just take me away

I'm not ungrateful for the gift of life, nor the possibility of success some day in the distant future, but I'd much rather pass away quietly in my sleep tonight. It's been too long a wait to be discovered and rewarded, too miserable and frustrating to deal with another cold night, nothing recognizably sane on the BBC. No car, no phone, no internet, no cash.

I cough 1000 times a day, maybe more. If I lay on my left side, it wracks and chokes, gasping for air. I run through tissues like an army of rats building a Kleenex city, three boxes a week, a costly expense item second to dog food for my shihztu and cigarettes. Vaguely human vittles for me comes third, Oscar Mayer and stale bread for breakfast, lunch and dinner seven days a week. I had to punch two new holes in my belt. Never any chicken, no orange or cranberry or grapefruit juice, no eggs or hamburger or cornflakes or pizza. Prisoners have a better diet. I cut my own hair with a scissors, looking in a distorted plastic mirror.

I can't kill myself, because I don't want my daughter to suffer that. It has to be natural causes, something as polite as stroke or heart failure.

There's nothing further to write after eight novels, a dozen nonfiction books, two decades of forum posts, essays, short stories and screenplays, a new theory of justice and a constitution, video lectures and radio interviews, a long trail of work-for-hire in print, original work on film and pro tape. No man has had more opportunity to be heard or less recognition. I shouldn't complain. Two pals gave me flattering book reviews last year. Amazon paid me $24. I earned five hundred doing carpentry and day labor. Nice neighbors gave me an old jacket and rubber boots to ford the creek after a drenching thunderstorm. More than once, I've had a surprise meal delivered in Tupperware, leftovers from a feast that I did not attend. Old hippies shared pot on occasion. I can't remember the last time I sat in a restaurant, slept on clean sheets in a hotel room, used a credit card to buy gasoline, a Coke, or an airline ticket. I'm ready to die.

There's a tombstone page that a friend hosted yesterday.