Your favorite suicide poetry

[Chaetopelma]

What are some of your favorite poems about suicide?

Here's one that I like:

Anguished Grief

Anguished grief, fury beyond measure,
Grievous despair, full of frenzy,
Pining without end and a life made of misfortune,
Full of tears, anguish and torment,
A sad heart which lives in darkness,
A ghost-like body at the verge of death,
All this, without ceasing, continually
And from these I can neither be healed nor die.

Pride, the harshness of being separated from joy,
Sad thoughts, deep sighing,
Great anguish locked up in my weary heart,
Bitter anger borne secretly,
A mournful bearing without happiness,
Tearful hope which dries up all my good,
These are in me, never leaving
And from these I can neither be healed nor die.

Pain, irritation which has gone on for ever,
Bitter to be awake, shuddering in sleep,
Empty tasks, their importance enfeebled
In sad work, unhappily,
And every ill that anyone could ever
Say or think, without hope of a cure,
These torment me out of measure --
And from these I can neither be healed nor die.

Princes, pray to God that he would very soon
Grant me death, if he is unwilling in any other way
To help with the ills in which I am painfully wasting away
And from these I can neither be healed nor die.​

Original version (in French):

Deuil angoisseus

Dueil angoisseus, rage desmesurée,
Grief desespoir, plein de forsennement,
Langour sansz fin et vie maleürée
Pleine de plour, d'angoisse et de tourment,
Cuer doloreux qui vit obscurement,
Tenebreux corps sur le point de partir
Ay, sanz cesser, continuellement;
Et si ne puis ne garir ne morir.

Fierté, durté de joye separée,
Triste penser, parfont gemissement,
Angoisse grant en las cuer enserrée,
Courroux amer porté couvertement
Morne maintien sanz resjoïssement,
Espoir dolent qui tous biens fait tarir,
Si sont en moy , sanz partir nullement;
Et si ne puis ne garir ne morir.

Soussi, anuy qui tous jours a durée,
Aspre veillier, tressaillir en dorment,
Labour en vain, à chiere alangourée
En grief travail infortunéement,
Et tout le mal, qu'on puet entierement
Dire et penser sanz espoir de garir,
Me tourmentent desmesuréement;
Et si ne puis ne garir ne morir.

Princes, priez à Dieu qui bien briefment
Me doint la mort, s'autrement secourir
Ne veult le mal ou languis durement;
Et si ne puis ne garir ne morir.​

 

[Gray Wounds]

Great poetry, that is.

My favorite is my own's. Because I have never felt more alive than being inside my own writing.

 

[Chaetopelma]

@Gray Wounds , feel free to share.

 

[skitliv]

I love that Christine de Pisan poem, very good!

 

[Gray Wounds]

@Gray Wounds , feel free to share.

I have posted this already in this site for quite sometime ago.

.

Above me is a tearing sky,

like a frivolous eye ready to die,

bedizened with maladies in the color of red,

in which my cheeks shattered and bled.



Bowing my lifeless head below I saw,

the teeming shivers and spasms always I held low.

Like a statue robbed of impunity my lee wept,

And into the scarlet tears which my body veers it slept.



Orbs of black stared in horror into the vein,

but what macabre can't suffice this onerous vain?

Yon space dragging my gossamer reality and sanity,

producing neither equality nor inducing me some lighter profundity.



Sagacious I must've been to be avaricious to a horizon,

the imagery of an eye fiery by the colored paint of indecorous oblivion.

All this I can see yet behold the specious vicissitude,

enter–my hand grasping the prelude.



Your descant injects to me a dissentious folly,

for such quintessence of vivacity became vicious and obligatory.

Headless your race swarmed into a monastic ailment,

cloistered in the scent of aimless impediment.



Perusing my vestiges in the form of a wave you came,

frightening, manoeuvring, intoxicating your poisons'— a shame.

Shoot me, shoot me with your own hatred and despair—

The vane in my pocket a shield through the pain and a mess beyond repair.



I reach my hand for you to feel,

the drip of plea coated in red, pulsating in a certain degree so real.

Trepidation then laid with me to touch, violate, lick my obnoxious body.

These holes I covered in a jacket of obscurity not even you can see these worms so godly.



