unfortunate heaven
(The stage is bare. The poet steps to the mic.)
(Begin calm, deliberate)
They tell you prayer is soft hands,
is waiting for a sign.
They tell you it’s a useless, romantic kind of whine
that only grows your doubt.
But I say prayer is a shout.
My prayer is a dare:
May love grow in the hearts of men,
and may believers learn to think again.
They show you quotes about commitment,
about how the moment you begin, Providence moves too.
How a whole stream of events you never knew
will rise up to meet you.
How boldness has magic.
Power.
Genius.
And they say, “Begin it now.”
(Pace quickens, voice fills with anxiety)
And that…
that scares the sh*t out of me.
You see?
It’s the finality. The end of the mystery.
It’s the sweeping swings of a promised Spring
withheld from my wild purpose.
It’s the dead forms, the placid rituals,
the mantra-mullah songs that kill the Truth in me
the moment I sink in.
One night, God came to me in a dream.
Said, "I’m taking you to the brighter-world, Jerry."
And that’s it.
Heaven.
Game. Over.
(Frantic, pleading)
W*T*F.
What if I want to take my body-of-cycles with me?
What if I want the sweat-of-passion and the blisters of unfulfillment?
What if everyone has to come?
The monsters of the night, the broken, the lost—
can it be so? No one left behind?
Isn’t a Bodhisattva a gem that keeps coming back for more?
So I choose this edge.
I choose to slice the night with the light I find on the dark side.
I choose this persistent imminence.
This place where death limns us all.
(Angry, hitting a rhythm, like fists on a table)
They give you the wish-fulfilling gem!
The power to change it all!
The holy fire! The timeless abode!
And you turn your back?
You turn your back on splendour
for the simple, sweet redolent smell of another human?
For the pain? For the failure? For the wounded misery?
YES.
Because without it, we’re not human.
We’d be like those f*Kin’ Angels,
no pleasure, no pain,
just taking some sick satisfaction
in f*Kin’ with people’s heads
because we’re so easily deceived by hope.
It’d be like being King of the Hill.
An alpha-grin, spitting down at the world,
“I’VE WON.”
And then you’re done.
Except for the fun of rolling a few Sisyphean rocks
down on all the other wanna-be’s.
(Shifts tone, becomes wondrous, philosophical)
There’s something wonderful in the cloud-of-unknowing
that heaven or hell cannot glean.
It’s the unfinished.
The undone.
It’s the potential that makes infinity trivial.
We are better at being the process, not the finished product.
Knowing is the end of curiosity.
So I’d rather be on a Sisyphean roll.
Really.
(Softer, finding the core truth)
Because if memory is a lie, then so am I.
A story I tell myself.
A fiction and a reality, hopelessly intertwined.
An act of remembering that changes me,
so I sing my songs as they come,
right now,
making myself in my own image…
(Voice drops, each word deliberate, a quiet anthem)
unbecoming,
unfettered,
unfinished,
undone…
(Building to a final, fierce climax)
Because when an inner situation is not made conscious,
it appears outside as FATE.
So I wrestle my demons. I like the contact.
I like the fire.
Like Prometheus, running from the perfection of the Gods,
ranting about the lack of darkness in their light.
He brought us these revelatory wings.
He brought us this truth:
That the burning of the Eagle’s Talons
is a misery required
when enamouring Fire.
(Silence.)
Copyright ©
Jerry Whalley
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