A Question for the After Life

Now the question uppermost,
As you dance around the door,
Seems to be, Do you believe

You’ll have anything to say
When you finally step through?
There’s a little eagerness,

Almost a nudge-nudge, wink-wink,
About those wanting to ask,
Wanting to know if you’ll try

To cross over with yourself
Intact, maybe signal back.
They remind you of minors

Outside gas-station markets,
Hoping to find an adult
Willing to take their twenty

And come back with a six pack.
You’ll get to go into Death
And ask their question for them.

Excuse me, Death, you mind
If I send a little note
Back to everyone living,

Let them know, despite it all,
That I’m still me on this side,
Except that I don’t exist?

Good Luck with Long Odds

Be funny if someone’s magic
Was just that, luck of the bad,
The bad beat, the darkest horse—

Anytime they tried to be
Sensible they succeeded
Behaviorally but failed

In terms of desired outcomes.
Things went skew-whiff and haywire,
Unless they were being fools.

But luck like that isn’t luck.
There can be no magic luck,
Since you could say that magic,

As such, eliminates luck.
And yet all imagine it.

Never Sublet to Your Dreams

Quick dreams rearranged the room
Like someone cruelly teasing
A blind tenant who was out.

You came to yourself and boom
All the dimensions were wrong—
Vertigo for a second.

Thanks to being sleep-deprived
And hospitalized, you'd let
Your sublet dreams pull this stunt

On you ten, twelve times a day.
The furnishings of your world
Didn’t seem yours anymore.

Ten times a day, you’d drift back
To where you were hanging out
With your daughter at the lake

And then you’d be back, the same
But not, no longer healthy
In any way, your daughter

Not even there. Erase that.
Startled back again. Your friends.
Weren’t they just talking to you?

The Gold Was Made of Angel

The evening angle swings around,
Beginning its consolation.

That light itself is forgiveness,
Or what forgiveness ought to be,

The weightless touch that lifts you up
The gold that’s free of all metal—

How unalloyed is that? The word,
Or the word in any language,

For gold, for golden, can’t have been
Begun as name for a metal.

Humans knew light long before gold.
The metal was the reminder,

While the forgiveness in itself,
The glow before silvered twilight,

Was the core originator,
The effortlessness of late day

That later made you claw the dirt
Craving more forgiveness from Earth.

The Empty Toolbox

Think of all the skills you have
For living, for dealing with life.

How many times have you shared tips
On how to handle this or that—

Deal with conflict, ask for help,
Not get caught in a traffic jam?

If you’re scared, there’s an industry
Of advice for every topic

And a library of efforts
From the past, deep past, deeper past,

All that eudaemonic input
For living the best kind of life,

And now here you are with your life
In hand, all that good stuff, facing

What isn’t life at all, and life
Seems suddenly irrelevant.