To Hell and Back in the AM
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“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate”—Dante's Inferno (The Divine Comedy): Canto 3. Lead by the poet Virgil, Dante finds inscribed at the gate of Hell which, translated, warns: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
When wracked with suff'ring even more,
I all alone bemoan my fate,
as one who drowns in sorrows sore
which harm, harass, and maul his state.
Aggrieved for what feels like forever,
I trouble God with bootless cries
as I endure my manic fever
with tearful, red, psychotic eyes.
The minute hand lands on midnight!
I can't find clear words to express
feelings of falling a headlong height
b'neath heaven's reach 'yond grief's excess.
Inside, I feel the Reaper’s scythe
as I think out my mordant plan:
razor, pills, or a kitchen knife,
a way to end it by my hand!?
Like Sylvia Plath, if I can
plant my head in a GE gas oven,
then it’d be painless!? (But why plan
a death so cliche, and unproven?)
I think, too, of Virginia Woolf,
how she drowned her life in a lake;
I, too, feel swallowed in a gulf
of swirling misery that'd take
me to my death! Why do I feel
forsak'n, and heavy as lead now? Am
I so hopeless? Why do I feel
so worthless, and so so dead? How am
I to end my life (to kill myself)—
if all loved ones were then to miss me?
“Help yourself!” I then heard. "Heal thyself!"
I hear aloud. As angels kiss me,
I thus then found comfort in this:
that family and friends all care,
and if I'd died I would be missed;
so, I war 'gainst profound despair.
And then, Hope dawns! And soon comes peace…
And in the morn, I wake arising—
Joy breaks in, and I have new lease.
And then my state I cease despising!
Copyright © Ngoc Nguyen | Year Posted 2016
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