Into the valley of death rode the desperate.

Imagine a landscape so bleak

That shadows cast shadows.

Imagine a mind state so weak

That caresses becomes blows.

 

Picture a rider whose mount is unease

Traveling to a destination without cease

But already certain that this won’t appease

The secrets hidden in his dark soul’s crease.

 

To the bottom of the valley, he cuts a path

So slippery that success always fails

And an invisible scythe’s  vicious swath

Beheads love and quarters laugh into wails.

 

Efforts are steps to errors or so they seem

When doubt engenders doubt in stride

And lone survivor of a genocide

Thou think yourself the sole victim of it

With blinders of the mind to life’s profit

Making you oblivious and void of esteem.

 

Despite warnings that loving voices yell,

Winds of fury over that wilderness swell

That distorts them in the grumble of Hell

Lost as echoes at the bottom of a well.

And when the road becomes so steep

That the climber, mistrusting the rope,

Finds solace in the absence of Hope …

Upward, he thinks, is jumping in the deep.

 

Dedicated to little C. and all that took their own lives.

Tay.