Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Custom Made




Will there be carpenters in heaven?


Will there be carpenters in heaven?
Will there be architects?
Will they build temples and palaces
With wide windows and generous atriums
To let in the light?

Oh let in the light.



Will they lay wood floors and decks,
Build spiral stairways with wrought iron railings
For our going up and our coming down?
Will they lay brick paths
For our insubstantial feet?

Oh make a path for our feet.



Will there be designers
To mount the invisible patterns
We live inside of ––
To raise the
Scaffolding so grandly enfolding
We rarely see it?
Will there be designers to inscribe
Small patterns on our clothes and plates,
On our furniture, walls, and ceilings?
Stripes and plaids and houndstooth and chevrons,
Diamonds and webs and phalanxes and skeins,
Parquet and inlay, scrolls and meanders?
Designs that remind
Us of Earth



Oh remind us of Earth.

Will there be plumbers
To channel running water
For our baths and showers
For our pulsing jets, our jacuzzis,
Our basins, fountains and pools?
Will there be plumbers to give us water
In the kitchen, in the sink full of dishes,
Water filling the toilet tank,
And water in the bidet?
Water for cleanliness and sex
And tired feet


Oh bathe my tired feet.

Will there be electricians?
Will there be grand glassy
Candelabra? Will we have
Startling, theatrical floodlights,
Old-fashioned lanterns in the yard,
Dimmers then for dining,
When we eat in company?


And later when our need is for solitude
Will there be bright lamps for reading?
And when we depart
And when we arrive late,
Long after the designated hour,
Will there be windowpanes
Glowing in dark of night
Guiding us electrically
To home and hearth,
As fire once did
When we lit wax candles,
Placing them there in the window frame?

Oh place me a guiding light.






Will there be painters
Painting our moods
On interior walls 
In the rooms of our intimacy?
Retentive blue for calm,
Kelly Green for prosperity,
Orange like sudden horns
Blaring proclamations:
Festive fuchsia: tropical, wild,
Gentle lavender for teatime,
Red for the room of a child,
Off-white for business,
Gray for industry;



Yellow and gray for sunshine
On a cloudy day.





Will there be painters

To paint our exteriors
In acceptable hues?
And from deep in childhood memory
The one house or two
You walked past to school
And on the way home:
That pink or purple house
That stood on its own?



Will there be painters to paint
Pictures to hang on our walls?
Landscapes and seascapes
And cityscapes withal?
Skylines and lines of traffic,
Lines of people too,
Queues for buying, for
Making selections,
Queues for flying and

Voting in elections?

Will there be painters
To picture each of us who
Once were human
Dwelling in the body of
Man or Woman?
Replicas of our
Eyes :
Windows of the soul,
Our famished faces,
Soft bellies,
Dancing feet
Tender hands,
Necklaces and earrings,
Colored bands,
The manners and graces,
The fabrics and laces
Of our many lands.

Oh paint our many lands.

Will there be computers in heaven?
Computers for commuters,
Laptops for Agitprop,
Blurbs in the suburbs?


Will there be iPods for demi-gods?
Search engines on vagrant stars?
Websites about Malachite, Stalagmites and
Mars? 

Will there be
Satellites using megabytes
Of data stored pro rata
In blue transparent jars?



Will there be
I-pads for granddads?
Mobile phones for Net crossbones,
Video games for Jameses and Janes,
Self-driving cars in slow and fast lanes?
Social media with links to Internet  
Encyclopedias, wikis writ in
Open source code, composed in sly 
Abodes
For Geeks up creeks without
Paddles: addled, yes rattled, and
Saddled with too much fuss;
Embattled, embittered, straddling streams
Of information packets, reams
Of phrases inside and out
Of brackets; compressed lyrics
And video themes
Resembling dreams,
Unreal pixelated animation schemes,
Gyrating shapes riding light’s airtight
Sunbright color beams.

If not this, then what will be?
For we’ve grown up, humanity,
Content no more with
Misty promises,
Backlit scenes,
Vague pictures,
Sentimental memes.

If not to a world that’s made
For us,
Finite and created,
What purpose in our coming
There, early or belated?

If not to a world that’s scaled
To us,
What purpose
Our lives hereafter?

The heavenly house it seems
Belongs to our fondest
Earthly dreams.







       






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