The Ideal Unachievable State

for Blaise Pascal, who died August 19th, 1662

Canary, breathe!
What was not is again,
no thing is an illusion.
What was empty has been
filled with good things.

Heaven takes despair
and puts it somewhere else,
in the mouths of miscreants,
or perhaps, the unaffiliated
creedless, cretins and bores.

Believe in nothing at your peril,
nature abhors a vacuous mind,
better to swerve and hit God
than miss the devil, don-cha-know
if the after life is so great, go now.

Falling off a perch happens,
empty takes up space, not a bit
left for a mote in God’s eye.
I would have written a shorter poem,
but I did not have the time.