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.