Once, a shooting star wrote into the body of the lord so dark,

letters of which every quidnuncs have failed to announce without a bark.

By my niche I silently clawed into my eyes the tears, so coward,

for the word is so pernicious it can inspire my lively thrive, to death I go forward.



Whispering my absence to your ears I bleed,

shut tight, it imitates my fists as I walk away into the abyss, my greed.

Pushing through my body countless thorns and golden knives,

wondering about a certain creature who could've saved these lives.



And now that my consciousness has settled into this blind abode,

I shall reveal to you the things I endure and these wounds so broad.

For somehow even these metallic chains can be heard from afar,

together with the thousand souls I've devoured all fixed in my divine altar.



Careful, careful with your steps for you might awaken the distorted.

Don't wail, don't shout, don't falter by your temporary blindness and get haunted.

Follow the distinct rusty yet sweet as a rose scent,

which to your beating tiny life, like a guide I have sent.



Every cell illuminated by the blood of its prisoner can confuse you,

mine you will find not so distant, not so near for I am free, I am true.

But where? Where could I possibly be in this terrain of thoughts?

Ah! Step backwards— one— two— peek-a-boo, into my body rots.



My newly sharpened vane found dalliance in your foible,

steadily and then shaky like a dying man's breath, my hand sliced your arm so feeble.

A gasp— long and trippy— we have heard,

simply being gashed and you trembled like a disappointing herd?



To saunter with you has been my goal,

more than the mountain of Everest you shone like coal!

Eeeek!—- Your cry has been when my tongue, a snake, delivered saliva in your skin.

Oooh… so tasty, so pure, a soul not tainted not even by my existence nor my kin!



What folly this could be? A spit into my crown of faith and promises!

Unforgivable! Impeccable! Divine premises!

These taunting chains', a monster's claw driving me insane—

wait for me dear, wait for me as I put to you the same coquetting pain!



Like a child I sat, untouchable, impure, and palled,

back into the wilderness off this blackness my bones have nulled.

Then silent footsteps like wings I've heard so bright,

from the falling swords of prejudice above me you ran as I cover your plight.



Weep, weep for me and for these coffins injected in my back,

as bloodless arms and open wrists caresses thy heart from the impact.

Pearls flowed through this dark abode and I noticed their source,

your eyes like virgin oils shimmered because of my course.



The light is already far beyond my pleading,

and I know that you want to stop it all from bleeding.

In this line I will give you my deepest apologies, for my needs made you suffer.

Eyes wide open I plucked my wings, you shivered to its warmth as I whisper "after".



Devoid of laughter, devoid of sin,

I watched you put your hands over the glass of my coffin so thin.

Saying unheard words as rain poured from your eyes.

And for the last time I'll tell you goodbye, and remember that time will turn all memories to ice.



Flitting, an ash I've become.

Gray, my body obstinate for the power of the wind, not balm,

Up, down, up, down, into this black cataract of afterlife I dive,

gyrating together with every strip of memory, ebbing, a life ended by a knife.


Note: Oh, and I just realized that my previous comment sounds so smug. I do not intend it to be that way. i just became laconic at that time to further express the notion. if that ever sounds horrible to any of you, I apologize sincerely.

 

[Imaginos]

The ones I'm about to post aren't explicitly suicide related, but I hope you don't mind if I drop them here anyway.

Go, let oblivion's curtain fall / Upon the stage of men, / Nor with thy rising beams recall / Life's tragedy again. / Its piteous pageants bring not back, / Nor waken flesh upon the rack / Of pain anew to writhe - / Stretched in disease's shapes abhorred, / Or mown in battle by the sword / Like grass beneath the scythe.

The Last Man - Thomas Campbell

It was the dark delusion of a dream, / That living Person conscious and supreme, / Whom we must curse for cursing us with life; / Whom we must curse because the life he gave / Could not be buried in the quiet grave, / Could not be killed by poison or the knife. /

This little life is all we must endure, / The grave's most holy peace is ever sure, / We fall asleep and never wake again; / Nothing is of us but the mouldering flesh, / Whose elements dissolve and merge afresh / In earth, air, water, plants, and other men.

