Preacher

Don't worry about me Mama

It's just another blow to the back of the head

Another prolonged moment of unknowability

I just need the view from several paces back

A couple weeks of being nothing 

Sexy stoned and unemployed

A deepsea diver in measured ascent

Adjusting his lungs before his next breath

A preacher stopped me on the street

Repent, repent, he said

The first words he ever spoke to me

Repent, you shine too bright.

Preacherman

How does the world hit your eyes?

Omniscient and powerful, yet so deeply scared?

When you alone have gone to paradise,

And all the sinners you berated are in flames

Will you have the last laugh then? 

What will it mean when no one can hear you?

When Jesus laid his gentle hands on lepers,

Would you have shot him dead?

Or commanded all the layfolk,

After they have given you their last dollar,

To skin him strip by strip in the public square?

And if the stray dogs beg too insistently

Would you swing your fancy boots, or

Make them feast upon the sinners?

When the seer wields prophetic language

Would you slice out her tongue

And display it from your altar as a warning while

You laugh at the fool for bleeding when cut?

How dangerous love is

When it is simply love

And not a subjugative act

J.K.