The Second Coming by Tom Riordan

...twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed... "The Second Coming," W. B. Yeats

1. Omnipotent Even on the Cross

Omnipotent even on the cross, Christ voluntarily embraced his pain. He could have called it off at any time, cut it in half with just a thought— or doubled it. After he died, his body was arise-able at any moment too. “He held his body in abeyance,” we should say. He suffered and died differently than ordinary people do. Omnipotence cannot allow for Jesus ever ceasing to be God. He never spoke of this specifically but it's been studied scientifically. As C-fiber excitation signals pain, the bloodstream surges with adrenalin and sugars; pulse and respiration spike; blood masses in the heart, lungs, limbs and brain. Voluntary pain's metabolism is an invitation to sublimity. Burke said, “Pain that's simply terrible when it's too close may be ecstatic at a certain distance”; Fayyaz, “Voluntarily accepting pain, we overcome our nature and we feel sublime.” * When Crusade set its essay contest up—“I Volunteer to Sacrifice Myself Like Christ for Other People's Sins”—over a thousand people paid the $40 entry fee and sent empassioned essays in. Nearly two hundred broached the question of the possibiility they'd rise again. “What if the sacrifice itself,” one wrote, “is what made Jesus God? Why shouldn't I retrace his steps? There's still a lot of saving to be done.” The thief who suffered next to Christ believed his pain would carry him to paradise as well—became a firewalker passing barefoot over coals. When suffering is purposeful—is sacrifice—it ceases to be sacrifice per se, but a transcendent path. Christ's suffering, and death, had asterisks. One early Doctor said the Gospels, Acts, Epistles sketch a silhouette of faith whose contemplation's up to us. “Omnipotence,” wrote C.S. Lewis, “is by definition limited. For one thing, God's not capable of nonsense.” ** Christ's pain, as certainly, could not contain the element of helplessness.

* Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful Fayyaz, “Sublime Pain: A Study of Voluntary Pain Acceptance” ** Lewis, The Problem of Pain [all paraphrases]

2. Jesus Replies to “Omnipotent Even on the Cross”

Don't cast aspersions. You don't understand, and never will, one single thing about the nature of my suffering. I know you inside out— though you cannot know me at all.

Don't think I clenched the aspirin of divinity between my teeth while hanging on the cross: don't think it took the edge off that I'd volunteered or knew how much salvation it was bound to bring.

Don't think it was some loss of pride that galled me so, while shit-mouthed Roman soldiers listened to the cocks crow; or enduring as the thieves on either side hissed Fucking this! and Fucking that! I'm God. A far cry from an egotist.

You probably won't get too far, but think along these lines: What had I given up to spend that long, long afternoon in cruel hands, tortured, bled? Can you even wrap your head around the sacrifice involved?

And the amount of pain I suffered? Add up everything you've ever lost and multiply by—what? six billion in the world? I felt that all. It pierced right through my heart.

I wasn't so much there redeeming you as mining the hard truth of why I ought to cut you far more slack:

So this is what it's like. My lord! These poor benighted creatures must be given the green light to buy whatever pleasure, comfort or relief they can afford.

3. Then I in My Anger and Pride Reply

You'll give me the green light? You're going to cut me slack? You and Queen Elizabeth II both need to lie calmly on your back and ask an analyst to help you shove your grandiose delusions back inside Pandora's bag of cats. Neither one of you rules shit! Slap your own cheek and get over it!

I'm sorry. Do I sound testicular? I confess I fell hook, line and sinker when the devil tempted me to view myself as my own lord and master. I hate fathers, school, jail, taxes, military service, armed assailants, time clocks, lice, mosquitoes, gnats and all Do thisses and Do thats. So no, it's not you, in particular.

When I was younger, glummer, gullible, still glazed with fear, I clasped my hands and put my faith in what your birth, self-sacrifice and resurrection heralded. When that grew old—the only fruits I tasted sour do's, hard don'ts, and guilt— I struck out on my own to try my hand at doing what F. Scott Fitzgerald did. That price is high for the untalented— same pining, twice as much frustration— but maldito blueballs, viva masturbation!

