The heavenly power of ideas

Suzanne Lummis has ideas about heaven. . .and just about everything else. It is a poem by Lummis, as well as a class I took with her years ago, when I was the same age as most of the Litrus staffers, that inspired me to set the students to a celestial challenge: “What are your ideas of heaven?”

She asked her UCLA extension students this question and told us to write our answer. I did the same with my students. It’s harder than it sounds. The expected elements, clouds and halos and wings, can take writers into the realm of cliché. Imagery that goes beyond the expected to the realm of “what-if?” can take us to the place where poetry lives.

I grew up with Suzanne’s poetry. It just so happens that Lummis, poet, playwright and director of the Los Angeles poetry festival, is one of my mother’s best friends. However, when I read her work to my class, it is not out of convenience or nepotism.

In a world filled with timid poetry, Suzanne offers switchblade humor, incandescent imagery and a slingshot-ricochet from mundane details to big ideas. “The Man Who Delivers My Papers” sets down a “catalog of last night’s crimes” carefully, like “a newborn or a thing he made with his hands, like a bomb.” The poet’s diminutive breasts are “prized by diamond cutters, vegetarians and collectors of miniatures.” In a letter to a real-life assailant, Lummis understates, “something’s not right between men and women” and extends a laurel leaf: “I’ll admit I was glib if you’ll admit you were insensitive.”

A beautifully disappointed pulp novel heroin settles for a night at Gin Alley, taking “a smooth sip from a lousy year” in a place where “desperation and lust will do just fine.” And in Los Angeles, her poetic landscape, anything can happen at any time, from a peep-show view of a fatal accident to a near-fatal case of insomnia to the canonization of Marilyn Monroe (“God we need a charm for this city, a name like a prayer to save us. Be alchemy that changes base metal to gold. Be cool like water. . .make the real less real”).

I don’t know what kind of poet I can become. I’m still on my journey. I know I am the bravest poet I dare to be. And I think it’s partially because I sat with my legs dangling at Suzanne’s poetry readings when I was in elementary school and white-knuckled it out to a UCLA extension course when I was still attending Citrus.

Okay, poker face aside, I admit it. I have a heroine.

So what are some of her “Ideas of Heaven”?

The walls there are shell white.

There are bowls of goldfish,

rainwater.

blue azaleas in a white vase.

Or are they white lilies

in a blue vase,

a vase of blue

marble with traces of gold

so faint it might be

imagination?

Suddenly the fish are tropical,

half wild, little jewels

that light up at night,

inextinguishable

fairground lights.

. . .

What do people do there in heaven?

We don’t know.

We are far from knowing.

But you don’t stop being happy in heaven

even when you cry.

Your tears pool in your cupped palms

and light the way home.

