Jesus pious

Jesus pious thirty feet tall

striding a citys crackled tardrizzled street

anointing

with a gesture of His hand

one hundred meters up

and behind him two hundred

with a slight turn of His hips

the streetlights smile benevolently  curling their lips

the parked cars along the curbs sigh

their colours bleaching  when His shadow crosses them

and the children old and young who have bought His line

kneel  crossing themselves  on their front porch stoops and in doorways

thats what I walked outdoors into

inhaling a remembrance of pungent censers wafting on stainglass coloured lights

a chilly tremble in a cistern filled with holy water gobbled at by arthritic hands

covered in skin tissuethin and marbled with liverspots and lesions

at their old splayed rusted hips  small children restrained by the hooks of their parents patient hands as they are desirous to fill their Communion vials to clutch to their breasts as the Latin Mass descends from the marble pulpit under

His torturous  pleading  crucified eyes

the wrap of thorns around His skull

His tears mixing with His Blood

His Body becoming the Bread of the New and Everlasting Covenant

I blew nose ferociously into a coloured handkerchief to rid it of the smell

I shook my head as hard to slip the slimy crab of memory picking at my brain

Jesus pious

in my boyhood

not taking Hold

the black and white habited nuns attempting to enforce The Word

the black and white collared priests peering outraged over their barren shoulders

their colourless sterility  and the stories and threats which offended my Sense and 

Nature

Jesus pious

thirty feet tall

throws His shadow along the street

the neighborhood hoodwinked

not for the first time

nor the last

the sound the chink of rosary beads

cold like coins in the collection baskets passed between pews

the chink in the Churchs armour

the thief of tithe of people trying to buy their way into something that does not exist

while common thugs extort protection money and deliver what Jesus pious cannot

yet with a Magicians whiff of smoke

a sparkling relic  

an icon dangled before their willful eyes

they pay for nothing

Jesus pious approaches me like a benign collector

a gold toothpick working between His teeth at a lunch He did not buy

unimpressed  I let him come

His sandals smudge the unkept road the borough is too poor to fix

He stops and rests one foot atop the hood of a car held together with wire and a prayer

I dont look up to him  I look up  Whats up big man

Who are you to address me

I got a perfect dress for you if ya give me time to alter it

Benevolence   evidently   has its limits

so did the big guy

He snapped out His anointing hand but not before telegraphing His intent

I stepped inside it and made like a bug and rolled

I rolled into the side panel of the spit-and-wire car He stepped on

and before he could recoil and take His weight off that foot

with two hands I slashed His Achilles with a straight razor

the Almighty has an Almighty throat and from it He bellowed deeply

goblets and goblets of Blood spattered

wounded He tittered

and with no control over His foot He fell

and fallen

now no taller than I

no plead in His Throat to His Father

no room in it beside His groan

with two hands I slashed His throat

not with malice or vindictive

offered only with what I possess

a humane death

sparing Him 
this time  

terror and pain

               

0154,  Sunday,  30  12. 12

1944,  Sunday,  30  12. 12