I most certainly do
Cool air from our desert night
blows through barred window
a small stone cell
Canvas cot full of the dried odors slimes mistakes
of the men before and now me and then
One tries to believe
That seems the critical element of preparation
But it all seems so fantastical
The hood just some simple soft cotton or rough burlap or medium linen cloth
like any other, but now used to hide my bulging-eyed end from the eager early morning crowd
if anyone shows
The rope
Scratching and have other necks already known this final embrace
seems like they could at least get a new rope
And the same pleasant sun of this warm seaside world
where I’ve always
And never again
So much as a woman’s hair brushing against my face
A day wasted coffee wine and cigarettes on the balcony
watching the people pass certain of their futures and me too believing then as I did in tomorrow

Sometimes
the Fates redirect
and you must go
through the windshield into the tree

Sometimes
the lines turn out to converge
quicker than you’d supposed
In wartime the bombs destroy everything everyone and you must watch and then again as you’re folded into the dark
the void that only goes one way, like a blackhole
In peacetime everybody sad and talk about what a fighter and you almost believe it
but you know
It’s just bedtime; there aren’t even bombs involved this time; you don’t even have to watch your world erased; you just watch your body disassemble and listen while people say how it is as the uncontested mystery coasts to another ridiculously easy victory

So we all fall
for what feels like forever
especially early years
when, after that brief dreamtime in misty smooshed-together chaos shot through by eternal Love, you’ve gotten acclimated to living and, if lucky, being safe and loved and never watching the violence tramping and hacking into your town
A free fall that feels like a nice safe snug home
So we fall
flailing reaching trying to grab and hold onto
And the lonely comes circling round
like a tiger
when you’re caught out in the woods far from the thatched roofs, odor of the cooking you’ve always known has always seemed like real, gossip boasts kind words empty ones angry ones words
And you think
this is a big deal
But then
I guess your foot slipped
and you feel within the falling
and now you’re eyes bulge just like the mouse
with the snapped back
so close to the little dollop of peanut butter
it was your design
whose design is this?

When you fly through the windshield
And I am run through by this joke or the next one
Do we go through the same point?
Do we all meet we all everyone even though we speak now of planets of universes of timepspaces of so much conscious motion?
Where did you go?
Where will I go?
What counts as success?
Or is it like the Kafka story?
Whatever you tell yourself and other people, you never reach the Law though you wait all your life, and then your breath loses interest and quits on you and as the oxygen leaves you, your watching watches the guard and the door that you’d never been able to bribe or steal or cheat or beg or sneak your way beyond, and you hear your throat asking how it can be that all seek the Law, so how is it that in all these years no one’s ever come here to be at the door with you?, and he is so tall and powerful and his beard so thick and terrible but his teeth and eyes seem mild and kindly and I’ve known cobras like this but that’s another type of poison for another type of essay and so what I mean to say is that at the end he says, in the story, he goes, “This door was just for you; now I’m closing it.”
?
And then
and only then
into the mystic

I should think not
surely we can go into the mystic now
surely we must
surely there’s no delay
anymore
given the failures
of various systems near and far

A healthy young man in any easy sunny life on cobblestones
hidden away from the harsh realities from the meanness and the danger
with a wife and a family in a little town that curves with the glittering sea
and yet somehow
to not be
a fool
to not
take such blessings for granted

And now?
In this world, the Fates always win.
In the world beyond within and through: the God the Love the kind delight giggling over with always more to joyously share: that’s what always wins there
In the mystic
perhaps we could
be both here and there
and then

What then?
I can’t tell you anymore
A man prepares for death
Every step he feels all through from the footfall to the connection with the sidewalk to the rolling forward to the way the impact gently spreads up the leg into the hip and gut and torso flowing with the swaying arms this old idea you never quite inhabited and now
What will the Fates do?
The nice part is we know what the God will do; that’s always the same and that’s only good.
But the Fates aren’t like that; they aren’t mean, but they know this is an illusion and that sooner or later you must also know that
That’s all fine and good; it’s just lonely to think we are all One in the Soul, and so there’s no particular anybody to be my home and me hers and this illusion of human love will never carry us home to where we belong
or
well
A man prepares for life or death
he tries for life
he accepts death is already there and that he is already a hollowed tree standing lifeless but yet somehow watching in the forest full of such trees

What can I do?
How can I organize what’s within my reach?
To be what you need?
Or if that’s just not possible
How can I organize what’s within my reach
To do what’s best for everyone
which strictly speaking should be a goal anyway
?