Fantastic Lie

Jesus kissed the dust,

Jesus had dirty feet -

He smelled like a camel,

His eyes didn’t sleep

but they had great black rings around them.

He knew the first sin,

Hands on his hips, laughing at the sun-

Adam? he thought to himself,

I’ll do it even better.

He’d slept on a mountain, he’d looked for God,

But there were wood shavings in his eyes and nose,

Only his father,

His mother,

Sometimes an old priest

Rambling about the good old days.

I’ll bring it back, Jesus whispered

Confidentially,

Eyes lowered,

I know how.

From the empty, heavy, dusty Egyptian air

He yanked nothing, he took it in his hand,

Just so much wind,

And he said,

“I am the Word!”

It was the truth, he -

And his fellows -

They were the Word

So he must destroy them.

He could have been forgiven,

Just for saying it first,

Just by showing them the nature of the truth!

But he twisted it, out of all proportion,

Like all great truths.

The Word came to Judea like a hurricane,

Destroying homes and ideas,

Trailing blood in its wake,

It said, “I am the Word!”

And it added:

“-and only me.”

Jesus was happy to die

For his fantastic lie.

Hung up on the cross he saw

For years and centuries

The men that would never know-

and for that, they deserved their lives,

Their slow misery,

The hell they trusted so fondly.

Jesus had been there a long time ago -

But he was a snake then,

Just a clever animal,

Cursed for being better than a rat.