Charles Rammelkamp on "Attempted Suicide" by Tony Dawson

Tony Dawson’s witty noir poem in which a husband and wife argue about the man’s proposal to kill himself, reminds me of the scene of choreographed violence in A Clockwork Orange, in which Alex and his droogies viciously beat a man bloody to the tune of Rossini’s Thieving Magpie, director Stanley Kubrick turning the “ultraviolence” into a kind of operatic performance. In the same way, utterly gruesome details of the proposed self-murder are amusingly related in a “civilized,” rational tone as the man and woman weigh the options. Indeed, the couple perform a graceful sort of pas de deux of their own, a Danse Macabre. When he first suggests the idea, she is horrified, but only on aesthetic grounds, by the idea of his hanging himself. “I don’t fancy bumping into carrion.”

“I could shoot myself if you prefer. I’ll buy a gun.
“You can’t do that. There’ll be blood all over the walls!”
she growled. “Why not line the room with plastic for a dry run?”
he suggested. “It will still look like bloody Niagara Falls!”

Dawson’s ABAB rhymes even suggest a dance, both of them stepping forward and back, as if their steps are synchronized, ballroom style. They consider options from poison (“But what if the dog licks your face and dies?” she objects.) to slashing his wrists in the bathtub. She suggests he simply drink himself to death in a bar. “Drink makes me ill,” he replies. “Why don’t you simply nag me to death?”

“Because that would be murder, not suicide, my dear.”

They end up in the classic Mexican standoff, he suggesting they set aside the negotiations for another day. She agrees and suggests they “put the rope, poison and plastic away, and go for a walk.” It’s as if the music has concluded, the couple has bowed to one another, and they’ve gone back to their seats. —Charles Rammelkamp


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