What if the afterlife
Was whatever you wanted it to be?
What if the heaven that existed
Was the heaven you believed?
Would you still follow all their rules
Would you still believe in one
Without me?
What if it was whatever you wanted
Would it still be the place they tell you to believe?

What if we were all free?
Free to make up our own minds
About what lies past that door.
What if we had never heard
Of a person named "God" before?

What would our own souls choose?
What would our own minds think up?

If we could create
Any heaven we wanted,

What would your heaven be?

I feel like all the time I have this
feeling of being under
cover (keep me warm)

Heavy-duty
winter covers with the
cigarette burns from fifth grade
and the smell of *** forever
ingrained from high school.

It's the kind of night where I can't
breathe because of this smothering mother
of a blanket, and if I venture from my fortress
I'll surely be bitten
by the outside,

I'll surely
be (keep me
warm) bitten
in this

cold.

a liar in love
a crow in the cold
beginnings ascend
from the carcass of folly
what remains is the will
what survives is what
was there all along
courage is knowing

If blood came solely from my chapped lips and the spit that issued from them,
maybe you'd know I meant it.
The force that only comes from the letter 'f' flung forth with great ferocity.
The fear induced by a sudden change in the airs humidity.
The fever that comes from fire stoked in between my four burning lids.
Pardon me for feeling such things,
for facing the truth that is the sham of these past few days.

"Forever my *** you fake *******, clean your face and *******."

Until now, my best work yet: a boat, a love, the Leonids.
Quite beautiful as heartbreaks go, a near miss on a midnight
lake, with wishes dropping left and right. I laughed at that,
said take me back, and until then, I thought I meant
to shore. Nice story; camera fixed on Indian Point, boat exits
left 'neath fireworks, sponsored by the Galaxy, brought to you
by Tunnelvision. Cue piano, pretentious fin, but then
you – a star: hotter than those meteors, colder than those
miles of lake. I wrote you in, rough draft, known as
the man who loved this woman best, but take your bow;
you've been recast: the man who loved this woman last.