The World Dream Bank: Pinhead Heaven

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Pinhead Heaven

Dreamed 2013/7/12 by Wayan

I'm in line at Heaven's gate, waiting for my judge.
As a winged friend glides by, I flash my sin-badge.
It's like a radiation counter--cruelty and pain
Fog your soul-film. Cumulative. Then again...

The badge-count's fallible, a crude analog
Guide: for thugs killed young can't fully fog
Their souls, but even kind centenarians smudge;
While refugees and vets may soot and yet
Be decent folk awash in mad times' flood. Not all
The mayhem in your life do you create. Not all.

Without interview, he waves me in! Angels like him
(Where'd we meet?) have staff-badges--the same film
But dove-shaped, not the butterfly we dead wear.

We? Wait--my own badge is dove-cut! Is that
Why he swung the carven door, took me for staff
Back from mortal sabbatical? Do angels err?

I mosey through heaven: a leased hardwood flat
With bedrooms rigged as rec rooms for the blest.
A San Francisco Victorian, and a gem at that;
Seraphic bureaucrats rent nothing but the best.

The first door down is thick: a soundproof hall.
Classical musicians jam. I'm tempted to sit in,
But as I listen, think again: cute flute, but all
the others lag, old-noodle limp. Walk on.

A TV room. Canned ha. Eternity of comedy? When
A channel's just a soggy ditch? Not my itch. Walk on.

A row of patient folk sit in a hall. Some chairs, some floor.
I ask "Why the long wait? The angels said those interviews
Had the last lines we'd ever endure. Or what's a Heaven for?"
"Wait? Oh, no. We just like to sit." There goes my fuse.

Stalk rooms afume. More Heaven than I deemed: a fair-
Sized resthome I guess. But for billions? Pinhead-small!
No deed to do. Death-dull! Humane, an entertaining ware-
House for souls. Well, unawarehouse, all in all.

So much for death. Let go, let go. Deep breath. Up corridor
To tell the desk "I must get back to work now--be reborn
To build a world I like." Seraph: "Yeah, duh. That's why
Heaven's so small." He sighs. "Stuck on the burnout ward!"
Comforts me. I feared the City's rents had leapt so high
That even God Omniplutent could not afford.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

Passive heaven: Saw a movie at the Nordstrom Mall in San Francisco. Funny film, fancy architecture--but the Nordstrom shoppers all looked drugged.
Sin-badges that fog up: like the radiation badges in the Manhattan Project that built the Bomb. This bodes ill for Heaven.
No more lines once you're in: like Disneyland's modern fare structure--pay at the gate, not for each ride. I'm old enough to remember when each ride had a ticket, graded from cheap A to top-grade E. So Heaven's not just radioactive but Disneyland! This bodes MORE ill...
"Or what's a heaven for?": the full quote is "A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" (Robert Browning, in Andrea del Sarto, a poem wrestling with comfort, mediocrity and plateaus.)
Omniplutent: holding all the loot. Or as Emily Dickinson once saluted Him: "Burglar, Banker, Father..."
San Francisco rents too high for even God: Science News reported a new model of cities. Dense, diverse interactions spur innovation, but if a town gets too fun, rents rise till they price young innovators out. Theme park! True here in SF, priciest city in the New World. The poor, the young, nonprofits, startups, experimental arts--all booted from the city they built! Wealth's as stifling as poverty. How do we get our mobile, mixed-up mess back?
ACTION 1: Just say no to films & malls. Entertainment bores me. I need to make & do--and BE with makers & doers.
ACTION 2: Oh, and if it turns out there's an afterlife... get reborn. Forget the astral bliss. I need fingers.

LISTS AND LINKS: angels - paradise - souls - passivity versus initiative - reincarnation - money, economics and class - dream poems - dream humor - Only in San Francisco

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