J.C.

• Jesus, it’s the anniversary of you.
• Time to mark the day in our neo-pagan way.
• With our hemisphere un-leafed
• we drag in the remaining green
• and illuminate our shortest days
• with menorahs, candles and fallen stars.
• We look for you in other J.C.s…
• Joseph Campbell, Jimmy Carter,
• Judy Chicago and Joseph Cornell.

• Irving Berlin’s on Muzak again
• and Wenceslaus is in the elevator.
• The money-changers are loose.
• Cash registers toll while politicians
• blather about goodwill.
• The robed men who stole the narrative
• and made you into Julius Caesar
• gloat in their edifice.
• 
  
• Jesus, you look weary. Forgive us
• for the misdeeds done in your name
• and your early subversion we have bungled.
• Just tell me this….did we get the story right?
• Are you human, nothing less?
• A Jewish-Christian, Jiminy Cricket,
• Julie Christie, Johnny Carson,
• Jeepers-Creepers, Jellico Cat,
• juicy cantaloupe, jeweled constellation?
• 
  
• From your manger 
• to a cardboard box by the off-ramp
• come silence the night, halt our traffic,
• unmask the imposter
• so we might pause and wake
• with astonished eyes, re-seeded
• for another go round as if
• in a haloed world, as if
• with turned cheeks, as if...