When I am writing songs, I sometimes jot down words and phrases which ultimately begin as a form of poetry. In practice, very little of what I write in my little notebooks end up in song form. Sometimes the words lead to no finished "art" of any sort; other times, the words feel more like poetry than song. And that's what happened below. It may end up as a song some day, but for now I'm glad to share some of my words in this poem.
"what heaven is"
when I stop climbing up
the air is thin
my energy evaporated again
and I finally concede
there is no heaven
no heaven I can see
above the tallest trees
no place for me to rest
for imagined eternity
standing on ancient stones
left by fractured mountains
weathered by ten-thousand storms
walked on by the largest army ever seen
of our single-cell ancestry
and I finally concede
there is no heaven I can see
this is where the dinosaurs used to be
we've inherited the age of human kind
how long? not for long
a blink of God's eye
everything I've been told
was only half true, I eventually find
believing in a good idea
is worshiping a false ideal
heaven and hell are stories of consequence
making sense of night and day experience
every scriptured word a new idea, a new experiment
some held true and others mythical
the truth of right and wrong may be questionable
one thing isn't a question of altitude
when you truly love or
when you have been loved
you know best what heaven is