What Does Heaven Look Like?

To most, it seems, it exists

Only as a dream—

An unhappy utopia

Where white clouds cushion

Handsome harp-playing heroes and harlequins

Whose hearts haven’t held hate

The way it’s lodged in my left ventricle—

Where boisterous laughter is a sin

(As are lazy eyes, uneven breasts, bad jokes,

And the tendency to seek divergence).

A growing population favors the other end—

When our bodies rot,

Riddled with worms and mushrooms,

So too do our souls,

Our essences, which get drunk

Up through the roots of, say, an oak,

And we are no longer Zach or Tom or Melissa,

But rather oak or birch or evergreen,

Until fire or time wears down once more—

That goodbye is the last thing we ever say.

But maybe it’s a virtual reality

DVD controlled by us, the deceased—

A decathlon of memories best

Where we might say,

“Let me love her one more time”—

Masterstroke of an omniscient statistician,

His remote in our hands

So that we might re-experience,

Might achieve life’s failed goals.

Then again maybe heaven’s a lot like here—

Minus all the assholes.