Now

By Sascha Carlisle 

Poetry, Heard/Alexandria Detention Center writing contest, August 2021

If they let me code Heaven

It’d be a dope place

You could taste the finest fruit

Or try out every plate

Like TV you’d see everything

Everyone ever did

Find out from the unrequited love

What made her ticc

You could hear how your heroes

Brought themselves out of bed

Experiencing lives

Of those that are dead

Paint your placebo

It’s your work of art

You get what you believe in

At the end of your part

I’d chitchat with Adam

About how he cyphered words

Or ask Thoth how he managed

To transcend this Earth

Watch and don his crown

As he reigned in his day

Caste the gods being Brahma

And reshape the race

Go fishing with Fuxi

Observe all his ways

Stargaze with ZoroAster

Putting time into space

Moses a big one

How’d he merge all those hoods

Meditate as the Buddha

Learn what he understood

Jesus my homie,

For what did you fight?

With Muhammad hit Ghazawat

Excite a nation of might

Party with Genghis

And philosophize

See Mayer come up

As his Rothschilds rise

As reality blands

Through all this knowledge

I’d explore possibilities

Go down every ridge

Adventures with the boyz

My girl and no jail

Puzzle together my best life

Hop in and sail

Close with a thousand years

Of ecstatic bliss

Nirvana then comes

And I’d hit the switch

An atheist heaven

A final release

To feel the conclusion

Eternal peace