The Good Place

 

If I were to pass away today

and take leave of my body

and find myself on the other side

of the thin veil between life and death,

where would I wake up?

 

If there was a heaven, 

would it be like the Christians tell it?

Peopled by Raphael’s dough-faced 

baby cherubim inattentively

attending the Madonna’s gate

behind which spread buffets of milk and honey?

Or would there be terrifying multi-eyed wheel beings 

Like their book says?

 

If there was a hell,

would it be all bad marketing and poop jokes?

Would the personal hell awaiting me

be built inside of a small windowless office

on hold with a doctors office

listening to the same muzak on loop…

for millennia.

 

Perhaps, there is some middle ground

steeped in sepia and perpetual “meh-ness”

or some inexplicable void 

orchestrated by incomprehensible beings.

 

What careful calculations and 

mathematics of meaning-making

could possibly surmise the contributions

of a single life?

And what a horrible power to wield.

 

I don’t know the answers

or if anyone is really in charge

but, I do hope that it is fair

that they have a sense of humor,

and that there is froyo in the beyond.