This world’s a ward for the insane,
Where fate gives birth to good and bad,
Where joy morphs slowly into pain,
And ruins crumble cold and sad.

No other realm could ever claim
Such seas conceived from blood and tears,
Such storms from weary sighs that rain
Through hollow masts, through broken spears.

The joke’s on me—this much I know,
Among these patients, I remain.
Through halls where raving madmen go,
I drag the shackles of my stain.

The joke is on me from my birth,
For sin was woven through my breath.
I wandered cursed across the Earth,
A fool who laughed himself to death.

The joke is on me still at last,
Though no soul remains to grin.
The jester’s shadow has been cast
Across the quiet wards of sin.

Its irony escapes me not:
That hell may masquerade as bliss,
That paradise itself may rot
And plunge by night into abyss.

Perhaps redemption lingers still
For all condemned to share this plight;
Perhaps some distant, stubborn will
Still strains to crawl toward the light.

In prison, even guards are chained,
They cannot leave the bars they tend.
No soul within these walls has gained
A road that doesn’t downward bend.

All souls confined, yet still we fight
Through false divides our minds create.
We choose which side we think is right,
Though every path still meets one fate.

We are the same; our blood is one.
The locks were forged within the mind.
We write the laws we kneel upon,
Then curse the chains our hands designed.

Yet misery endures the same,
Its shadow stretched across the slate…
Perhaps mankind is to blame:
Too old to dream, too late to wait.

Perhaps the bars were never real,
And all we feared was born of late.
If wounds can close and scars can heal,
Perhaps it’s time to clean this slate.