If you haven’t tried everything yet,
by all means keep trying.

That is,
if there is still something you wish
to say or do that seems it might
just be the thing to establish
the veracity of your special
amazing
carefully hidden
sparkling
inner superhero
identity-
the one only you really understand,
the one you feel that you and you alone
must forge in the fires of your achievement
and then quench in your cool wit and intellect,
the one the world would have
finally understood in shocking admiration
if only…
…if only the cracks
of circumstances had split your
private reality a few feet further to the
right, rather than opening up
like a subterranean maw
below the one spot
from which you
were about to spring,
leaping high into the air
to demonstrate
an extremely rare kung fu maneuver
that looks so banal only
a true master would even
be able to distinguish its
potentially devastating power
from a perfectly normal game of
hopscotch-
Go ahead.

Or…

If you’ve tried everything,
and nothing has worked, then
by all means give up.  Stop
wasting your time and energy
on such a hopeless cluster@#%$
of an endeavor.  After all,
the Creation is quite clearly
unresponsive to you.

Maybe start a lecture tour.
You’ve proven Reality
doesn’t work in ways few
of us would ever have dreamed of
considering, and deployed
methods we could never
have withstood or endured.
You are a champion of perseverance.
Your chest is a brick fortress,
a protective device constructed
from the only materials you had available,
the detritus of history and experience.
Only an expert
on the taxonomy of failed
promises and dashed hopes
could elucidate, as you could,
the pitfalls of considering the possibility
that it all works out.  Spare us
that deception.  You have been
to the distant deserts of Hope,
and wrestled baby deer from the jaws
of lions, only to be set upon
by a deranged herd of drunken
wildebeest and kicked through
the desert like a beach ball.
What further proof is needed?

Or…

Look here, You could join Us…

We cordially invite you to
try the Middle Way.  We are
a great caravan of beings, moving through
the desert on this journey
without distance,
whispering, knowing, dreaming,
cooking, cleaning, washing,
rinsing,
rinsing,
rinsing,
reciting the lines that were etched
upon our Hearts, playing
that cosmic poetry game where
you line up our hearts in different
combinations to make new flavors of Light.
(We play that all night long.)

(There’s a word we can’t make without you…)

You could join Us,
so we could stop caravaning
in never ending circles around you,
banging our drums and rejoicing,
all the while imagining how great
this caravan will be on
the Day of your Return.

There’s a word we can’t make without you…
Forget kung fu and the scent of wildebeest…
Think a moment, about who you really Are…