Hello there. Some of you guys may be familiar with my column here on Geek Devotions. Some of you may be familiar with my podcast, Victims and Villains. If not, my name is Josh and I’m the host of the Victims and Villains podcast. Our podcast is the marriage between pop culture and suicide prevention. At the beginning of this year, marked ten years since a friend of mine committing suicide. These past ten years I’ve devoted so much of my blood, sweat, time and tears to the cause of mental health. This October, I’m proudly releasing a spoken word album on my journey through my own mental health and the effects I’ve experienced through others. It is with the greatest joy that I premiere this exclusive, debut track for the Geek Devotions audience. This is “Faster, Cliff, Faster”. The debut album, Loser/Lover, will be available October 18th.

I want you to understand where all of this began

How the weight of silence is an avalanche

The blizzard is coming

The vision is blinding

White for miles and even if you dared to scream – no one would hear you

I imagine that’s what it must have felt like for you

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve replayed that moment

A limbic system consistently on repeat

The projector must be broken

Open. Read. Dead. Dread. Silence.

The call it survivor’s guilt

and in some ways, it’s a small portion of every breath I’ve taken this past ten years

Bruce Wayne lying in a puddle of mom and dad

Pearls dance with blood

Under a symphony of street lights and wrong place, wrong time

But what if you had danced just a bit too close to the sun?

What if you had danced just a bit too close to wrong place, wrong time

As you were baptized in the lies of unworthy

and never good enough

Atheistic to the core

But that didn’t stop a bond from growing

Cut from the garden of light

And you the garden of darkness

But God has split the red sea

Called Lazarus and Jesus out from their tombs

Ushered in violence called it wind

Unleashed himself to dwell within our frames

So is it really that insane to say that the garden of darkness couldn’t cross-pollinate with the garden of light – eventually evolving into new man, new creation?

I never had the chance to even experiment or to form a hypothesis

Tongue-tied at every moment

Guess I must have studied Courage the Cowardly Dog a bit too closely

Because we’re definitely related

Bro, your smile was the Cheshire cat of every moment of every conversation

A cat that I’ll never get to see again

Even a decade out and I still can’t shake this weight

It’s amazing how much in common words have with bricks

The way they silence you

And take your breath away

Breath taker

The coroner has sadly seen this before

Suicide

My mind is a NASCAR track

and the person behind the wheel is Cliff Steele

You know before the robotic transformation

Best that there is and yet I still can’t make sense of it

Suicide

I guess I should have known from the way you dressed in winter wardrobe all year

That arms could have been grounds for cuts and scars

The way that mine are for tattoos

THESE BRICKS ARE GETTING HEAVIER!

Heard that worthless was a word that you were all too familiar with

Even from what I knew of you man

And to ears and faces that I’ve never seen, those hands I’ve never high-fived or ever will get the chance to high five

You

Are

Never

Worthless

You are worth it

Every breath, every step, every day

I’m sorry and broken that you had to go through that

To hear those lies

Until you eventually chose to go deaf by suicide

Suicide always feels fantastical

Until you’re left with nothing to say

You just cope

Faster, Cliff, Faster

Even a decade out and I still can’t shake this weight

Now that weight is more than just you

It’s those lifestyles of deception and abandonment

Those that believe this life has nothing left to breed them

Those who believe the lies

If I could pull the moon down to demonstrate your value

I would illuminate every fiber of my being

Every bit of my core to draw you the love you so badly deserve

No matter how hard this life gets

Please, please, please

Stay with us, stay with me

Understand your beauty

Understand your value

Understand that the hourglass eventually runs out

And that depression is the Hollywood stereotype of that basic white girl who is never satisfied

Suicide always feels fantastical

Until you understand the weight of its reality

It is a cancer that consumes everyone it can

Reach out,

Start a conversation

Cope with me

FASTER, CLIFF, FASTER!

If you or someone you know is struggling with suicide, addiction, self-harm or depression – please free feel to reach out. Use any our resources, call the suicide lifeline (1-800-273-8255) or text 741-741.