Let's co-exist, long lost fraternal friends. You keep your Thou shalt stones inside your pants, I'll keep my No I shan'ts somewhere your sun don't shine. I know it violates your Prime Directive to give up on offering your love to me, but since your motive's so benign, why not just give me a free pass and stick that Oh boo hoo, he shut his heart to me right up your ass?

Oh, there I go again. M'scusi, padre, I have sinned again and it's a doozy, I got pissy at the Prince of Peace. Yet, you? You aren't angry in the least, but only thinking, Saving such a hardened case is going to be sweet. But nothing is pre-destined, is it? Free will—white of you to give it— adds a bit of drama, whets the stakes.

No, you go right ahead and smile down on me and overlook my flaws and do whatever floats your cloud. I shouldn't blame you for a couple overzealous nuns and 30,000,000 fundamentalists who say you lead them in a war against progressiveness and threaten hellfire on the rest of us. For all I know you washed your hands in 36 A.D. of that entire business.

4. And He in His Loving Voice

Air all the pique you want, Bean Sprout. I'm pretty much immune to it. Now let me answer you about the hellfire and permissiveness.

The great debate in recent years about the if and if so, what? of hell is understandable—it does involve a mystery. What happens if you don't accept my invitation to come spend eternity in bliss with me? Short answer? If there is a place of fiery punishment, it isn't mine.

I have my eyes on you while you're alive and at the moment of your death I reach my arm in your direction and I pray, Please take my hand, but if you don't, the screen goes blank. Your blip just disappears. If something else exists for you, it lies beyond my eyes and ears.

I never lose sight of the littlest cog or nuance of the universe that I created, but to tell you pointblank, guaranteed, That's all there is, would be nonsensically presumptuous. No one can say with certainty there's absolutely nothing past the pale of their awareness— zero possibility of someone else's Genesis. So could some alter-afterlife exist that is unpleasant, torturous? I can't promise you it doesn't.

You also wondered if I'm still involved in Christians' war against unrighteousness. Forgive my being Irish there again: the answer's no—and yes.

Without a lengthy parsing of my views on right and wrong, it's not brain surgery to sense that they and evangelicals' diverge.

And where they clearly coincide— providing for the least of these, let's say—I offer grace to any warrior who shields a child.

No, I did not say fetus. Did you notice how your pulse leapt there? Yikes. Put that pro-choice dick back in your over-liberal jeans.

5. In Ire You Invented Sex?

My pro-choice dick? in over-liberal jeans?

Did you create men's penises without entirely appreciating both their functionalities?

Presumably your body, when you came to earth, was perfect as could be— without genetic or environmental defect. If I'm not mistaken, your dick only peed.

And back in Genesis, the Garden was designed for only two of every kind, immortal, naked, unashamed— the reproduction tacked on only later, part and parcel of the exiles' sentence after Eve, against advisement, touched and ate the tree that pleased her eyes, the tree that she desired, and in anger you told Adam, Twixt her seed and thine, in sorrow shalt thou propagate.

Ever since, you seem to look askance whenever lovers drop their pants.

Did you screw up when, improvising on the fly, in ire you invented sex?

6. I'm Glad You've Come to Me for Help

You're obsessed. You see that, don't you, Tom? It's sex, sex, sex, sex, sex. Your own. That's why your love life's such a mess. I'm glad you've come to me for help.

Oh, calm your vag! It takes me—what?—3 sentences to get your goat? It's out of character for me to gloat, but as a fact that you should know for your own good, that's one of the 10 Reasons I am God and you are...not. You're too infernally excitable! That king-sized ego on your sleeve makes you too slight-able.

As I was saying, all this Push the Lord away is one of the 11 Common Elementary Forms of Praying. The Antiphonal's ever been a favorite of the Thin-Skinned Miffable and 16 Other Kinds of Jerks.

