about heaven or hell

sitting on a hard bench

buster brown shoes on my feet

unwilling to smile for the photographer

or anyone else i meet

wearing a silly shirt and bowtie

inside a hot studio room

i'm asked to behave nicely

but i feel an approaching doom

not a mushroom cloud exactly

just a sense i don't belong

i haven't yet accepted

the notion that i could be wrong

the world was still a small place

not even a marker on my hand

there were philosophical discussions

which i couldn't understand:

a basement party without a band?

an Easter chicken that couldn't fly?

looking in the bathroom mirror

and seeing a forehead bull's-eye

with the ever-present blonde hair

atop a child's smile with a wry grin

but already a questioning stare:

what is out there?

no, i don't want your damn tomato soup

or to belong to any mindless group

don't talk to me about slavery

or about the bomb to end all life

i'm out back in the blacksmith shop

tempering my own knife

it's just that i'm in a time zone

where i'm happiest being alone

where music sounds like the expanding universe

i'm old now 

writing and reading verse

wearing sandals with no shirt or bowtie

and if i appear to cry

it's only when i glimpse a nightmare becoming true

and don't know what to do

to save you

as we sink inside an inkwell

without premonitions

about heaven or hell.