What if everyone is wearing masks
at the non-stop cocktail party in heaven’s ballroom?
Where it’s standing room only for self-satisfied lounging,
always in the wee hours, with perennially full glasses of champagne,
and all the conversations starting with “Remember when...”
and concluding “...it all worked out in the end.”
What a regatta of Freemasonry, what a cloying gratitudinal arc.
The tautology of mercy received from an ambient being,
a generous deity nobody has ever seen,
haunting the foyer of his own transcendent home.
What if there are no directions in the welcome bag
and I am oblivious to the fixed appointment for our anticipated reunion,
as if a lifetime’s worth of waiting wasn’t enough?
What if the hallways are a maze of mirrors and newly laid carpet
filled with the scent of cleaning solvents and the piped-in waft
of yacht rock?
What if my bed is too hard and my pillow too soft?
What if it’s all a litmus test of faith based on the volume
of one’s largesse
for the housekeeping staff, as they toil for tips in purgatory,
waiting on all those saved souls?
What if you never get an explanation for your admission,
no balance sheet ledger with your merits and sins tallied in stark relief?
The algorithm that pressed all the right buttons in the elevator
with a pearly cab door alighting into white hot fire.
Where there’s one floor up that takes a lifetime to reach
and only one floor down, weighted exponentially on whims.
What if it’s hermetically sealed
with the party-goers sniffing their own farts and huffing their own
laughter?
What if I step out for a minute to walk on the gilded suspension bridge,
swaying gently in the ether, where the cool air refreshes
from the stuffiness of the holy kingdom’s conceited leisure?
This penthouse everyone’s trying to reach,
this privileged echo chamber of virtue.
What if I climb the rail to jump
only to bounce back up from the springboard cloud canopy?
My thwarted attempt to bid adieu to salvation
unnoticed by the throngs of raving revelers.
My esteemed fellow shunners of sin, the model sheep of the flock,
enough to bore a sheep dog to complacent tears.
What if I can’t find you in heaven
after asking around, ransacking the whole lot,
always screaming your name? What if
there is no escape from deliverance after delivery?
is a U.S. Navy veteran who was born in Canada, raised in the United States, and currently lives in Italy. He is a graduate of Niagara University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Bologna. His poetry appears/will appear in Ink in Thirds, Lone Mountain Literary Society, and Stone Poetry Quarterly, among other publications.
