My Life Crawled In Front Of My Eyes

and I had to turn away from the misty screen.

Scratching the tire track across my chest
I looked around the rest of the cloud:
the other souls waiting in line were bored stiff;
the angels were humming and giggling;
God was yawning.

Apparently, I wasn’t going to
hell – hadn’t been naughty enough –
I wasn’t going to limbo (it was full)
and now, finding myself through happenstance
somehow ending up in heaven,
it seemed that no one wanted me here.

I realised at that excruciatingly slow moment of revelation
that my life and I had been really, really boring.

I sat there thinking about all those
special and unique and good things
and how I didn't feel I was any of those things.
The heavens must have been watching lives like mine
for an eternity: just average, just normal, nothing special –
I imagined having to sit through an endless run of
‘Based on a True Story’ made-for-TV films.

I turned my back to it all, too preoccupied
with my own life’s monotony to watch the movie of it.
But I couldn’t not hear, couldn’t get away
from that dull soundtrack.

My Life Crawled In Front Of My Eyes

I listened to the last few seconds:
a busy street – cars – people – blaring horns –
then a screech, people screaming, a mother crying,
then silence.

I turned back to watch the final scene –
a baby crawling back into her mother's arms
then a fade to black.

In the end,
I couldn’t remember what had happened.

Then I heard a choir of cheers and what looked like eyes
being wiped but staying wet. The others were all applauding
the angels patted me on the back and among all the handshakes
I said to myself ‘I don’t understand.’

God put his hand upon my shoulder;
He smelt clean, new, like a big bearded baby,
then He said, ‘Let me show you around.’