Jump the Life to Come

Robert Ronnow
The Imaginary i

Jump the Life to Come

Some go bravely, without flinching,
others like a clown riding an elephant
out the circus tent, laughing and waving.
Some want to be alone where the deer
lay down their bones, or with family standing
around their bed. All go to an undiscovered galaxy.

They’re greeted by their hosts, impersonal,
ephemeral, efficient and nonviolent.
They meet other ghosts moving into dormitories.
If you had a stiff neck in life, now you don’t.
Are there dogs and birds? What about fleas and the flu.
Is this nebula discernible from the Milky Way?

Do I need a name? No name tags, please!
How arbitrary—an appellation, a nation, a place of birth,
i.e. Hoboken, New Jersey,
the history that surrounds us,
my doubts re my worth.
Everything changes but consciousness.

More people were alive in 1950
than subsisted in all of antiquity.
That said, I proceed to daily heavenly being,
delights, disputes and gossip where the self
is lost and found again. Why not participate,
where’s the harm? Charming and disrespectful

the devil exists to carry the load
when we misbehave and fight among ourselves.
It would take 64 million years to cross this antipode
in a jet flying 1,000 mph. Big, Jamaica Bay
to Inwood, the Battery to Pelham Bay,
so I’m never getting out of here.

A certain clarity obtains as a djinn,
a spirit lingering without a body, just a gas.
Gases tend to expand and dissipate
absent a vessel, or armor, or bony bestiary.
Being free means belonging to the loved ones
which is why I won't abscond, rebel or resist.