The prayers of finite intellects like you are based on one or more of 8 Beliefs:

1. Finite's able to communicate with infinite. 2. Infinite is interested in learning about finite. 3. Prayer cultivates a better attitude in finite. 4. Prayer helps finite to philosophically and intellectually know infinite. 5. Prayer helps finite gain direct experience of infinite. 6. Prayer affects the very fabric of reality as finite knows it. 7. Prayer catalyzes change in finite's self or circumstance. 8. Infinite desires and takes joy in finite's prayer.

What is your basis, Tom? What are the ins and outs of if and how you secretly believe this whole thing's going to progress? Or are you flying blind, instinctively? I'm going to be here beside you every wingbeat till you safely land. I too have faith:

It's like romantic comedy. When finite rails at infinite or makes a declaration of indifference, invariably he's taking his first step toward getting intimate.

7. Let's Make a Deal

You may be right: for all I know, my soul is desperately hooked on your infinite tip and bleating indecipherable spiritual code— in layman's terms, pure gibberish—

Come, Lord, and make me yours.

My love life is a mess. It doesn't take divine omniscience to decipher that. And people put out vibes that contradict what they intend.

And here I am addressing you, not Krishna, Buddha, Ptah, Mbombo, Allah, Ao or Zeus. So yeah, I'm willing to admit the possibility I'm feeling for your hand inside some dark room of my mind. I'm an agnostic—like you, not too arrogantly blind to categorically deny a universe that I can't find.

That said—you crack me up! You're so cocksure that your prescription for salvation is dead-on, one size fits all.

After you cast your critics into hell, did you appoint a loyal throne or seraph to play devil's advocate, to occupy the role of Inquisitor Sceptic?

Remember when you stationed fearsome cherubim at Eden's gate beside a sword of flame that jitters up and down like it's an epileptic? Has it occurred to you to nonchalantly saunter past just once in all this time to ask those guardians what portion of the human race has ever tried to break back in?

My point, m'lord—diversify. The kind of saints who kneel in prayer and flail their backs with knotted cords— who, gleeful, leap inside big smoking pots of boiling olive oil— who empty bed pans all day long inside Calcutta's flophouse for untouchables— how many heavens do you think you'll ever fill with them? Two? three at most?

To move the cheap seats too, you have to cater to the lower tastes. Play down the harp. Push pop and rap. The hors d’oeuvres— matzoh shmeered with manna cheese and locust paste infused with Dead Sea salt, a shredded fig garni, and mustard seed— are not for everyone. Target your message more to ordinary folks. Cocktail hotdogs and some kind of nachos are a must.

And then there's drink. And drugs. It's not my business if you want to kiss off half of your potential market scolding idiotically, Intoxication's bad— insist on flying in the face of possibly the one thing humankind is certain of— but where's the harm in promising at least that up in heaven's pub there's always Guinness and St. Pauli Girl on tap, and top-shelf whiskey for the price of well?

Toss in a little Ecstasy, some pure Jamaican pot and Oxy extra-strength, I guarantee you'll pack the rafters every night, and have to ask St. Bernward to start sketching plans for Heavens 8th and 9th.

I know it's gauche to bargain with the infinite— it's shameful proto-prayer engaged in only by the dim and ignorant— still, didn't Jacob get safe passage toward Rebecca's well, King Hezekiah wrest an 15 extra years of life, infertile Hannah finally bear a son, and Abraham succeed in dickering you down from fifty righteous souls in Sodom, to just ten?

You're right, in part: I'm definitely save-able, I'm listening, I have a price. But I was never one who bit for Monty Hall's You want to trade that $1000 cash for what's behind the curtain? schtick. My braver angels thought the folks who did were heroes—they had guts. My choir of cowards thought they all were fucking nuts.

Is it too much to ask for you to grant one or the other of my prayers? 1. Give me courage, Lord. 2. Let me taste some of your wares.

8. His Prayer

You sell me short, improvident man. My wares, as you so cavalierly put it, comprehend the oxygen you breathe, the tits that gave you satisfying suck, the bill of fare for every hour of your life, as well as wherewithal to foot it.

