Five Poems by Gale Acuff

 

Nobody lives forever, not even

 

folks who die and go to Heaven, they're still

dead but on the other hand at church and

Sunday School they say they live forever,

by they I mean the folks at Sunday School

and church and not the dead, ha ha, that's kind

of funny but anyway if you be

-lieve then there really is eternal life

maybe but to snag it you must die and

I'd rather have eternal life on Earth

than in the Afterlife where I'll be dead

but my Sunday School teacher says No, no,

Dear, you've got it all wrong, you're dead here and

now so I answered I'm damned if that's so.

Instead of punishing me she said Good.

 

 

Someday I'll die but I don't want to die

 

but sometimes I don't want to live and that's

life or a pretty fair definition

I told my Sunday School teacher after

class but like the Bible says it made her

weep, not just cry, I guess that weeping is

crying with a college education

or crying as if every drop means some

-thing or is somehow clearer and purer

than what you get with ordinary tears

from bawling or plain old blubbering--if

there really is a God He's well aware

or should be of the difference so when

she dried out I apologized but she

said That's okay--I feel better now. Christ.

 

 

I hate everybody--no, that's not true

 

but it is if I hate only a few

but then I think that's a different idea

but I'm not sure, I'm only ten years old,

I don't know enough to hate so

I'd better wait until I'm older, then

maybe I'll be more successful at it,

that's what I told my Sunday School teacher

but after class so in case she got clutched

by my strange confession she wouldn't turn

red in front of the class but I needn't

have worried, alone with me she laughed and

laughed and told me that I'll make some woman

very happy someday and maybe she

means Mother but she's dead. Who else is there?

 

 

I'll go to Hell when I die for the sin

 

of stashing my chewing gum under my

chair in Sunday School class, it was either

that or swallow the damn thing and they say

at regular school it takes your stomach

seven years to digest it--yuck--so in

the seventh year I'll rest, ha ha, and get

over it but then there's all the Juicy

Fruit I swallowed in the past, it's a good

thing there's an Eternity, maybe there

I can work off my debt even if it

means I lose a little of forever

from Eternity and next week to show

God and Jesus my good intentions I'll

go early and peel it off and cop it.

 

 

Everybody wants go to Heaven

 

when they die but sometimes the righteous go

in the other direction, that would be

Hell, and gladly suffer, so they say at

least before they leave, torment and torture

and are good with it because they show God

and Jesus and the Holy Ghost a thing

or two and meanwhile I'm ten years old, what

I don't know about life and death you could

write a book about but of course I do

that every day, just not in so many

words and if it comes to pass that I stand

before God's throne and await His judgment

then maybe I'll tell Him I've been assessing

Him. Oh, we'll see how He likes those apples.

 

 

Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in a dozen countries and have authored three books of poetry. My poems have appeared in Lothlorien Poetry Journal vol. 8 (2022), Ascent, Reed, Arkansas Review, Poem, Slant, Aethlon, Florida Review, South Carolina Review, Carolina Quarterly, Roanoke Danse Macabre, Ohio Journal, Sou'wester, South Dakota Review, North Dakota Quarterly, New Texas, Midwest Quarterly, Poetry Midwest, Adirondack Review, Worcester Review, Adirondack Review, Connecticut River Review, Delmarva Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Maryland Literary Review, George Washington Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Ann Arbor Review, Plainsongs, Chiron Review, George Washington Review, McNeese Review, Weber, War, Literature & the Arts, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Font, Fine Lines, Teach.Write., Oracle, Hamilton Stone Review, Sequential Art Narrative in Education, Cardiff Review, Tokyo Review, Indian Review, Muse India, Bombay Review, Westerly, and many other journals.

Gale haa taught tertiary English courses in the US, PR China, and Palestine.