Fashionable Jesus

I
Saw Jesus
driving a Mercedes SL63 AMG convertible
License plate read:
MOVONUP
Bumper sticker said:
Progressives for Palin

Saw Jesus
on “Dancing with the Stars”
After his gig he pointed two fingers skyward and said
“This is for Haiti”

Saw Jesus
walking down the beach
drinking a Perrier
He was wearing Gucci loafers
with a Tommy Hilfiger sweater
tied around his shoulders

Saw Jesus
buying a big screen TV at Best Buy
He told the salesman that his favorite shows were
The Apprentice
The O’Reilly Factor, and
Millionaire Matchmaker

Saw Jesus
sitting behind home plate at Yankee Stadium before a game
He was signing autographs
sipping a glass of Dom Perignon
and sporting an A-Rod jersey

Saw Jesus
Wall Street Journal in hand
cutting an impressive path through the traders
at the N.Y. Stock exchange
Laughing
he said he hadn’t seen this much
reverence to a stone tablet
since Abraham came out from the burning bush

Saw Jesus
marshalling the faithful at a NRA rally in Nashville
He was outfitted in jeans
and a Charlton Heston T-shirt
and told a jubilant crowd whilst holding an AK-47
“Cold dead hands ain’t nothing new to me!”

Saw Jesus
giving a lecture at Bob Jones University
He was telling the students
that insider trading
wasn’t the evil it was cracked up to be
and that derivatives were a sure bet
Trust him, he said

Saw Jesus
being asked by a reporter
if the crisis in Darfur had been weighing heavily on him
The son of God
answered that he’d been busy of late
then asked the reporter where she’d bought her I-phone

Saw Jesus
being questioned on Fox News Sunday
about his opinions concerning climate change
The former resident of Nazareth
brushed off the inquiry
saying such matters were “out of his jurisdiction”

Saw Jesus
talking to a bell ringing Salvation Army worker
in front of Saks Fifth Avenue department store
He was explaining the evils of socialism
and bemoaning the fact that
he didn’t have any spare change at the moment

Saw Jesus
mingling with the members of a KKK chapter
in Biloxi, Mississippi
He then grabbed a microphone
and led a rousing rendition of
“die Fahne Hoch”

Saw Jesus
speaking to a group of soldiers
at an Army base in Afghanistan
He assured them of the moral imperative of their mission
and related how Mohammed
whom he’d known for years
really wasn’t a bad sort of guy

Saw Jesus
drinking a Pina Colada at Trader Vic’s
he was standing next to John Edwards
their hair was……. perfect

Saw Jesus
walking on … oil
in the Gulf of Mexico
With a briefcase in his hand
he was waving …
Good-bye

No "Fix" on Fox

“She was someone’s little girl once”
That’s what the cop said as he closed the zipper
On the first home she’d had in years
She was a beautiful baby
All giggles and jiggles with big, brown eyes
And fat little chipmunk cheeks
She was a precocious and charming child
Asking questions about anything…and everything
Soft, delicate lips and skin like golden brown cashmere

She was abused and molested
Starting at the age of nine by Bag Men
And her Druggie mother’s fellow Bed Bugs
She was Torchin’ up at eleven
Or doin’ the Herb and Al show
Hype’s in the hood called her
The Blunt Runt, The Bowl Troll
The Skunk Punk
She was “On a Mission” by her 15th birthday
Chillin’ in the Ozone…Cooler in chapped lips
Munchin’ on Gorilla Biscuits…gettin’ Twacked

She was a Bag Bride at eighteen
Jacked, Cracked and slapped…All Tweakend Long
A Rockette dancin’ at midnight
With Spindarella
She was Freakin’ and Geekin’…Back-to-Back at 20
A Raspberry, a Toss-up…a Crankenstein
Her own special diet…on the Jenny Crank Program
Committing Methamfelonies and Chasing the Tiger
Every damn chance she got

She was a Skag Rag
A Bag Chaser
A Crumbsnatcher
A Free Baser
A Rock Fiend
A Ratchet Jaw
“It’s my life…fool”
“F..k the Law”
She was an All Star
A Doper…An Addict…A Junkie
She was a Crack Head
On Ugly Dust
She had a Jones named…Monkey

