Pop Culture Jesus

He came into the world a baby,
even as Adam and Eve
entered it,
fully formed.
He is heavily edited,
often misquoted.
Eighteen years of his life
are unaccounted for.
He honored His father and mother,
but honored His Heavenly Father more.
He was a carpenter
even as He was a King.
He is a mystery,
yet many feel they know Him.
He is a part of history,
but not herstory.
He loved all women,
or He loved one woman.
His Name is a prayer,
even as it is a swear.
He was a pescatarian
who declared all meat clean;
a drinker of old wine for the Catholics,
new wine for the Mormons.
His atonement covers all sin
beyond the point of conversion,
for His shed-letting only blots out
sins repented of.
He loved the poor,
for He was one of them.
He is an ideal
few live up to,
and even fewer seek to.
His words have saved the lives
of those who believe,
His influence, even more
for those who do not.
He committed suicide;
He is a martyr who allowed
Himself to be killed.
He is a liberal Socialist
for the eugenicists,
a conservative Republican
for those who believe in
natural selection.
He is God,
He is His Son,
or He was,
a Man.


Boxing Day


The shelves in the shops have been ransacked—
all but the candy,
which won’t be on clearance for another week.
There is glitter everywhere,
coating every surface like fingerprint powder—
the aftermath of consumerist crimes.

Packs of wild-eyed women grab and toss,
their carts queueing up like battering rams,
juxtaposed against a mass regurgitation of goods—
a symptom of the holiday hangover.

The joy of the season has smoked like a pipe dream,
and all that was so prettily placed
has been leveled to plastic ruins.
Broken glass,
like Kristallnacht,
has been swept under the now skeletal fake firs;
the silver has worn off the angels,
the gold off the goody tins.
None of it was real after all.
Time broke the spell.

The tableau is reminiscent of a post-apocalyptic surreality,
following the celebration of a divine birth—
ushering in the red death of retail.
Santa is hungover somewhere under the Northern Lights,
hatching his next Socialist experiment.

Few got what they wanted,
for most buy for themselves throughout the year.
The unwanted little darlings that ended up under their evergreens
are regifts for next year’s “Dirty Santa” parties.

Congealed gravy sits in the fridge,
and ham bones star in crock pot Yankee Bean Soup.
There is one last slice of pie that no one wants;
a cranberry has been crushed into the carpet.
The rubbish bins runneth over with the corpses of dead trees.

The carols have gone silent,
the bells have stopped ringing,
the lights have went out,
and the bleakness—
known as Christmas Come and Gone—
has become an oppressive presence.

Churches will be half-full (optimistically) once again,
and the snow will no longer glisten red and green.
The metallic tinsel dangles from the chandelier
like an instrument of flagellation and strangulation,
choking the life out of the year,
as it breathes its last breaths.

The lustre of Christmas is pined for,
for Christmas is a stopping place;
the New Year marks a start few of us want to make
but feel we must,
for the quest of self-improvement is a road that never dead ends,
always leaving us empty,
wanting more.