Exasperating Afterlife Poem by gershon hepner

Will the afterlife be any less
exasperating to us than the one
we have? Unless they give us an address,
how will we find a place to have some fun
once it is time to shuffle off the coil
that to this weary world binds every mortal?
Whoever tells us probably will spoil
our day and afterlife, and chortle
because he, she or it knows very well
that we expected something better than
than what will be offered, not exactly hell,
but something not acceptable to man
while he’s alive, and even less when dead,
and, what is even worse, there’s nothing we
can hope for after afterlife, once led
to where there is no cable on TV.

Inspired by Michael Schulman’s quote of a statement by Noël Coward in his description of a forthcoming production of his play “Blithe Spirit” with Angela Lansbury, starring as a medium who accidentally conjures and Englishman’s first wife, much to the consternation of the second (Talk of the Town, The New Yorker, March 2,2009) :

“We have no reliable guarantee that the afterlife will be any less exasperating than this one, have we? ”

2/27/09