He falls the second time

Because the sequence is beginning to come 
clear, beginning to reveal a definite
direction, he begins to notice details
and events as correspondences, as links with
(repetitions of) his past and future.
He recognises that this holds a delicate,
uncertain danger, but makes small effort
to sustain his place as now.  Self-destruction
is the least of his new possibilities - he
hasn't time to sit and meditate the path's
divergence, for the one way (there,
marked by red neon) has become insistently
more possible.
               (He drags from time to time,
               but by and large keeps drifting,
               with the pain of mass, 
               its gravity, his
               burden of detachment,
               measured by the space,
               not by the act.)
It's not the fact of losing his advantage;
the desire to do so is his failure,
and he does desire to let it slip,
to shed the distance that he's gained, because
it isn't gained, because he knows damn well
that every step is further from his aim, is
formed towards a gesture that he knows
is his to make - useless and, above all,
final.
     He thinks along these lines,
stumbles across these lines carved in his
humanity, driven by a patience stirring
deep within a part of him he'd rather remain 
unaware of.
        He can't remain unaware of it; he
watches as the gap becomes a symbol,
swearing savagely, recognising his reaction,
not as then or then, but now.
His days summed up by fear, he tries to be 
detached, and finally refuses to acknowledge
the reluctant fate he clings to,
though he senses its absence in
all but his falling.

( to the contents page.)