When Jesus comes again
To push a cart and live off food stamps in the rain
Don’t expect to recognize Him
And don’t expect Him to recognize you either
When His words froth on the ocean of our solipsism
They will seem the ravings of a mad fool
If they lock Him up it will be under laws
Carefully laid out by voter-supported government officials
When He speaks of thieves and outcasts
Straining against His straitjacket
They will diagnose Him
And sedate Him to prevent Him
From injuring Himself and others
And when He meets the fallen angel
Risen in the alleyways of your metropolis
Half blind and fresh home from the wars
They will lock in a stumbling combat quite unworthy
Of generations raised on choreographed violence
And the pit one casts the other in
Will be muddy and cold and not far from your door
And you will walk past as quickly as you can
Averting your eyes
When he sits, black-eyed, in the Gethsemane of your local bar
Reeking of two thousand moldering years
With His motley band of whores and indigents
You will complain to the bouncer
And have Him trundled into the parking lot
Through the window you will watch His bloodied form
Crawl into a dumpster to sleep
As testament to His omnipresence
When you see Him in the library
Every inch a mottled stain
Staring at the books without reading, bemused
Knowing every combination of words
And ineffably bored with it all
You will look at Him only over your shoulder
As befits a true god
And when He dies
In the ditch His father prepared so long ago
His father who knows
Truth is no truth lest it be leavened with atrocity
When He dies
With the bottle in His hand
Emptied of all but the last dregs our sins
The police will scowl and spit in the grass
And thank the Lord for preserving us
From His fate
