It’s Mental Health Awareness Month. Here’s a poem about the value of human life, written many years ago when I was in a very dark place. The goal of this work is to discourage suicide and address clinical depression.

Through the doors of my decisions I enter.
Dazed and confused, further and further deviated from my center.
A numbing sensation of partial reconciliation
To which I am hardly amused.
I pass through the first gate,
The Crystal Arch of Truth.
Ironically I transcend my history of actions quite uncouth
And approach the redemption I await.
There I find a long and winding highway
Drenched in a dark sulfurous miasma
That burns my soul to a melted plasma,
Reviving all the memories I had left in Fantasma.

The infinitesimal probability.
The inescapable culpability.
The bitter premonition of a crushing reality.
I travel on against my morality,
Scouring the plains past the gate
For the heavenly healing truth I religiously await.
The feelings to which for years I could not relate.

The envy, the delusion.
The dastardly self-imposed illusion.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel
Like glowing quicksilver illuminating the twisting funnel
That guides the road to its eventual conclusion?

For miles I wandered.
For years I wondered
Of actions transgressed and about demons unaddressed.
Development arrested and hypotheses untested,
Even the demons I aggressed protested.

My body pressed forward,
Yet my spirit fell backward.
An unlikely paradox, an unsettling duality,
Led me to the end of the path, the Ivory Arches of Eventuality.
There a guardian, ensconced in cashmere and velvet,
Wielding a fiery saber and a lustrous brass trumpet,
Brandished his weapon and stared.

“What is the reason for your intrusion?” asked
The imposing eight-armed figure dutifully masked.
I replied, “I wanted to die”.
Said I, “I wanted what other people had
And complained to the Heavens, ‘Why?’”
Its question answered, a prophesy fulfilled,
The gargantuan guardian like Atlas shrugged,
Bugged by a wretchèd being so average.
With a mind of its own, the façade of doors that lined the arches
Became available for passage
Into the realm of the unknown,
The truth that lies beyond the tail of the guardian’s tapering gown.

Into a chimera my fears had grown.

From the skies an angel had fell
“You took everything life gave you for granted”, it said
“And for that I wholeheartedly welcome you to Hell”.

Upon hearing this I wished I was dead…

…And I was…

This was the truth,
The untimely consequence of my actions uncouth.
We live. We learn. We die.
In death (and even in life)
We fight ourselves and the world,
Tossed about a stormy sea of disequilibrium and strife.

A single life is worth more than the sum of its parts
And with this message I wish you the best as I depart.

Published by Andrew Blitman

Andrew Blitman is a poet and artist who is also the webmaster of this blog. He is the published author of 13 books, including "Birthright 2012: A Voyage into the Heart and Soul of Israel" and the "Wild Writers" Series. He can be reached at this e-mail address: andrew.blitman@gmail.com View all posts by Andrew Blitman