Poetry: Selections from Gale Acuff

Our Sunday School teacher says there's something

 

called the End Times, it's the end of the world

and can happen 'most any time so we

ten-year-olds need to be ready because

if we've been sinners, heinous or other

-wise, we'll go to Hell, forget Jesus died

so that we won't have to even though we

will, it's called religion, it doesn't make

sense but it's almost as exciting as

comic books but anyway I don't want

to die, not even if I get to go

to Heaven and then that's only my soul,

I'll leave my body behind and pick up

a new one in Heaven but as for my

old why can't it rate Eternity, too?

When you're dead you're dead and don't come back to

 

life they say at regular school but at

Sunday School 'most anything goes, you get

to go to Heaven if you're good and if

you're not you still live forever, just in

Hell where even croaked you'll wish that you were

dead again and I get that once a week

but for the other five days it's science

and not even God can overcome that

and on Saturdays I'm sort of on my own,

if God rests Sundays I do Saturdays

and try not to think of either kind of

knowledge though I doubt that's what it is at

church, it's more like a scary movie with

some good parts but not enough nudity.

I'll go to Heaven when I die, then live

 

forever if I get to stay, God will

judge me but it's possible I'll go to

Hell to burn forever but that's life, too,

I hope, and to get to either one I must

die and I don't want to, I want to live

forever and I mean alive, alive

on Earth, where life really counts and I'll bet

there's no fire in Heaven nor ice in Hell

but where I am now, by damn, we've got both

and my Sunday School teacher says that God

became a man and died for me but I

think that sacrifice is wrong, I mean when

you promise to return but never do

--Santa comes back and he's not even real.

Nobody wants to die I tell my Sun

 

-day School teacher but she says No, Dear, you're

wrong, some of us do so that we'll see God

and Jesus and the Holy Ghost and our

old friends, a few of them anyway, and

the angels and saints and our old pets so

I ask Yes ma'am, so should I kill myself

but she says No, God will take you in good

time, be patient, and remember that if

you do kill yourself you'll wake up dead in

Hell, that's how that works, suicide's a sin

above all sins or almost, then she smiled

so I smiled, too, and I wanted to ask

if she kills me or I kill her is that

kosher but I think I'd hear a Maybe.

Nobody lives forever, all people

 

die but their souls have a chance, a shot at

living forever and up in Heaven

and for all I know down in Hell, too, they

get new bodies to hold their souls, the Good

Book says something like old wine in new wine

-skins or is that new wine in old skins, I

forget exactly but one thing's for sure

--when I die I'll know all there is to know,

my Sunday School teachers swears it but if

after I do I don't know a damn thing

new or know just a little but not it

all I'll want to come back to life and try

again, though it didn't work for Jesus

or it did but He found that He knew too much.

Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Reed, Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, The Font Chiron Review, Poem, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review and many other journals in over a dozen countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.