—Suzanne Lummis, “In Danger,” 1999

*Suzanne Lummis’ “In Danger” is available through Amazon.com. Her work is also featured in “Poems of the American West,” an Everyman’s Library anthology edited by Robert Mezey. For more information on the Los Angeles Poetry Festival: www.lapoetryfestival.org Heaven Aaron Castrejon I've never shared what my vision of what Heaven would be with anyone. I don't know. I guess I never found it necessary to share that with anyone before, and no one has ever asked my of what my vision of Heaven is. I'm Catholic, and consider myself very religious. I am spiritual. I believe in forces we cannot comprehend. These forces play a vital part in our journeys through life and how we choose the path we choose to trek. I pray every day for the people I care of most. I like to quietly talk to God when I feel it very necessary. I attend church every week. I guess one can say I am a man of God. However, I cannot help but also apply my life to science and the physical world we live in. I love science. Science allows us to solve the problems that plague us and opens our eyes to worlds we cannot see with the naked eye. Sometimes though, humans have a habit of going beyond God's boundries, breaking them even, and seek to diceminate and manipulate everything in sight, which I thinks angers God. The power of prayer can also help solve the problems that plague us. Blind faith is not a bad thing, but I am on a tangent. That's another story. I guess one could call me a man of science as well. I'm a Libra (yes I follow horoscopes, they can be very acurate sometimes and they are not evil) so I tend to find a balance to everything I find in life. As Albert Einstein says, "Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind." It's a little difficult for me to describe Heaven. Part of it is the fact that I am a little fearful of sharing something that is only supposed to be between God and I. Part of it is that in the supposed vastness of the human mind we are still primative and feeble and we cannot even begin to fathom an existence we are not even in the same dimension as, but I will give it my best shot. Heaven is whatever we envision it to be. It's as simple as that. Our souls are connected to our physical body. Even though we are an extension of God, our souls can only fill the capacity these vessels allow. So our physical bodies cannot arive to a bonafide explanation of what Heaven really is. I think, perhaps, we are not supposed to. It is the question that drives us. Our souls hold onto memories just like our brains do. After death, perhaps to protect our soul from the extreme shock of being exposed to another plane of existance, God chooses certain memories, certain visions we have and projects them when we arrive in heaven. So when we arrive, we could first see a beautiful beach, or a forest, a loved one. Any memory or sight we hold dear to our hearts to calm and invite us. I think this would be a necessary step so that we can comprehend the actions of a strange universe as the third-dimensional existance. Physicists have theorized the possibility of up to 11 dimensions. We live in the physical dimension. The 3rd dimension. There are four known dimensions, three spaclal and one time dimension. Only GOd knows what dimension he is in. The others are not visible perhaps because of there compactness and are theorized to be visible at extremely close proximities. So as God slowly makes known to us the situation we have now been brought in to, the existance of the unkown dimension, Heaven perhaps, is made known to our soul. It is then that God brings to light all the deeds we have performed. Good and bad. We are then judged accordingly to what we have done and if we should be allowed to acquire a new karma, a better one, be reborn and begin a new journey interacting with others; love each other and help each other and fight those who perform injustice or over-indulge or do not acknowledge God's hand in our life, or be forced back to the physical dimension to be reincarnated and be cursed with our indeeds. This is God's decision and his alone ( I am not projecting that God is a male, I simply use male references when speaking about God. God is a being of an unfathomable existance). It is only God that performs the interactions of molecules in the physical world. And if anyone reading this has taken any general biology course, it is the interaction between molecules that eventually form chemical reactions, releasing energy, the interactions that form masses (planets for example), and the interactions that form complex amino acids and large biological molecular structures that eventually lead to the formation of life itself. That's my explanation. Everyone has a different one. Does that make us right or wrong? No. It is only part of our journey through life. A journey of discovery. Adios

I know what the end has to be
A burial in the nude is how I want me
For there’s not enough clothes with enough majesty
To keep me in the same outfit for all Eternity

—Jessica May Sears Heaven smiles upon my spirit

By jonathan rosales

Heaven smiles upon my spirit
Enclaves of angels hovering
Anchors, no longer there
Vast expanse of cream colored pillows
Encased in an envelope of light
Now I’m free, I’m free

Silky clouds are my robes
Milky white, pristine glow
Indigo field, our playground
Lying there, serenely
Everything in solace
Surrounded in amber glow

Uttered prayers I now hear
Pleas I’ve once uttered myself
Over and over until I moved on from my
Neurotically built cages of my naïve arrogance
Melted away by the celestial light deprived in life
Yearning and desire now gone

Slowly I grow wings
Pale white feathers carry me
Into the arms of immortality
Realizing the truth
In my lonely life of searching
This must be my heaven, A POEM ABOUT HEAVEN

Grassy, lush, white tables and chairs,
with table arrangements and silverware
Your teachers, mentors, and guide, your mother,
your father, your children and lover,
Your enemies, your bosses,
Those who helped you cope against the losses
How can you help but sigh,
When they have tears in their eyes?
The souls that you know and welcome you,
To a paradise that you never knew
An end to the ignorance, pain, and calamity,
The purpose of your life that you now see
How your mistakes were the ones that saved you,
And your enemies the ones that helped you
To become holy as you are,
Home’s here, it’s not very far. Only glimpse of heaven

Round and round
we ran,
kicking up asthmatic
dirt devils
with our shoes
zippered tight
around an uncomfortable wad of change
given by women with low bosoms.

