If you lived here 
you’d be home now

Jesus wasn't what I expected when he finally came by

in a red corduroy suit 

driving a matching red MG sports car
yelling—Alright, everybody out of the pool!

Being Good Christians, we got out
dried off
asked—What's the matter now, Jesus?

Well, I'm ok, he said, but God is very incensed
literally
watching your rituals down your church aisles
smoky with deferment and depression—
He's even got His inhaler out. 

Now, wait a minute! we said—still in our inner tubes. 
Jesus went on:

We're worried about you guys
looking all around for God, or me, so listen—
Drop it. Knock it off, look
where you are! It's beautiful. 
Take off your watch and listen 
to yourself ticking. 

Drop the Bible, drop Heaven,
drop your thing called Facebook, 
drop your parents approval drop 
your teacher's grade, your boss through 
the floor, and the next door neighbors
you think are watching you. 

We see (from On High) that it starts early

worrying about good grades

best team

best school

best town best country

best actor

best-seller list

respect of your peers

respect of your community

biggest funeral, everybody 

laughing, crying, missing you forever. 

You seem to think it's all important

maybe even fun, and maybe it is, I can see that. 

Probably God can't, He's a little stiff sometimes, 

but what if that kind of success doesn't happen?

So go on, I dare you, drop the hilarious joke of success. 

Isn't it really, not much? 

So Jesus, one of us shot back, bouncing
up and down on the high dive board,
what is important? Nature? Love … all that jazz? 

Jesus got back in the MG and turned it on,
radio too. 

It was Charlie Parker. 

Yes, he said, and all this jazz. 

And, the next full moon—full WHITE

making the rest of the sky deep sea blue;

or the next Aurora Borealis you might see; 

or the deep blue sea (and the Devil, we like him too!);
acts of cheerful sweetness out of the blue 

by strangers deep in the countryside—out of gas,
stuck in the snow, or deep in the middle of a city—
stuck in a room; strangers on a plane, talking
through the clouds, through the night
about anything but success; your deep down
creative desiring instinct, and don't question it; 

not to mention the feeling in your bones 

and on your skin, next time you're out of control 

with laughing—notice that, do that, it's all yours.
So, be in the moment, not the monument. 

(Oh that's a good line, Jesus said to himself,
writing it on a pad and throwing it in the glove box.)

It's not that it's important, he finished up,

but that it's free, all over the place;  

not even made in China. 

Get it? laughed Jesus, revving his MG.

I'm funnier than my dad, he said, 

already in third gear, then

already gone. 

Expatriate from 
the patriarchy 

I never really ran with that gang anyway, 

always was sort of a lone wolf. 

And if women run with the wolves,

I’d say I was raised by them. 

The Eternity Ward

Are you having a senior moment?

Someone just accused me of that.

How many deadening cliches and

imagination-limiting catch-phrases,

how much social mediaocre 
and news broadcasts, national anthems,
and polite church services 
do I have to live through?

After all, when I was born

I popped out 

and the first thing I did

was lose my car keys. 

So what?

I remember clearly

my Third Trimester (plus 5 minutes) 

Moment—everybody was laughing! 

And the doctor (she admired me, I could tell; 

I admired her for being a woman doctor, 

there hadn't been much of that in the last 

life; in fact, I recognized her from before) 

said: This baby wants to drive! 

And while I didn't accuse her 

of being in a senior moment—

I knew she was in an Unlimited Moment—

you won't believe what she said next: 

Get this baby down the elevator to the Eternity Ward! 

I couldn't believe it, either. But I found my keys. 

Born with nothing to lose 

Born smart
born happy

but surrounded 

by the deliverer, that dull dumb mean one 
(her muumuu tied around your throat)

in two rooms.

Your baby shoes, the tv guide,

the tv dinner, your first and last  

job application (not filled out, already rejected) 
on the tv tray.

Sooner or later you’ve got to get in the way

or else become a helper, committee member, tv starer, 
facebook follower, church youth camp macrame mentor,

good deed runner.

Or—you get way out of the way
and run like hell. 

That’s no music for LIFE

I don’t even drink anymore

I rode the alcohol to get off the pain

and for me it was a Tilt-A-Whirl
with a permanent ticket, so I got off,

but since I do care about others 
why is the liquor store CLOSED 

at nine at night around here and all day Sunday?

Don’t say that, because everyone knows God likes a drink.  

God drinks it all in
all our restrictions, in His name 
swishes it around in the God mouth, spits it out and says—
don't look at me 
and who's to say I'm a He? 

God drinks, drank, gets d r u n k 

every time they put their cold clammy ecclesiastical 

inquisitional hands 

on that pipe

organ. 

Boy Scouts of America

(and elsewhere) 

She shot me with the novocaine

the warmest funniest woman 

my new Cuban dentist friend

then she told me in a nutshell 

as I went numb

about her life of limits, from
grandfather to father to husband;  

she couldn’t do anyone’s teeth 

couldn’t deaden a man’s mouth 

in Cuba. 

But that's over; in a nutshell—she ended it. 

I asked for another two shots

of novocaine, because I couldn’t take it

then I lay there in the chair and thought

(as she whistled, getting her silver diggers 

and pokers out of the autoclave)

of all she’d had to take 

because of misogyny. 

Misogyny. 

Some men are gonna need surgery. 
Maybe even a dictionary. 

Tunnel into the trees

And to think that 
I used to have a chip 
on my shoulder. ( Ha! )

I don’t even remember who 

the Old Block is 
anymore.