City of Dreadful Night - James Thomson

I do not want you To be born!... I do not want you To inherit Defects, Disorders and anxieties From your father. I do not want you… To wear on your face The nightmares of your mother. I do not want you… Barely out Of her entrails To cry… That in the polluted atmosphere Of our world You suffocate… And that we strike to resuscitate you. I do not want To hear your cries When you are thirsty When you are hungry When you are in pain. I do not want… To extricate you from your dreams And drag you to school Where fools Will force-feed you With stupefying nonsense. I do not want… Anything to do With your social development To teach you our smirks To teach you to bow down To deceive yourself. I do not want… The first maniac that comes along To touch a single of your hairs I do not want… The priest to threaten you with hell The schoolmaster, with unemployment The janitor, with prison. I do not want you… To inhabit my City Or listen To my television lying to you To slake your thirst On the venom of my journals. To play in the street With thugs Who will spit in your face. I do not want Sinister crooks To chain you to some drug, To turn you into an addict, To better abuse you, In the general indifference. I do not want Women to bewitch you With their arrogant breasts And their protruding asses, So many lures for one finality: Giving birth. Nor do I want Pretentious Casanovas To pursue you with their sycophancy And toy with your sensitivity. I do not want you… To waste your life Earning your daily bread By the sweat of your brow. Or else by a thousand renunciations By a thousand compromises. I do not want you… To fight for John Doe Or for anyone else Or for anything else. I do not want you… To see the next war To get cancer, Or witness one of the thousand evils to come. I do not want you… To suffer. I do not want you… To ask your father one day Why he let you come into a world That does not care about the world! I do not want you To be born There are enough slaves on earth!

Philippe Annaba, 'Antinatalism Poem' ; Translated from French

 

[Mrs.O'Leary'sCow]

Richard Cory
BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

 

[Vilthuril]

Angels of the Love Affair ― Anne Sexton, The Book of Folly (1972)

"Angels of the love affair, do you know that other,
the dark one, that other me?"

1. Angel of Fire and Genitals

Angel of fire and genitals, do you know slime,
that green mama who first forced me to sing,
who put me first in the latrine, that pantomime
of brown where I was beggar and she was king?
I said, "The devil is down that festering hole."
Then he bit me in the buttocks and took over my soul.

Fire woman, you of the ancient flame, you
of the Bunsen burner, you of the candle,
you of the blast furnace, you of the barbecue,
you of the fierce solar energy, Mademoiselle,
take some ice, take come snow, take a month of rain
and you would gutter in the dark, cracking up your brain.

Mother of fire, let me stand at your devouring gate
as the sun dies in your arms and you loosen its terrible weight.


2. Angel of Clean Sheets

Angel of clean sheets, do you know bedbugs?
Once in the madhouse they came like specks of cinnamon
as I lay in a choral cave of drugs,
as old as a dog, as quiet as a skeleton.
Little bits of dried blood. One hundred marks
upon the sheet. One hundred kisses in the dark.

White sheets smelling of soap and Clorox
have nothing to do with this night of soil,
nothing to do with barred windows and multiple locks
and all the webbing in the bed, the ultimate recoil.
I have slept in silk and in red and in black.
I have slept on sand and, on fall night, a haystack.

I have known a crib. I have known the tuck-in of a child
but inside my hair waits the night I was defiled.


3. Angel of Flight and Sleigh Bells

Angel of flight and sleigh bells, do you know paralysis,
that ether house where your arms and legs are cement?
You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll's kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The brain is not evident.
I have gone to that same place without a germ or a stroke.
A little solo act ― that lady with the brain that broke.

In this fashion I have become a tree.
I have become a vase you can pick up or drop at will,
inanimate at last. What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill.
Angels of flight, you soarer, you flapper, you floater,
you gull that grows out of my back in the dreams I prefer,

stay near. But give me the totem. Give me the shut eye
where I stand in stone shoes as the world's bicycle goes by.


4. Angel of Hope and Calendars

Angel of hope and calendars, do you know despair?
That hole I crawl into with a box of Kleenex,
that hole where the fire woman is tied to her chair,
that hole where leather men are wringing their necks,
where the sea has turned into a pond of urine.
There is no place to wash and no marine beings to stir in.

