How excellent if we could just die during those moments when the world manifests itself to us in such splendour that we could quit at the top in the brilliant sunlight of a late spring day with butterflies fluttering lazily about hummingbirds delighting on nectar and the clouds promising rain or mounted on the lover, mid-plunge as the magical union of souls precipitates and all sense dissolves into love that we could release our final breath at will because the view from the mountain-top leaves nothing left to desire because the perspective is so expansive that we understand we’ve seen the face of God that we could expire in the grip of Brahms gliding along the violins of Vivaldi floating on the ocean waves of Jóhannsson weeping for joy with Händel Alas, our time is not ours to pick instead we die undignified deaths in droves at the bottom of shallow graves stabbed in the back with bayonets we die ill and feeble, and weary of life clinging pathetically to our memories abandoned by our beloved, whom we alienated we die bilious in the concrete jungles we’ve built vomiting the poisons we daily eat and breathe inconsolable in the loss of our humanity we die burning at the stake by firing squad or lethal injection at the hands of bureaucrats we starve by the millions, die buried alive plummeting from bridges and belfries overdose on opioids, get shot by those meant to protect us we take our own lives for the sheer lack of love in the world but when we have the now what matters the end? - 6 V 2019 -