She was 23 when they found her dead
Lying in an alley…glassy eyes looking
At stars she’d never reach
Track Marks criss-crossing…embossing
Pipe stem arms…A Dime’s worth
Of Bobby Brown
Embedding in the tissues of her ravaged liver
No more High Speed Chicken Feed
No more Buzzard Dust
No more Bugged and Bruised
The Ratchet Jaw now could rust

And if you listened…as they loaded up her body
The sound of a TV…floated down the alley
A special bulletin on Fox News
Told of how a pretty…wealthy
White girl had been murdered…
And the nation was aghast

This was no reported crime
Yet her life ended with a rhyme
The news was mum, unspoken
This was just a user croakin’
No hearts were cracked and broken
She was just another token
And what once had been a pearl
With tiny feet and dangling curl
Just up and left this world, and
She, too, had been someone’s… little girl

Pillow Talk

Of all the friends I long to keep
The one I pray for most is sleep
Eyes squeezed shut yet fast awake
With all the pills that I can take
And still I pray for sleep

I day-dream of a bed so deep
Where I can fall down in a heap
Free from stress and body ache
Of their leave I shall partake
Oh how I long for sleep

Why, oh why, can I not reap
Into my brain - why can’t it seep?
A peaceful nap beside a lake
Or six straight hours would heaven make
Oh someone help me sleep

Sometimes I can’t help but weep
The tower of desperation from whence I leap
A forty winks pie I pine to bake
Or a seven layer slice of shut eye cake
Which would blessedly let me sleep

A childhood prayer I oft’ repeat
In dead of night with burning feet
…if I should die before I wake
Before you “save” me…for God’s sake
Please just let me…sleep

Cap and Downer

In response to a family obligation
I recently attended a high school graduation
Young people in high spirits
Were the order of the day
It was bracing to be near it
I heard many of them say

“We, so honored to graduate this year
Face a turbulent world, yet face it not with fear
We’ve come a long way
Since those first days in ninth grade
Our heads held proudly when we say
From adversity we did not fade”

They issued forth many now familiar platitudes
Bestowing upon friends and family the usual gratitudes
Like a gambler who’s calling in all debts
Each speaker marked their checklist down
They’d paid their dues and won the bets
Now armed with diploma, cap and gown

Then amidst hand clapping and rousing cheers
I strangely found my eyes wet with tears
Drifting back I turned the page
To a hot summer day in ‘74
When a gangly kid walked across a stage
The world by the tail, nothing less, nothing more

The world was my oyster, or so I’d believed
Now understanding, I’d been self-decieved
Like surely some who stood before me now
I faced tomorrow both naïve and unafraid
Success was surely in the bag somehow
Despite a lack of focus and plans never made

And so through cloudy, misty eyes I sat and watched them bask
Whilst behind, with gears a-grind, I slowly took myself to task
“Perhaps this is why,” my ‘Id’ said to I,
“You dread high school graduations”
Then drawing a deep breath with imperceptible sigh
I reminded my tormentor of family obligations

Now the ceremony’s concluded with smiling family and friends
And the part of my brain that tortures me so offers his amends
As I leave the arena, the celebration behind me
Happy tears fall on satin flower petals on the floor
I return to the world of my lamentable reality
Hopeful for the graduates yet still reminded of ‘74

Leafy Testament

They said it was just … a weed
Growing in soil where it shouldn’t be
A wayward and imperfect seed
Attaining the height of a grown man’s knee

It was a product of an inferior creed
Without the beauty of a flower
To this patch of earth it knew it must cede
For the Black-Eyed Susan had the power

“Beauty is transparent,” yet this we don’t heed
As we strive to make a world error free
But the eye of the beholder is often one of need
And who can judge what another really sees?

So now the hybrid weed starts to beg, starts to plead
Amongst perfection begins to wilt, begins to cower
“I only ask a tiny patch, oh please, can’t you concede?”
But the look on Susan’s face is rather dour

“I’m sorry my dear fellow, I cannot share my feed
With those who look or those who act unlike me.
I suppose, between the lines one like you will have to read -
The Earth was always set against one like thee.”

Now in the final moments of a foul and ignoble deed
I reflect upon a world I find most sour
With garden gloves and sinews bared I slowly draw a bead
Removing one who longed to lived amongst the flowers

Confessions from a Box Seat

Cardinals in St. Louis
Clad in red ... adorned with chains of gold
Touching all ... bases
Fingers directed ... skyward
Cardinals at the Vatican
Clad in red…adorned with chains of gold
Touching all ... debases
Prayers directed ... skyward
Victims of clergy abuse
Clad in despair ... justice put on hold
Touching many ... faces
Whispers directed ... who can know?

