Entering Heaven Maimed

______________________________

I entered heaven
maimed through
the bottom staircase.
There the entrance
wears butterscotch.
And gold. The angels’
eyes are diamonds and
rubies that never grow
cold.

Peter doesn’t sit at
the gate like most
think. He is inside
getting a new eye.
And a new right hand.
He expressed those parts
to hell. They arrived
the night of his denial.

Some say a man needs
both eyes to be healthy.
I say you’ll get cancer
anyway. Winter waits
for no one; cancer
leaves you alone until
you think you’ll leave
this life unscathed.
Sin is like that.

I long to write like
Rumi. To clothe the
naked with my words.
But I can’t. I am not Rumi.
I cannot weave awesome
tapestries with my tongue.
I cannot swallow the dense
waters of the subconscious
to spit it back out like
a misty shower on the
old, dry earth.

Our tears improve the earth,
he said.

They do. And our cure
tears it down. Our death
precedes all births. Our
gouged eyes and severed
hands line the narrow way
to heaven, like rotting
skulls on a desert highway.


--original draft June 6, 2008--
© 2009 vagrant moon