Gale Acuff

Cinq poèmes

 

 

Before you know it you're dead my Sunday

 

School teacher tells us ten-year-olds every

Sunday so that it's like dying over and

over or damn-nigh but at the end of

class (I almost said the end of the world)

she smiles and sets us free for another 

week with at least enough God and Jesus

and the Holy Ghost to see us through, then

we're back it next Sunday so what goes 

around comes around just again and a

-gain so after class I came back to ask

her If life never really ends then why

do folks have to die and she answered It

ends down here on Earth but goes on in E

-ternity. Maybe I’m already dead.

 

 

 

When I die I'll go to Heaven or Hell,

 

Heaven does the less harm to you even

though you're dead is what I figure and I

said as much to my Sunday School teacher

but she said that I'm crazy if I think

that Heaven isn't perfect, that would mean

Hell's not so bad as folks make out so I

apologized even though I don't get

what she was angry about since after

all she's closer to God Almighty than

I am to my own shadow and I just

made that one up and hit her with it and

she smiled and said You should be a poet,

Gale, which was sweet to hear but I don't want

to be hungry--bread alone is good, too.

 

 

 

I don't want to go to Hell--or Heaven

 

either for that matter, I'm good or good

enough with Earth, for all I know it's all

I've known and there's no other place for life

or maybe I should wait until I'm dead

to say so though I probably won't be

able to say anything, not having

a mouth but then I'm not sure of the facts

of nothingness if that's what I'll gain when

I'm dead, time will tell but tell when time ends

and at Sunday School when it ends time ends

with Eternity, that's time without time

passing maybe so I wonder what I'll

be doing then--nothing? I guess that takes

time, nothing at all. I want to be born.

 

 

 

When you die you're dead but not really they

 

say at church and Sunday School, your soul soars 

to Heaven to get judged then gets to stay

if it's been good and you have, too, and I 

guess that includes your body or part of 

it, but if you've been bad Woe unto you 

and so on because then you go to Hell 

and burn and burn forever and ever

with no second chance, you won't be happy 

so maybe they're not telling folks the truth 

at church and Sunday School, you never die 

at all, not truly, you go on and on

but not the same as you are now or I

am anyway, so the best bet's Heaven

--you burn there, too. Just out of righteousness.

 

 

 

I'm going to go to Hell someday, when

 

I die that is and I hope not before

but wouldn't it be something if I did

and got there not just in spirit but in

body, too--I'm not sure how special that

would make me and I'm a nobody-ten-

year-old now but wouldn't I be stronger

for being dead down there but embodied

or weaker because like somebody in

the Bible says that the flesh is weak so

I bounced it off my Sunday School teacher

but she said dead folks get all-new bodies

in Heaven, and for Hell she's not so sure,

but the odds of me going to the Here

-after like I am now are small. That's big.

 

 

 

A friend of the Macabre from wayback, Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. His poems have appeared in Danse Macabre 23 (2009) and 109 (2017), Ascent, Arkansas Review, Poem, Birmingham Poetry Review, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Review, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Slant, Chiron Review, Coe Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Aethlon, Able Muse, The Font, Teach.Write., Hamilton Stone Review, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, and many other journals. Gale has taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.

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