To Go On or Not to Go On
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An adaptation of Shakespeare's Hamlet's To be Or Not to Be
Written by: Kristin Elyse Harlan
To go on, or not to go on: that is the question:
Whether tis nobler in the mind to continue
The feeble fight to carry on to the next day,
Or to slip into an eternal bliss
And to forfeit life for slumber. To pass on: to surrender;
No more and by yielding to the burden of breath
The hot tears streaming, muffled gasps
Of air that the ill-minded suffer
Tis a romanticized self-murder
Devoutly to be wished. To pass on: to surrender;
To surrender: perchance to smile: aye there's the rub;
For in the splintered mind and soul what final blow may come
When we have finally let that which is broken shatter;
For who would bear the suffocation of sadness
The lover's abandon, the bigot's discourse,
The daggers of spoken venom,
The pedigree's patriarchy and the wrongs done unto you
That insecure merit of the loathed takes
When she herself might her quietus make
With a chair and rope? Who would inconvenience bear,
To achieve an incomplete attempt
Yet to leave behind the conceived life,
The blissful giggle of a mind unaware
Of the world's ugly nature
And makes rather see his smile than mine own
Than to relinquish life to demons inside
Thus compassion does make altruists of us all
And thus the trapped universe inside veins
Compulsed to keep flowing beneath flesh
And forced actions with supposed smiles
With this to march on unto tomorrow
And lose the name of action.