To Go On or Not to Go On

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.