All that you fear to lose in loving me were posies fluttered past your nose: my fault in wooing you, shy modesty. Despairing any gift could lead you here, I climbed the cross in hope, perhaps, forsaking human blood to re-exhilarate your veins from their original collapse.

9. What Are Your Intentions?

Your sonnet's sweet, the Genesis and Passion axis—too ingenious! I'm halfway to a tear. You make yourself sound so goddam sincere— all give, no take, hell-bent on loving me.

Indeed, the Gospel you seems nice enough, a sympathetic soul— but not the older version in the Pentateuch, who seems a little... how to put it...gruff?

You saw an error in your ways and changed? The Holy Rollers have damnation wrong— all your commandments less like laws than peeves, or marital requests?

Or did it slip your mind to mention one key strand in your almighty sophistry— in asking love, you're only upping your demands?

Obeying me, affirming our inherent inequality, is part and parcel, Tom, of loving me. How blessèd your race is to have my testaments! My edicts, sanity itself! My ordinances, gifts! Your role is to obey and love, afford a higher pleasingness.

The orthodoxy says you're too beyond my mind's ability to grasp. But since I've got you here and we're beginning to be friends—explain? If it's not blasphemy to ask, give me a fighting chance.

10. Natural Law

You can't expect me to be just like you. Nor do I expect you to be just like me. I did put on the mantle of a Jew but I'm a very different taxonomic species.

Ordaining things is part of what I do. I said, Let there be light, for instance, and there was. I also judge, reflexively: He saw that it was good. So yes, my strictures have a bit more weight than when, say, wife tells husband, Thou shalt always, when you eat a doughnut, use a plate. There's nothing suspect in the nature of my love. It's simply an integral part of who and what I am.

Let's say there was another universe somewhere that someone else created, and I popped in with my covenants and said, Obey. Would that make sense? Most definitely no. So in a universe I did make, who's to say my laws are not to be enforced? One thing follows as naturally on the other as infants follow the gazes of their mothers.

So, yes, one of the underpinnings of the moral fabric of your world is the position called pro-life. Do human beings earn their dignity or does it automatically emerge with them at birth? Correct—they bear it with them from the womb. It isn't any more complex than that. New souls are budded at conception.

All your arguments about the plight of tens of thousands of unwanted kids who'll never know a family? Why care, if they're born without a shred of grace, just blobs of tissue women shed? No natural moral law is arbitrary. Every arm is an extension of the head.

11. Furious Denouncement

How many embryos and fetuses did you yourself drown in their mothers' wombs in Noah's flood? how many bake in Sodom and Gomorrah? Don't preach the sanctity of life. Don't speak of innocence to me! The only claim you make in telling us abortion is a sin— or wholesale murder is a sin— is I'm above the law. But then you order us to follow you. Forgive a man if he's confused.

12. Justify the Ways of God

You're judging me? How hard to satisfy your race, which even after marking my dramatic act of penance in the gloom on Calvary still throws up in my face the deadly sins of wrath and pride? For Christ's sake!— crowned with thorns and grimly nailed up in the city boneyard's not apology enough?

Mine own sins I atoned— both those committed in creating what was wrong and those omitted in not easing people's pain, but also those despairing spasms where I lost control and lashed out to delete, destroy— if not atoned, I tried, my sole desire in taking human form and breathing human breath to clear the air and clean the slate and start afresh without apocalypse of flood or fire bringing dies irae on the old.

As Noe's days were, shall my coming also be. Did you not hear me up there on the cross— my soul exceeding sorrowful, even unto my death?

Name even one mistake or one unholy mess I've made since then.

13. The Art of Apology

You attempted what, son, on your royal visit to our flesh? A mea culpa for the Fall, the Flood, and Sodom and Gomorrah?

Maybe too much parable and pageant muddied your intent.

When will you image poets get it through your heads that something shown is worth 1/10 of 1% of something said?

Pretend you had a wife. Pretend you killed a Highland single malt she really relished.