Spotted O-W-L

Spotted an OWL (older white lady)
Bombin' down '99
Frosted hair puffin' with the A/C
Acrylic nails keepin' time
Black Toyota Highlander
Ski Racks on Top
"Meg 2010" on Tailgate
Too bad she’s not an
Endangered species

(Contributed by Mrs. MLP)

Islands

We float, diseased, decaying flotsam on the oceans of the unafflicted
A permanent blot on the face of “healthy humanity”
Disabled in body, pillaged of hope, crippled in spirit

We ride the endless waves of todays and tomorrows
Our suffering, our longing for relief
Voiced in silent sighs and futile calming breaths

We search the horizon with pleading, crimson-tinged eyes
Not for miracles or counterfeit invocations of divine intervention
But islands, blessed islands, islands of escape

We emerge from seas of pain and despair
And luxuriate on warm sands of tranquility
Listening to bird song, examining the beauty of a grain of sand

We watch the sun’s life giving rays
Peek through billowing clouds and swaying palm fronds
Then close our weary eyes, dreaming of normality

We know that our respite will be brief
Counting each second, embracing each minute
In a fruitless attempt, to outwit Father Time

We try to forget the ceaseless revolutions of the clock
And of man, knowing full well our endeavor will fail
For, “pleasure time” surely outpaces time spent in anguish

We then watch, and listen, mixing equal parts anger and trepidation
As the tide slowly rises, as the waters of desolation creep up the sand
Forcing us to swim yet again, straining our eyes, exhausting our resolve
In the eternal quest, for precious islands that sustain us

Webitaph

His life was short and busy
At the base of ever moving feet
And the height of the plant he called home
His days were marked by caution
With nights reserved for survival
And preparation for the day ahead
Yet his death came unexpected
Caught between man’s inherent fears
And the futility of his existence
His eight legs now lay crumpled
A single strand of his lonely web
Attached to a crimson red rose
Soon to float off…on its rendezvous
With Infinity

Crude 'Tude

Uncle Sam’s a hype
You’re hip to the type
A junkie with a monkey
Ridin’on his back
But he ain’t sniffin’ crack
And he ain’t shootin’ smack
But when he roll up his sleeve
You can eyeball the track
Sam the kind of cat
Who got a boatload of ‘tude
Sam the sort of greedy fool
Cravin’ light, sweet crude
He need it bad and when he don’t get it
Scare him half to death
He need it like a fiend need rock
Like a bag chaser scoring meth
He’ll mainline from an Arab desert
Maybe squeeze it from some shale
Or dip his needle in the bottom of the sea
And go through the agonies divin’ with the whales
Sam, he Rapacious
He Voracious
He our Uncle and the brother need a hit!
Sam’s on a bender
A real gushin’ neverender
He gotta have this shit
Sammy got a hookup named Arco
He know a pusher named Shell
Sam pay for a stash
With fresh minted cash
Then blow a fix on an oil well
He once had a skirt named Ethyl
Who OD’d and turned up dead
She serviced V8’s coast to coast
‘Til they buried her ass
‘Cause a too much lead
Poor ol’ Sam a doper
And he sportin’ a lotta canker
He made it big with his crazy rig
Now he just tinkerin’
Lookin’ for a tanker
Lately Sam’s gettin’ shaky
Man just got to lubricate
Crusty ol’ dude in need of crude
So he thinkin’ ‘bout movin’ to Quaker State
The ol’ boy sure is strung out
Sam really got the jones
Fightin’ wars to score some more
Then sniffin’ fumes through drilling cones
But if some yell “save the planet!”
Conservatives recoil
If you wanna see the distance
‘Tween Sam and some folk
Take a gander at a Gulf…covered in oil
So while Sammy go surfin’
On a fat oil slick
And the crabs and the fishies
Suck on a dirty dip stick
Crank up a finger
For everyone to see
Put the chill on the drill
And to hell…with BP

