This is The Plan:
he will stop his heart through meditation,
escape this dimension, enter the ether region,
recover the soul mate whose loss
all those years back
caused his hair to fall out
in nervous clumps on a rainy night
traveling between cloven hopes
& battle calls.

He�s a married man with children.
He keeps a parrot
with an eclectic vocabulary
hidden in the basement.
He fasts every Friday, is convinced
his whereabouts
are no longer a matter
of body placement,
gimmicky gravity.
He uses 91 different chants
to pierce the godhead.
When doubt stalks him
he shuts down, tells himself
�all in good time�.

He has an overly large
gun collection, a soft spot
for his youngest child,
a Led Zeppelin understanding
of sex, a pornographic way
of entering elevators.
He likes his toast crustless.
He wishes he�d known his father better.
Weather, especially harsh, intrigues him.
He keeps mum
on the status of his brain waves.
On the ceiling above his bed he�s tacked
a map of Hollywood Boulevard.

The day for trying out The Plan is growing near.

He gives up pretending
he�s not The Chosen One.
His parrot reciting lines from
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
is sweet comfort. Getting
from here to there, he thinks,
may happen all at once.
Seated cross-legged on a cusp of swoon,
he dreams of finally
coming into his own.
He used to have a different plan,
but back then he was oh such
an ordinary man.



�2007 by Lisa Gordon