Deep Despair While Alone on One Dark Night

When fraught with gloom and psychic pain,
I all alone bemoan my state
like one who has sunk down again
into despair which drowns his fate.

Disconsolate beyond midnight,
I trouble dear God with my cries
as I bear this bipolar plight
with burning, red, tear-laden eyes.

The night is long—I feel distraught;
I long for rest to help forget
this sorrow's hold that has me wrought
like people in a crashing jet!

Inside, I feel the Reaper's scythe
as I think out my suicide;
I could slit my wrist with a knife
or pop pills to end this dark "ride."

Or, like Sylvia Plath, I can
stick my head in a gaslight oven;
it's painless—sure! (But then why plan
a death that's so trite and certain?).

I think, too, of Virginia Woolf,
how she drowned herself in a lake;
I, too, feel swallowed in a gulf
of swirling sadness that could take

me to my death! Why do I feel
so unloved and alone now? Am
I so hopeless? Why do I feel
so worthless and empty? How am

I to know—(that) if I kill myself—
whether my loved ones won't miss me?
"Don't quit!" I think:—so I will myself
to live (as if God's saints kissed me)!

So I thus find solace in this—
that God and family do care.
And if I die I will be missed;
so I endure the deep Despair.

And then Rest comes. And I have peace.
And in the morn, I wake arising—
Hope breaks in (and gives me new lease):
and then my life I cease despising!