Do You Anticipate...

Do you anticipate the bureaucratic afterlife?

with its            infinite           forests of filing cabinets and wretched Harpy Secretaries

perpetual exhaustion on.. dusty faces, watching as their eyelids dissolve

ceiling fans pumping slowly, growling like Cerberus

over waiting rooms—stuffy with ancient air caked on papered walls

where dizzy souls, Paralyzed in                 Limbo-time, rust to a stump in their seats

then    swirl off … opaque into each other’s shrunken skeleton lungs

fashion magazines from the 1970’s sit untouched glossy, etched into the wood of

eternal tables between folding chairs, heavenly!, squeaking/squealing

Then your name   !      rings confused-wonderful through decaying ear canals

and it’s like the MESSIAH descending as you approach the glowing window

—Before they hand you with clawed fingers …       everlasting paperwork laced with

faded ink and the technical ja.rg/o,n of middle-class spirits forever pregnant

with heavy-eyed hopes lank/ in their antique throats

assholes fossils in their wheeling chairs statued in time

these places! stretch unending like ant-pile hallways

blind to the elephant dimensions of Heaven

Infinity or bust, ha            sobbing                    — fevered jokes.

Somewhere … in the Universe (or out)— above or sideways    

—Robber-baron angels scaling hierarchical machines towering upwards

in their committees fluttering to       board meetings! -golden-faced

with helium smiles and withered brain matter contented

Pursuing Elysian days cycling bent-backed like sheep (never-ending)

and “administrative assistants” stand at Saint Pete’s gate

weighing souls x 10³⁰       weighing souls to the decimal point!

recording with ballpoint pens eternal injustices! Ah, perpetual unfairness.

and charts and lists and charts and lists “sign-here-please”

I imagine you can see your smoky soul leave your fingertips

the blessed color bleed out of your tepid cheeks,       sighing—

Oh but at last—the Czar, (chief executive!)

do not think I have forgotten Him! Do not worry …

Emmanuel-abba-Creator!ofHeavenand-earth/Lordalmighty.EL,“iam”—Yaweh?Jehovah\KingEternal>eloi—Author-of-Eternal-Salvation,AllPowerful

Teacher, shepherd, fire-breather, etc.?

He has many Names, certainly

No, I have not forgotten Him. He sits Up There …somewhere…—above or sideways

stamping celestial documents with timeless knuckles and brooding with constitutional authority

as reverent bowing groupies, privileged few, plant kisses on His Blessed Feet—wailing “Perfect Being,” weeping misty confessions cringing with insect pain, theatrically shielding their eyes, asking a little too excitedly   “Where were you…                       before Time began?”

but He is Transparent now with Infinite Weariness, rubbing -like a grandfather- his Infant Eyes

-murmuring murmuring, “I don’t know, I don’t know”         then tired –draws the curtain