Thoughts Of Afterlife Poem by gershon hepner

Thoughts Of Afterlife



Thoughts of afterlife can cause
a person to become reflective.
As soon as you’re beyond the jaws
of death they’ll show a retrospective,
exhibiting your every deed,
redacted by your friends, directed
by enemies who pay no heed
to glory that you once reflected.

The audience and critics will
be spouse and family, who’ll force
the world to watch the show until
the painful exhibition ends.
If they believe you were a hit––
unlikely in my circumstance––
and showed some glimmer in your wit,
no lady who is fat will dance
or sing to warn you that the show
has ended, but you’ll need no warning,
since you’ll be dead, and will not know
that no one truly is in mourning,
for nothing is expungible
from your life history once you
have died, and you so fungible,
your death is nothing that they’ll rue.

The show will never be repeated,
once the barrier’s been crossed,
for death will never be defeated––
and after it comes permafrost,
not Purgatory or Hell as some
have claimed, there won’t be fires
awaiting us, not doomed to come
to judgment, sentenced for our priors.

I began this poem in 1/8/01, but wrote the entire middle section on 2/10/09, in response to an e-mail from my immunologist friend Chaim Jacob MD, who responded to my poem “Indulgences” by declaring that he felt he had no need for them since he does not believe in an afterlife.

1/8/01,2/10/09

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