did i ever tell you?  once
i stood at the gates of heaven
but i stepped back
and away--

it was not my time to enter.
(not talking about death here,
talking about love
and its hellish consequences.)

i just dreamed those lines.

talking about the queue, the long 
line to heaven, the doorman,
the stamp you get on your hand
so you can get back in,

in case your earthly life is resuscitated--
forget it.  DNR! and if you revive me anyway, i am
not going back to that joyless, misogynistic place.

today it is utterly like spring.  sap is running,
snow has turned to mud, and the media's fancy
has turned once more to prostitution.
Lord, kindly own what you have done.
there is no way, no way
your mother would have let her house
become such a mess

where was i?
i was talking about love and how real love,
love like a pitch black room in which
there is one magic candle;
love where the innocent heart-true lover
is not the one who falls through a great
collage of dying stars;

love, where the past is held aloft, briefly
like leaves; where there are no stagnating promises
and the very first agenda is not to end it
and to leave....

Love.  the only thing in all of life
that is not a state of altered consciousness