interlude
he asked with a cold beer
glass in in his red hand:
What if you’re wrong?
I said the trouble
of it reminded me of feathers
(or something to that effect),
my girl gone, this hotel waybar
a mere convenience. But, he said,
again, What if you’re wrong.
And I said again
it reminded me, this choice
of a feather, and added:
what if you’re right, would you,
would you with your concept
of heaven, you admitted, right, in the end,
correct, correctness portioning
the physics of your new floating space,
would you be so smothered by happiness,
knowing me, your new friend, who
will purchase you another drink soon,
happy knowing I’m burning in the fires of hell.
furthermore, I said, in this cosmos
we live in (or something like this), I said,
do you imagine a deity so fraught with spite
that he would demand of his creations
belief, in his creation, if created,
of stars, light years, and quarks,
belief
or else,
that a deity whose galaxies
are expanding still and lit with countless
sunsspaces of such expansiveness
and possibility would cast me
and my kind into everlasting mud
because we went another way,
disbelieving, unbelieving, doubting, or indifferent?
No, I said, only people would imagine
such a creature, so powerful, so petty, so small.
how, Henry said, the red dove
on his forehead eagerly flapping now,
(or) where did you come by your knowledge
of the human mechanism,
so confident, so quick?
What makes your knowledge of the human?
a question, I thought,
pretty good and my finger
to the barkeep said two more.
I said: because, even thought I
live now and not then, now,
never saw Jerusalem burn,
though I’ve seen burnings,
seen whole buildings fall,
heard my brother cry,
seen men and women lose their minds
(will see a world without bats,
will wonder where all the bees went,
will watch as the schoolless climb
onto the ship of leadership), I said:
everyone wants to be worshiped.
I could, however, be wrong.