MICHAEL DENNIS MOONEY -- new writings

not how it was reported in the papers



She tried, and she might have died,
But you cannot commit suicide
With an airbag driver's side,
Nor with a seatbelt.

She hoped it would look accidental,
But mostly this pile of bent metal
Made investigators judgemental,
And loved ones nervous.

She took the not so unusual tactic
Of first becoming ataxic
On pills and liquor, then spastic
On the accelerator.

Should it be thought of as phallic envy?
She tilted at telephone poles in her frenzy,
Felled two in a hurtling catalepsy
Of rage. Then the car expired.

It was worth thirty thousand, and paid for,
But being used to make this big play for
Our hearts was not what it's made for.
That reduced it to scrap.


II.

But first, before she could die,
She had to make someone cry,
And had to get someone to try
To run to her rescue.

So she gave her boyfriend the kiss-off,
Also got her girlfriend quite pissed-off
By calling their plans for a tryst off,
Then staggering to her car.

In all this emotive effusion
And bisexual confusion,
She got more than one contusion
As she fell on the ice.

She got away quick to a gin mill.
There her mental status slid downhill,
Along with her mood, her impulse control,
And her common sense.

She called her psychiatrist's beeper.
Maybe some jargony talk might keep her
From going "off the edge" to reap her
Final (insurance!) reward.

It turns out there might be just reward
For antisocial behavior and fraud,
This hellcat has been declawed.
She must take the bus.


III.

Her girlfriend called the police
To ask them to hurry, puh-lease,
The highways are starting to freeze.
She's automotively amok!

The girlfriend then called the boyfriend,
The boss, the ER, the friends,
And everyone knew in the end
What she had threatened.

She says she's going to kill herself,
But first she'll pill-and-swill herself,
Then go to a motel and thrill herself
With a man, or two, plus pay-per-view.

(For when she feels really sensual
And sex is freely consensual,
She's a closet heterosexual
If you must know.)

She's going completely ballistic!
Few women from Bangor to Mystic
Are so needy and narcissistic
As our Martha Jane.

The phones were ringing everywhere.
This is the new community theater,
Played out in police blotters, the papers,
Court records, and psych evals.


IV.

When the phone poles were upended
She was finally apprehended.
Her license was suspended.
She was put in park.

She was put in a police vehicle.
She became sweet and drippy as treacle.
She cried. She rued the ridicule
She might now face.

She was given a fistful of tickets
For court, then a one-way ticket
To a psych ward, but first a side trip
To the ER for her busted coccyx.

Now that she's vented her wrath,
She feels just like Sylvia Plath
As she sets out on a tangled path
In her therapy journal.

Nurses trundle around her like tanks,
Feeding her antidepressants and tranqs.
She tearfully murmurs her thanks.
Oh, they're so nice here.

On a full schedule of therapy daily,
She skips to Anger Management gaily,
She tells sad stories rather feyly
In Death and Dying.

Her girlfriend brings cheese and salami
And chicken soup. They make origami
Together in Art. She has found a mommy
In an old, old friend.