Poetry and quotes for the bus ride to oblivion

[ShatteredSerenity]

I've been searching the internet for writing that resonates with my current state of hopelessness and despair as I contemplate ctb, and I thought I'd share a few of the pieces that I found.

How I would like to believe in tenderness –
The face of the effigy, gentled by candles,
Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes.

I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars.
Inside the church, the saints will be all blue,
Floating on their delicate feet over cold pews,
Their hands and faces stiff with holiness.
The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild.
And the message of the yew tree is blackness –
blackness and silence.

— Sylvia Plath, from The Moon and the Yew Tree

'Tis a fearful thing
to love what death can touch.

A fearful thing
to love, to hope, to dream, to be –
to be,
And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,
And a holy thing,
a holy thing
to love.

For your life has lived in me,
your laugh once lifted me,
your word was gift to me.

To remember this brings painful joy.

'Tis a human thing, love,
a holy thing, to love
what death has touched.

— Yehuda Halevi, 'Tis a fearful thing

They don't make it
the beautiful die in flame-
suicide pills, rat poison, rope what-
ever...
they rip their arms off,
throw themselves out of windows,
they pull their eyes out of the sockets,
reject love
reject hate
reject, reject.

they don't make it
the beautiful can't endure,
they are butterflies
they are doves
they are sparrows,
they don't make it.

one tall shot of flame
while the old men play checkers in the park
one flame, one good flame
while the old men play checkers in the park
in the sun.

the beautiful are found in the edge of a room
crumpled into spiders and needles and silence
and we can never understand why they
left, they were so
beautiful.

they don't make it,
the beautiful die young
and leave the ugly to their ugly lives.

lovely and brilliant: life and suicide and death
as the old men play checkers in the sun
in the park.

— Charles Bukowski, Whats the Use of a Title?

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.

― Sylvia Plath, from Lady Lazarus

The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.
― Arthur Golden

A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future.
― Albert Camus