Ugly are your wings so drab and dark          
Softly bending against rippled bark  
Golden borders with spots of blue                
Dreary patterns of somber hue  
  
Mourningcloak you are a fraud        
A butterfly severely flawed  
Unbeautiful as your name implies    
The ugliest of all butterflies  
  
Mental illness makes for fragile wings  
Always falling short of better things  
A dolorous sight of stark despair  
And restless flights that go nowhere                          
    
Strange specimen caught in a net                  
To choose to live is to forget  
That life will end but death won’t come        
In the killing jar you just go numb  
  
Through rounded glass will life transform      
And taste so sweet of chloroform  
A soothing bane breathed in real deep          
Faint distractions drift fast asleep  
              
Isolation keeps you who you are                        
Death is endless in the killing jar  
Wings held outstretched on the spreading board    
Pass deathless moments where time’s ignored  
                                      
Pins pierce the body and puncture through                
To hold you here but you’re not you  
Pinned and labeled put on display                              
Pressed in a box and forced to stay  
  
Immortalized in a private case        
In solitude to hang in place  
Repulsive feckless Mourningcloak  
Now the symbol of life’s cruelest joke