Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself

I go to borrow a book but the librarian takes me aside.

You take care, she says. I will, I promise. So when I get home

I remove all sharp objects, have a packet of anti-depressants

at my side and put on the Monty Python song’ Always Look

on the Bright Side of Things.’ I have beside me  a poem

‘Hope is the Helium’ though modesty forbids ……. and have

the Lifeline number at the ready. I flick through the grim

chapter headings and brace myself for an ordeal.

At least there are no photographs.

 

• have you read any books lately that have disturbed you?
• is it permissible to make jokes — black humor — about subjects like the above?
• is there even a point — aside from morbid curiosity — in even reading such books?