A new Tennis Ball,
neon against edible asphalt:
“I do not fear death!”
cried the child,
as she charged headlong into the stinky traffic.
where buses and ice cream trucks don’t stop for kids,
and the only citations are death and money.
I don’t see a difference, personally.
The impact was near
as she skirted telekinetically
the broad, flat finger of mortality.

To the crowd it was horizontal,
but this is what I saw:
God
that day lifted her up,
looking little down at tiny sneakers,
big coins burning in orbit,
far above knowing
Eath is a speck below heaven,
only to land on the other side—
adults shrieking that primal breathless noise.

—Rebecca Linton Heaven

I climbed up from my bed,
my body behind,
I rose with the sun,
left my slippers, my mind,
tucked under the corner,
They stayed waiting and watched.

Through the fury of loud, startling shouts
My friends, my belongings,
Pondered my whereabouts

They cried, hold it, hault
Stop all the press
No need for a panic, let’s just get serious

They sent letters on the back of a grand old owl,
Sent out posters and postcards
Said it was wrong, called foul

All the while, oblivious, without a clue
With me rising, gliding
In skies that are blue.

They said it would be glamorous,
Hushed and serene.
They said it would be beautiful,
amazing, like a dream.

He called me by name,
remembered my middle,
said, Bravo, Bravo,
You conquered the riddle.

Heaven, they said,
would have no pain.
No hate, not betrayal
No tears nor rain.

No confusion, no sadness
No meaningless games
Just straightforward truth,
No room for shame.

They said there would be castles,
Dripping with riches,
Streets made of gold
And silver used for stitches.

But for me it is quite simple,
White, and plain
No money, no wealth,
No boasts to be gained.

For me it’s quite soothing,
With clean cool bed sheets,
And a window that looks down
Into quiet, empty streets.

Fields that are a lush, vibrant green,
Beds of flowers and clover
The kind you can lie down in and dream.

Bears that give real hugs,
Lions that are gentle
Letting me place my lips to their ears
As they purr in a roar that is sentimental

Men who love with no risks,
No, they don’t hide their intentions
They send flowers and write poems
With their strong sturdy grips.

I have my own corner of Heaven, they call it.
I’m allotted an allowance
Given a spectrum that stretches
Like a rainbow, a reminder, with not one limit.

So far I’m doing well.
I’d have to say I’m doing fine,
In a world where there are no boundaries,
No worries over time.

My Heaven is simple,
soothing and true.
My Heaven is beautiful,
Meant for me, not for you. THE WALK TO THE GATES
By Katrina Lising

I enter the gates
With ginger steps
My eyes moist and beady
My face coated with haze

I’m knee deep in clouds
White and plump
Wading barefoot
Like those times the ocean slept

And we were one
I close my eyes
To wake my senses
Exhale a second longer

I walk further and further
Slicing through the frothy air
Cold and tingly
In untamed contentment

My Lola smiles
She meets me halfway
And catches me in her arms
Her heart beats melodies

Of a childhood lullaby
My Lolo Kalbo
Walks without a cane
His speech, not slurred

But strong,
Like his words
That planted my roots
So I could never fall

My Lolo Melchor
From the picture
Over my Lola’s bed
And my father’s drawer

The bullet holes healed
Like history
With time and grace
Cloaked in a sturdy white suit

The one with no name
Or too many, my own
My flesh in spirit
I hold it close

And never let go
In a place with no tears
Not even happy ones
I walk to the gates