Russian Roulette

5-11-09

We have been sitting here for days on end,
Just passing around this gun,
And we play fast, not like wimps,
We don’t pause to wash our hands,
We just hand it, pull it, hand it on,
And we can never quite decide,
who wins – those left around the table
or those strewn on the floor.
So we just keep playing, and we all
avoid the question –what about when there’s
only one person left? But you can see
the fear in each of our eyes – don’t want to be last,
Don’t want to be left behind,
And we pull the trigger with ferocity
And sigh, but not in relief, when it clicks,
And a sharp intake of breath flows around the table
when the air ignites with our buddy’s blood.
And we play fast, not like wimps,
We no longer bother pausing to wash our hands,
Like it would make a difference, they’re so red,
Probably still stained from years ago,
‘Cause we just sit at this table and we never
move, I’ve held a gun to my head so many times,
Always begging, always pleading silently,
Always hoping inside to hear…nothing,
That click is like a death sentence in that
it’s not and if it were I wouldn’t hear a thing,
Or think a thing, or see a thing, or breathe a thing,
Or cry a thing, or mean a thing, or feel a thing,
What a perfect way to go, what a perfect way to live,
What a perfect ending, what perfection,
I’m passing it faster and faster now,
I’m starting to get desperate,
“Oh my hand slipped” I took two shots,
Before I passed it on and blood found my face,
My hands, my clothes, my body, my arms,
And there’s three left now, just three,
And we play fast, we each are so desperate,
And click, click, click, each click burns my ears,
And I’m trying not to be on the verge of tears,
When will this end? Hell, when will this end?
I plead, when will this come to an end?
And click, click, I’m so tired, I’m so tired
of all this clicking, and click, click, and it’s
igniting but it’s not on me and the blood
is getting hard to see through now,
The room looks like a murder scene,
But it’s not – this isn’t murder,
This is just a bunch of desperate people
playing an old-fashioned game
to kill the time until they kill themselves,
And there’s two left now, and I’m so scared
of being the last one but I know my luck,
Yes, I know my luck and I pull, and I pull again,
And I pull again but she rips it out of my hand,
“it’s not your turn, it’s my turn now”
And her blood crashes down on me,
And I cry, I just cry and it wets the dried blood on my face,
And it flakes down my neck and lands on my shoulders,
And I knew I’d be the last one left, and I scream at myself
“Why did you start this? You know your rotten luck,
Why did you think this would different? You know
your rotten luck, what the hell were you thinking?
What the hell are you going to do now? Why did you start this?
You knew you’d be left to end it like this.”
And when we all sat down, we made a promise,
Like at the end of the game “we’ll all be dead – no-one lives,
That way, each of us, we all win, and it’s time we had a win”.
And so shaking my hand is at my temple, and I’m hearing
screams in my ears like ‘do it’ like ‘what are you thinking’
like ‘this is the end, this is the tragic end you always knew
would find you’ and my fingers shaking so bad I pull the trigger
by accident and it clicks once, it clicks twice, it clicks three times,
And that’s time for me to hesitate, and then I ask why do i
hesitate? And how it makes me hate myself for being so weak,
But they all did it and they’re all l dead and if I’m found like this
I’ll be sentenced to worse than death so I may as well make
the body count an even six. Raising the barrel back up to my temple,
Shaking hand and shaking breath, I’m on the verge of tears,
All of a sudden they clear and everything just fades away,
I let my eyes close a little and I pull. It doesn’t click at all.
I don’t hear a word. I don’t feel a thing. I can’t move my tongue.
I can’t make a sound. I don’t see anything. And then…
the gates of Heaven approach and in my panic, I cut out my tongue,
if I’ve got nothing to confess with maybe they’ll let me in,
If I’ve got no way of asking for forgiveness maybe they’ll let me in,
But thunderbolt, just like in my mind, and I feel again, I feel the pain
I thought I left behind and I don’t see pitchforks and red men,
But I know where I am, with the sand eating my ankles,
With the sand clawing at my throat, and I laugh,
I just laugh. After all of that I end up in the same damn place
I was trying to leave. And I look around but there’s nobody.
And I realize my worst fear was being left all alone, feeling
all alone and now I’m stuck in eternity all alone surrounded
by sand and I can’t even feel the weather – it doesn’t matter,
I feel alone, that’s all the punishment I need, I laugh,
Oh what a bloody end. Oh what a bloody stupid end.
Oh what a bloody “I could’ve seen that coming”.
Oh what a way to start the end, and now we’re all
in our little separate hells living our worst fantasies,
Alone, alone, alone and we thought we’d all win this way,
But we all lost, we all lost to the universe.