Joking Jesus

JOKING JESUS

The alternative of alternatives

An exotic banquet of options on offer

I take an aperition holiday

Thumpingly absurd

Go wild in the wilderness

Forty days and forty nights – off season

In a land famous for terrorism, stuffed tourism, and beautiful trouble

I went to it like a racing car

Under a milk-dish icy moon I sat

The wilderness, a lurking enormous horizon

And being a man of infinite tea I sipped a spliff

My mind followed the smoke rings in carousel circles to the sky

Elasticated and high – flexible and flipped

While the wind whistled mad tunes

As I waited for a message from oblivion

The desert breathed it's wind

and a mirage in it's sigh

When a light foot I heard

I resisted imagining

Whispers like creaking bones

In the neck of night I struck a light

And saw a dreamy shadow first

Then there, the mad cap stood before me

Ash and sack cloth in a crown of thorns

A spiderweb of hair

The fanatic's gleam in his eyes

A living metaphor of fear and queerness

His body shook as a kind of measure

Indigo shadows fell into the sockets of his eyes

Then a smile from ear to ear

'Man the devil', he said

'Have a nice day!' I said

Oh, I have another plan! he replied

'Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return

'Why the thorns?' I asked

'No pain, no gain,' he quipped

And in his theatrical guise

He began a rap in tongues and paradox

Then sung and danced a bit

I tempted him with spliff

To cool his brain

But nothing passed his lips

Then he laughed so hard he cried

Then the moon passed us by

Then all of a sudden he spied a dashing hare

And chased it down it's hole