O.S. of my alcoholic breath
before I hit that sidewalk on Roebling St.
because there's no way that I should've survived.
With each blink as I slowly opened my eyes I heard angels clap and
my chest beat fierce conga rhythms –
my Soul told me he rented out the four-bedroom apartment of my heart to
these cats, Christ, Muhammad, Buddha and Abraham while I was away
and apparently these mother fuckers love to drum circle
hasta la quince da la mañana.
Their vibrations make my broken bones ache in a good way
like rocking a loose, baby tooth back and forth like a pendulum
drawing the outline of a smile I now wear permanently
because I have rediscovered life like a procrastinating poet who
always wanted to get published and injected himself with an H.I.V. infected needle
to finally get that pen moving;
so what will it take for you to finally get to writing your great American novel?

For me,
It took a suicide attempt –
so close to success like
bungee-jumping and having a single hair graze the water.
With open eyes I looked below that surface and saw God winking at me
and now I find myself continuously blushing
and grateful to be alive.

By: Daniel Jose Custodio