I don’t care if I’m dead as long as I’m still
alive, in Heaven I mean though not Hell,
I might be dead but I’ll still be lively,
just somewhere else and in Sunday School class
we’re told that that place is perfect so what
am I waiting for, I should kill myself
but our teacher, Miss Hooker, calls that sin
heinous, suicide she means, It’s not fair
to pull your own plug just to plug into
Paradise, otherwise why did Jesus
die just to have us undo Him taking
our own lives? She’s pretty sharp, Miss Hooker
is, and pretty besides and even though
I’m 10 and she’s 25 I can see
her as my wife, for a while anyway,
until she dies, there aren’t that many folks
who really have lives past 45 and
once you hit that high number higher ones
follow, which is common sense but I mean
faster, one after the other and I
guess that when you’re older some even come
out of order–suddenly you’re 50
and if you’re not right with God by then it’s
the fiery depths of Hell for you where–sure
–there’s eternal life for your soul but no
air conditioning and worse torture and
torment and suffering and so on for
you, whenever I’m afraid of Heaven
being pure boredom I just think of Hell
instead and figure–and I’m not even
expired yet–that there’s more to do down there
but you pay a pretty damn high price or
your soul does, your soul’s what’s left of you when
everything else has been peeled away and
you are what you were in the beginning
without a body all over again
except that this time God’s not going to
fit you with a new one, ditto Satan.
What bugs me about perfection sometimes
is how imperfect it is–I’m happy
with life as I have it, or mine, now, but
when you’re dead you get a consolation
prize, let’s say, and how can it be better
than thinking about how good it might be?
I’d just like to be dead for five minutes
to see what it’s like and then I’ll come back
and keep my mouth shut, I won’t spoil Heaven
or Hell for anybody, I just want
a hint and a pretty strong one at that
of what God’s gotten me into so I
can prepare myself. On the other hand
I still don’t think I’m prepared for living.
But then I am and have been and will be
until I won’t be any longer, not
in the flesh anyhow. And that’s my bag.
Gale Acuff has had hundred of poems published and is the author of three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine, where he teaches at Arab American University.
