Court Of No Appeal

[Sentenced by the Trail, I ran to get Advice of Counsel - the first took my hope, the second my worldly possessions. I'm left only with the right of appeal, the longest of long shots, uncertain if silence is perhaps the wiser course. I cannot help but feel the fool by speaking but what have I to lose! Is there no return from the position I'm in? Tell me in absolutes so that I may know the wisest course. It seems the more I struggle to be free, the more I'm trapped. And yet to do nothing is to train in vain for a world to change.]

To the dearest Court:
My criminality cannot be disputed. My cleverness betrayed me. Who can be my counsel when standing before God? How can I un-know my crime? Look at the absences in my life! There's only one explanation: none. I can't go on like this, eaten alive under the giving sun, pressed into the army of the dead, my life hanging by a court appeal, my last option, shouted to a deserted moon.
However cruel or deceiving or wrongheaded or errant the Court may be makes no difference in my fate. Your worldly sentence is a fool's errand that steals your predicted profit. The Court betrays its future when acting unjustly; a dark cloudy mind speaking only to itself, doddering dunderheads given power and life because forsaken madmen would choose such a course. Woe to the judges for they squandered their mercy at the living time of trial, weaving a web to ensnare both guilty and innocent alike.
In my time of trial, I drowned in suppositions, lunged at evaporating apparitions, prayed to false idols in supplication. In these I placed my trust but rage my only harvest. Now I crawl before you a pathetic beast, drinking from the cup of shame. Each dawn I die, a thousand slashes in the night reminding me of my treachery. Raging, and raging more, pushed beyond the limits of humanity. My gasping soul can find no air.
Thus I write then tear up a thousand arguments for my fate, followed by a thousand arguments more, ad infinitum, for I can neither be silent nor speak as the Court has ruled. If freedom's wish is so foully forbidden, I must ask of the driving fear behind it. Does the Court find direction by denying mine? Yes, you know you have no obligation to answer me, but does the Court believe it has no obligation to answer? Is time your friend in this matter, or a growing enemy that looms over you that grants no appeal? Is that why you would deny my request, because yours languishes in silent refusal?
I'm of two minds, but only while serving one does the other seem correct. From one mind I strain to reach the other, as visible as a rainbow but just as elusive. This is where my freedom lies, in this constant pull that allows me at least a false argument of hope to get through the passing day, but like a prison courtyard I travel in circles only to end up where I started, so even when trying something new the result is always the same, rendering a cruelly familiar feeling I've yet to escape since the beginning of this ordeal that is so certain of my guilt yet withholding explanation - supposing any concern on my part unwarranted - safely ensconced in stubborn ignorance by claiming justice may be served outside the purview of truth while courtly retaining the trappings of reason that gives comfort to the uninformed and the ill-tempered who wish to draw no ire so as to remain blind to their peril not realizing that only perpetuates it.
So you see, I ask you not to do for me, but to do for yourself. We shall wail together or sing together - but together it will be. It is not the impossible dream the prosecutor argues. The Rider on the Pale Horse has still not arrived, proving hope is still with us. I have no leg to stand on. How does one piece a ripped flower back to life? But to live without meaning can serve no one's interest. Love is coming to us all.

[Like a man walking the plank, each nervous step I took returning to the Court burned into my memory: the angle of the sunlight, the darkening of the corridors, the counting down of time, the inner debates, and the final fleeting excitement of knocking on the door one has the words to change the world and plant a flower anew. But this sign I did see:

