People who don't go to Heaven when they
Poems by Gale Acuff
People who don’t go to Heaven when they
die go to Hell is what my Sunday School
teacher says and I believe her, after
all, she is 25 to my 10 so
she knows more than twice as much as I do
or should so I respect my elders since
To disrespect them is to merit Hell,
those are her exact words and she should know
also because she drives a new Ford or
it can't be more than a couple of years
old, I guess it's just getting broken in
and sometimes after church I walk her there,
I mean when Preacher doesn't, and help her
in., then watch her race away--she's pretty
fast like the Bible says, or is that swift.
Sometimes when you die you're dead forever
I tell my Sunday School teacher after
class this morning, It's not just Heaven or
Hell I add and she tells me Better shush,
Gale, you don't want God to hear you, not on
church grounds particularly and sometimes
particularly means especially,
I'm ten years old so I've learned a little
about words but anyway I tell her
that I ain't superstitious and there is
no God for whatever religion, then
she says Well, Gale, then you can go home now
and stop wasting your time and mine and God's
so I say No, if I belong any
-where it's here. Then I wink and she winks back.
Sometimes you die when you're not dead and more
than once, it's called a resurrection, I
mean that that's where the idea comes from, I
mean the Resurrection, resurrection
happens, just not to dead people and not
even to Jesus and I'm ten years old
and not exactly stupid for my age
so after Sunday School today I told
my teacher, who said Gale, you should go to
Bible college someday and study it.
For a moment I thought she was going
to say that I should go to Hell and though
she didn't confess it with her mouth she
said it with her eyes--The eye is the lamp
to the body, said Jesus. He’s alive.
I'm going to Heaven when I die but
not for the perfection nor paradise of
it, no, I'm going to study there
kind of like a foreign exchange student
and then return to Earth and help us all
improve our lot in life--that's what I told
my Sunday School teacher, who laughed and laughed
and said when she coughed and coughed back her breath
that when I'm up there I'll never come back
and never want to anyway and that folks
back on Earth wouldn't appreciate me
anyway, in fact I might get myself
crucified and there be no future in
that for anybody so I told her
Maybe, then, I'll go to Hell. That slew her.
I don't want to die but there's a first time
for everything and at Sunday School if
I want some of that Eternal Life then
I have to, there's no life without death you
might say--hey, that's pretty good--and what's more
they also say at church you get to be
born again in this life, that is even
though you're not already dead, imagine
that, and last night on the TV I watched
a movie full of zombies, they're kind of
both, living and dead that is, and except
for their staring eyes and sense of humor
which is lousy not all that different
from folks who are also the living dead,
me for one, and my Sunday School teacher.