Suicide

This is a poem to no one
But to the world

Where is life and love,
When there is so much pain?
You know of what I speak.
The endless lines and rhymes
Scribbled by desperate souls
Such as you,
Such as I,
Seeking, searching, praying
For what else but freedom.
But that freedom you fool
Is the illusion.

Could you ever see why?
Why pain is the chain
That weighs our souls down.
Why freedom is nothing more
Than the walls of our prison.
You may break free of none
And live a simple life
But I no longer can.

And still, and still I’m trapped.
I’ve clawed at these tiled walls
All these many years.
Now my bloody fingertips
No longer feel the salty tears
As I wipe them across my face.

So you see my unfortunate friend
The walls are my flesh
And the chain, my lonely thoughts.
No matter how deep I dig and tear
No matter how much crimson tape I bled
These very walls,
My tortured soul could not have fled,
Are damned.

So this night my tired feet will float
In a porcelain pool drawn  
With the tears of a polluted world.
As my prison floods this very hour
My fractured body will drown
Tonight like a crushed flower.

Goodbye, forever none

(c)2004 Joseph Palladino