COURT BARRED FOR COVID
WILL NOT REOPEN
CASE CLOSED

Advice Of Counsel

Good thing you came to me because you've made a complete muck of your petition to the Court - a complete muck! And I as a woman am uniquely positioned to help you in ways you as a man could never understand as the Court itself is also a woman and must be dealt with using certain sensitivities without which you would not be heard nor understood nor even received. Yes, you have proven yourself wise to place yourself in my custody and relieve yourself of this burden you've been carrying for far too long. How distressful this must have been for you! No one can make it alone in life nor should be expected to.
And if you wish not to be alone, I have a plan for that.
Running away is never objective, also you're then subject to all sorts of unfounded allegations and endless rumor mills and irrefutable assumptions no matter how inaccurate, and you'll find yourself answering for crimes you never committed - nor intended to commit - but your accusers know full well you will not face them so they feel free to fantasize the most outlandish of transgressions and thereby gain a hold over you which they believe to be to their benefit but that too is false because we are all in this together and for one to do well we must all do well and that law can never be violated under any circumstances.
For if you wish no violation, I have a plan for that.
I read here of your strong and sometimes overwhelming desire to hang yourself which is understandable having previously betrayed the Court in a truly irrational and maniacal manner. Yes, it is horrible to be a bad man - it's nothing at all like in the movies, singing and dancing your way down the stairs all the while forlorn for the love and understanding we are born to seek. I, of course, understand fear, as it has happened to me, only thankfully, I did not react in the foolishly zealous fashion you did that has put you in your currently dire quandary. No, deciding to hang yourself is never the answer. Only the Court can demand that.
So if you wish for a sentence to live, I have a plan for that.
So what is it you're hiding? Is there any valid reason for it - or can there ever be a reason not be free? You state you do not wish for the Court to see you as you are but in concealing this do you not also hide the brilliance of the Light inherent in every soul? You claim yours is a truth not to be tolerated but what besides the truth can save you? You lied to the Court to gain the Court's favor feeling it could not be gotten otherwise, and even though this is a so-called legal proceeding we know that all things in life come down to personal relationships. I can't imagine the point of vainly struggling against the inevitable and inexorable fate of revelation from which no soul is excluded.
But if you wish to be free, I have a plan for that.
Yes, I must take your gold but it's only so that I may survive because my survival is needed in order to help you. Like a lifeguard who brings in a drowning man among hardened dock piers, I must keep you between me and the piers so that I may not be smashed into them by ferocious waves because as you know if something happens to me, your rescuer, then we both die. This is just a circumstance of the world we live in and your understanding of this is vital. I do know there are many who make this same claim under the guise of helping you while swindling you and that is certainly the most horrific of betrayals!
Rest assured, if you wish no such swindling, I have a payment plan for that.
Some realities, of course, cannot be helped. If you jump off a thousand foot building with only concrete below then your death is certain regardless of even the most favorable of legal rulings. While falling, it's easy to fall into a state of despair and have your stubborn pride tell you all will be fine and therefore not look to see if you have a parachute attached, or worse you could listen to false supporters who praise your decision as perfect which convinces you of no need to use your parachute, or even worse you give into guilt at having betrayed the Court and deceive yourself into believing that can be mended by betraying yourself and that too will cause you to fail to pull the ripcord.

So, obviously, there can be no plan for that.

Trial By Guilt

She sat perched on high in the high court on a wooden throne with "FORBIDDEN JUSTICE" carved around the curved headboard in Gothic letters not to be questioned. On the wall behind, in the same but larger Gothic letters, "NO TRUTH IS CERTAIN" was loudly proclaimed to be true. As I stood awaiting in the lower chamber, the judge stood up in her long black robes designed to hide what is already known, and she began the sentencing mourned as my trial.
"I see before me a known unknown, persona non grata. So how can I judge you as anything else when Nature has made Her judgement before me? Do you have business here, does the doomed wish to speak? Perhaps a witty comment might do, you think? Something to entice me to enjoy your company. If so, do you believe you can sustain that indefinitely, for life? How much wit is within you? Are you certain of an inexhaustible supply? Or do you wish to keep that dour look upon your face, of which I have no desire to see and if I did your severed head would serve equally well. Or perhaps you wish to make a wry observation upon these proceedings? Do you think that is what I wish to hear? Would that please me or enrage me, you wonder. Do you dare take the chance? Are you having a crisis of conscience and faith? Is it only by crime you can gain my company? Is deceit your faultless ally? May a stolen moment be the only treasure you can obtain? Is an allegation of an unbearably anguishing separation your plea, so that the court may show mercy? Would that be a just outcome for this court: to have you tolerated at best, dreaded at worst? If you should fall into disrepair, is that the court's concern, of your every peregrination through life? Is the court obligated to tabulate the outcome of your decisions in which it had no say? Should the court hold itself responsible to weep over your grave when your death is without notice?
"Each soul assumes feelings but some assumptions are true and some are false. How is the court to determine your wishful thinking and flights of fancy from a true heart? Is such a thing even determinable? Is the court your refuge where you hope to ameliorate your wounds incurred from without, to substitute this life for having none? A person on the run seeks shelter and takes shelter wherever it can be found, right or wrong. Should the court be taken advantage of in this way? Does it exist for your pleasure and convenience? Am I to be at your beck and call, denying my own life, due to the discord in your own? Or do you allege that the sum of two parts is different when combined as one? Is this what you guarantee, an unknowable and unforeseeable outcome that has never been faced? Is your imagination to be taken for reality? Are you so certain of your needs that you yet proclaim them while still breathing? What is the court's obligation to your unproven truths?
"Or is silence your answer? To say nothing and be nothing is your defense? How can the court not be offended when you make no effort? Or are you simply cycling through the various answers you could give, waiting for the right moment to strike, knowing that giving the wrong answer - or the right answer at the wrong time - is equally offensive as silence? Or do you contend there is no right answer, that no possible words or combination of words ever invented could possibly do? Do you believe you have the intellect to make that determination? Or are you accusing the court of a prejudged bias against any words you say no matter how appropriate or inappropriate they may be? Have you come simply to cast aspersions and expect that the court would delight at the generous gift of your supposed insight? Where is this all to end, these speaking-and-not-speaking deliberations? Till death do us part? What offering can you make to this court, which you have deemed your doorkeeper to salvation, with your quivering lip which gives the court such pause? What is the way forward? If you do not know, how can I, for communication is the vein of life."
....
"OK, then, I'll communicate. I'm fucking DEVASTATED and wholly DISHEARTENED without your friendship. I'm FAKING everything every DAY. I acted without HOPE. It's UNFORGIVABLE. You are the KINDEST most INTELLIGENT person I know. I'm SORRY in every way."