Flight from Despondency

The places men go to die are never crowded:
I heard the patter of the feet above,
Through the melange of brambles and thorns
I could see the heels pivot,
Kicking up dirt towards my hovel.
I came here to be taken,
To disappear, to defeat panic,
The incessant rumbles of terror,
And the cycle of recidivism
That led to these terminal thoughts.
I came here to forget (to be forgotten):
The world has songs, innumerable,
Full of sad men navigating, muted,
Through empty city streets
Looking for a spot to drop,
To cease the weariness
And the footsteps echo through
Everything and recede into the night.
I came here to vanish, committed absolutely,
Short of lighting the pyre,
And subjected to segregation,
Felt ever closer to the decision
While the thundering of the footfalls above
Seemed to spread out in all directions:
Away.
I came here, tired of the quarrel,
To quell the material realm:
All that empirical devastation.
As the brambles began to close,
Tightly coiling astride my neck,
Pinching the carotid artery,
I saw her toes,
Curled in over the edge of my pit,
Lined together, split by a black latch,
Facing me, slicing through the thorns.
Luminous, radiant and brilliant
Her vibrancy lit the cell,
Shattering the darkness,
Revealing the graphic and ghastly form.
Ignorant no longer, I rose,
Stretched towards the surface,
Clutching what I could,
Pulling myself up from the depths
Of the barbed, piercing patch.
In my ascent, the thorns took skin,
Blood, hair, ripping and tearing as I climbed,
Leaving scars that would never heal.
I felt each injury with an exaggerated sensitivity,
Yet continued slashing through the vile garden.
I stood, faced the sky, battered, bruised and torn,
And there it was: my world, my life
And, below in the reflection of a gutter side puddle,
I saw my eyes and witnessed the return of my wonder.
Reborn and empty, I strode down the promenade,
To begin again, the collection of knowledge,
Love, and the thirst for all there is,
All there will be.