Comrades in Arms

Emerging from a rank and squalid womb
Located in the dark recesses
Of Avaricious gray matter
Two brothers are born
Sired by the same Father
Incubated by the same Mother
Pink flesh meeting foul, stagnant air
Whilst humanity sleeps, unheeding
Young Croesus and Young Red
Visions of opulence and oppression
Inherent in twisted, decadent brains
Introduced as answers to a seething, chaotic world
Then separated at birth
Mother Capitalism feeds an insatiable mouth
With a malevolent and shining silver spoon
Looking down at the riff-raff
From her Mansion on the hill
Father Communism hands out cigars
Bolshevik images of power
And riches
Dancing Faust-like on Kremlin sidewalks
Polar opposites worshipping the same God
Doppelganger twins in back-to-back mirrors
Nourished by the flesh
Of those they so callously exploit
Their offspring grow and grow… ‘til they become
Monsters…ideological oligarchs
Vampires…pointed fangs in the jugular of humanity
Hawks and Doves…Bears and Eagles
Co-mingling…..Breeding
Each feathering his respective nest
One bleeds its clueless victims
Of every last one thinned dime
The other feeds its victims
In lieu of the gulag…perpetuating the crime
And in a propertied penthouse
Atop plush carpets and the spoils of war
Where fine wine and gaiety abound
The Plutocrat and the Leninite
The Fat Cat and the Marxist
Drink champagne distilled from pain
Gliding effortlessly amongst gilded lampshades
And handcrafted porcelain china
The elegant, aristocratic Maoist lady
The true blood Boston blue blood
Both wear silk stockings
The Wall Street multi-billionaire
The Trotskyite party chairman
Both have cuff links made of gold
And to those star-crossed souls
Living in their shadows
Freedoms…live
Free…to work
Free to cry
Free to grieve
Free to die
Well heeled Bolsheviks lounging in Sable
Monied Magnates tucked away in stretch limousines
Are they not?
Have they not always been?
True…Comrades in arms
Living in regal splendor
In Palaces built of broken promises
Fostering hate and distrust
To maintain their insidious charade
With the looming presence of Fascism and Socialism
Etched on marble walls erected by lackeys
Echoing with the sounds of laughter
The tinkling of counted silver
Amidst glittering piles of looted gold
As they plot…the next spontaneous conflict

As the Crow Flies

Uninvited…they come
Nocturnal visitors
Sharing air space with
Witches and tooth fairies
Old school artisans
Character craftsmen
Working slowly… deliberately
Sculptors of tomorrows
Emissaries of Father Time
Patient, exacting
Creators of true beauty
Of inevitable… reality
Making their mark
Upon life’s canvas
Each night in
Three toed symmetry
Leaving recipients eyes
Etched with Crow’s Feet

Cauterized

Someday…after deprivation, and destruction, and disaster
Has left humanity numbering in the few
We who shall survive, we who persevere
Will join hands and embrace hearts
To marvel at the beauty of a tree
To gaze up in awe at the celestial majesty of space
To count drops of dew on a lonely spider’s web
We’ll build castles of sand instead of skyscrapers
We’ll make love at the end of a rainbow
We’ll drink wine from hollowed out coconut shells
And then…when graying and crotchety old man winter
Blows his blustery and blue frosty breath
Raising goose flesh upon our brown and bronzed skins
We shall build a great fire
Dancing yellows and orange reflected in moist eyes
To warm our toes, uncurl our fingers and free our souls
Burning the accursed pages of the manuals of hate
The blueprints for history’s architects of intolerance
Then sit back and watch the smoldering, antiquated ghosts
Of the Bible, Of the Koran
Rise and make their final journey to metaphorical… heaven
Leaving smiles on our faces…with Jesus at our side
As we all contemplate…palms outstretched, eyes on tomorrow
How the hell we ever made it….To someday

Out on a Limb

One less tree
To harmonize the wind
One less tree
That I can call friend
One less tree
On the street where I live
One less tree
With shade it could give
That old tree
Made a fatal mistake
That old tree
Survived storms and earthquakes
That old tree
Shed a sick arm
That old tree
Set off an alarm
The sick and the aged
Stand alone in their plight
The sick and the aged
Are losing their fight
The sick and the aged
Will one day be me
In the world of tomorrow
Will I end up like the tree?

Liquid Common Sense

I'm the Anti-Joe the Plumber
The Neanderthal who unclogs drains
I'm the shadow of a Conscience
The voice of the Voiceless
Trying to unclog brains