THE SUICIDE ROOM
POEMS BY STUART Z PERKOFF
Selected Work by Venice Poets

I have within the head a room of death:
brown walls (the death of spring), a vague breath of
seasmell, a ring of knives of every kind
circling a centered mat.
The failing lives
to be accompanied by flat drums,
dovecooing horns, plucked strings.
The supplicant comes,
he sits upon the mat. Attendants bring
paper and pen. He wills his philosophy
to the world and binds his eyes. And blind he dies.
This is the room I go to when my mind
extends no further than its hidden doom.
I weld the music and the knives into
a power over deaths.

I leave the dead
within this room when I have held power
for long enough to go beyond the point
beyond which one cannot possibly go.

Stuart Z. Perkoff
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