9.6 On Death

by Eric Chaet

I don’t know
what happens when we die.
I don’t believe
you know, either.
I don’t believe the ones
who are sure
of life after death
know what the hell
they’re talking about.
And I don’t believe the ones
who are sure
that there is no life after death
know what they’re talking about, either.
I don’t know if there is a kernel of truth in the idea of Heaven.
I don’t know if Hitler went to Hell, or to oblivion
or to some giant rehab lab, workshop, or studio—
Purgatory underground, as per Dante,
or maybe in that giant concrete mixer, the Oort Cloud,
out past Neptune & Pluto—
or in some dimension we can’t readily imagine
(as fish in a pond couldn’t imagine
the scheming, building, warring, coping
above the pond’s surface
on land, or in rivers, lakes, oceans, the atmosphere, galaxies).

Maybe there’s a body shop
like those for wrecked cars—only for souls
distorted by having to plead for the privilege
of submitting to painful & humiliating initiations
to join absurdly-occupied, wound-tight drones
in subtle but pervasive or violently-enforced
conforming to preposterous misunderstandings-based routines
& by their roles in battles for domination
within each hive & among the hives.

Who, as an embryo outgrowing its living container
could have guessed what birth would lead to—
the glorious universe, glorious life—& mad humanity
sometimes sleep-walking & other times rampaging?

I’ll risk that the best strategy for facing death
is the best strategy I’ve found for life, as well—
not to believe I know what I don’t know
especially what can’t be known
& to do as close to what I wish I would as I can
to face what I must face
as close to the way I wish I would as I can
not to rule out what might be sweet & thrilling
because so much sour, bitter, heavy, tedious, crazy, unjust
has landed on me & on everyone else
like an anvil falling from some office building window
while I’m walking innocently up the street
while humanity is walking innocently up the street
trying to figure out what business is mine to mind
trying to figure out what its business is—
tho many pretend to know & fiercely defend the pretense
& pursue other illusions, too
whoever they must trample on their ways
trapped in ideas that are only points
of their own willful creation
which need constant nourishment
for energy to struggle against surprising in-coming evidence
in the midst of something neither they, nor you, nor I made
dynamically-ranging, awe-inspiring, enabling
yet far beyond our ability to comprehend, let alone control.

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Picture: Michael Delahoyde, Washington State University