In this hole your mother is crying out each day.
Your father is eating cake and digging her grave.
In this hole your baby is strangling. Your mouth is clay.
Your eyes are made of glass. They break. You are not brave.
You are alone like a dog in a kennel. Your hands
break out in boils. Your arms are cut and bound by bands

of wire. Your voice is out there. Your voice is strange.
There are no prayers here. Here there is no change.


5. Angel Of Blizzards and Blackouts

Angle of blizzards and blackouts, do you know raspberries,
those rubies that sat in the green of my grandfather's garden?
You of the snow tires, you of the sugary wings, you freeze
me out. Let me crawl through the patch. Let me be ten.
Let me pick those sweet kisses, thief that I was,
as the sea on my left slapped its applause.

Only my grandfather was allowed there. Or the maid
who came with a scullery pan to pick for breakfast.
She of the rolls that floated in the air, she of the inlaid
woodwork all greasy with lemon, she of the feather and dust,
not I. Nonetheless I came sneaking across the salt lawn
in bare feet and jumping-jack pajamas in the spongy dawn.

Oh Angel of the blizzard and blackout, Madam white face,
take me back to that red mouth, that July 21st place.


6. Angel of Beach Houses and Picnics

Angel of beach houses and picnics, do you know solitaire?
Fifty-two reds and blacks and only myself to blame.
My blood buzzes like a hornet's nest. I sit in a kitchen chair
at a table set for one. The silverware is the same
and the glass and the sugar bowl. I hear my lungs fill and expel
as in an operation. But I have no one left to tell.

Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen
with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport.
Once I sunbathed in the buff, all brown and lean,
watching the toy sloops go by, holding court
for busloads of tourists. Once I called breakfast the sexiest
meal of the day. Once I invited arrest

at the peace march in Washington. Once I was young and bold
and left hundreds of unmatched people out in the cold.

 

[Vilthuril]

Walking Around (1935) ― Pablo Neruda

It so happens I am sick of being a man.
And it happens that I walk into tailorshops and movie houses
dried up, waterproof, like a swan made of felt
steering my way in a water of wombs and ashes.
The smell of barbershops makes me break into hoarse sobs.
The only thing I want is to lie still like stones or wool.
The only thing I want is to see no more stores, no gardens,
no more goods, no spectacles, no elevators.
It so happens that I am sick of my feet and my nails
and my hair and my shadow.
It so happens I am sick of being a man.
Still it would be marvelous
to terrify a law clerk with a cut lily,
or kill a nun with a blow on the ear.
It would be great
to go through the streets with a green knife
letting out yells until I died of the cold.
I don't want to go on being a root in the dark,
insecure, stretched out, shivering with sleep,
going on down, into the moist guts of the earth,
taking in and thinking, eating every day.
I don't want so much misery.
I don't want to go on as a root and a tomb,
alone under the ground, a warehouse with corpses,
half frozen, dying of grief.

That's why Monday, when it sees me coming
with my convict face, blazes up like gasoline,
and it howls on its way like a wounded wheel,
and leaves tracks full of warm blood leading toward the night.
And it pushes me into certain corners, into some moist houses,
into hospitals where the bones fly out the window,
into shoeshops that smell like vinegar,
and certain streets hideous as cracks in the skin.
There are sulphur-colored birds, and hideous intestines
hanging over the doors of houses that I hate,
and there are false teeth forgotten in a coffeepot,
there are mirrors
that ought to have wept from shame and terror,
there are umbrellas everywhere, and venoms, and umbilical cords.
I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes,
my rage, forgetting everything,
I walk by, going through office buildings and orthopedic shops,
and courtyards with washing hanging from the line:
underwear, towels and shirts from which slow
dirty tears are falling.

 

[Vilthuril]

Dolor (1948) - Theodore Roethke

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

 

[locusdelicti]

Had I not known
that I was dead
already
I would have mourned
the loss of my life.

-Ota Dokan

 

[therhydler]

The poetry by @Johnnythefox

 

[Johnnythefox]

The poetry by @Johnnythefox

Thanks you very much @therhydler, I appreciate your appreciation.

 

[Vilthuril]

Wanting to Die (1966) ― Anne Sexton

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!―
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.