Do you make it up to her and get back in her bed by yanking out a fingernail or telling stories about pricey pearls?

Christ no. You drop a hang-dog face, look her directly in the eye, and say it unembellished:

I'm so sorry.

14. Christ's First Confession

So sorry. Sorry even for the ineffective way that I apologize.

What else? Yeah, sorry for the Fourth Crusade, the Inquisition, shitting on the gays, and Catholics barring women from becoming priests!

Why not lay everything in Christendom that gang agley at my poor, punctured feet!— why credit me with getting even one thing right?

Do you consider the C-Minor Mass an accident?

I wanted to apologize just once with one grand gesture lurid, metaphor- and metaphys-ical, atone for past mistakes and buy some good will going forward.

I forgot how ahistorical you humans are: a minor ripple of appreciation at my resurrection, and then quickly back to remonstrance, disgruntlement, chagrin, disapprobation.

You fed the rabble on the Mount. You made a blind man see. But how far do you plan to coast on that? What's in your bag of tricks today, for me?

I get it, I misjudged, forgot your element is the immediate, the now. You're not all one, but individuals. You're petty, small. Okay, I've said it. There. I have a little disappointment too.

You change your mind with every slight shift of the wind about how much you think I ought to do. Too much, and it's paternalistic, but too little, it's a rubber crutch.

Retirement has crossed my mind— just wash my hands of all of you. But then I realize there is nothing else to occupy my time. Redeeming is the only urge, the one great passion, I possess.

15. Absolution

You're not so different from the rest of us. Self-expectation way too high, it's hard to rinse away the blot of misdeeds in one's youth— a drunken driving hit and run, for instance, hypothetically. Blood on your hands. Blood on your mind. You weren't the first and you won't be the last to look for appeasement through harming yourself.

16. Thanks Just the Same

I feel the mercy in your voice and, unaccustomedly, I'm moved. It's very...Christian..., Tom, but inappropriate, presumptuous. I'm meant to salve and shepherd you. I can't accept your sympathy. The fact that you've rejected mine can't nullify the basis of the God-and-man relationship as it was meant to be.

It doesn't matter if the architect is sorrier or more bizarre than what he's made; one rather hopes, in fact, he is. As Wendell Berry said in one of his two dozen tomes of wisdom, It is never from ourselves that we can learn to be more than we are.

Your preciousness to me is greater than you think mine is to you. That's not the question, though. It's Who is answerable to who? If I accept that you can ease my burden even just a little bit— that you're creating me, to some degree— where does it stop? Do I tell those who lay their sorrows at my feet, Yes, I could play the role of god for you, or not?

Your will is free, not mine. You can embrace me as I am, decline, or live a lifetime sitting on the fence. But I can't flutter in and out of godliness and call, Hey, Tom, you got my back?

To Mine Own Self I have no choice but never-failingly Be True.

17. Tom the Evangelist

Look, dude, I understand. You've got to keep your gig. It's not an option ducking out on your sublimity to roll with us.

But our free will? I see its beauty now: the out you couldn't grant yourself. You can't amend your own eternal verity— the way you interface with us— but you don't govern what we do and say.

I mean to lighten your condition with or without your permission.

Don't get mad, go stomping off. You interest me. Not all that nutty stuff about the blessed trinity and virgin birth, but what you do all day, and what it feels like to be you, and why you've chosen to conduct yourself and your creation as you did.

When Satan stood you on the temple roof and tried to talk you into jumping off, you had a chance to throw the towel in, abort your rebirth, and revert to being Mr. Tough God for whom man's obedience or not was all that mattered, all there was. But you said no, and forged ahead. You hadn't come that far only to turn around and transubstantiate back home without pursuing to the bitter end the revolutionary plan you'd hatched to elevate your lot from mankind's king to something nearer mankind's friend.

And, half your wish came true. You re-interpreted your character from god primarily of punishment to gentle font of clemency and grace, but like so many would-be men still haven't found the words to say I beg to be forgiven too. I'm right beside you in the trench, no better and no worse.

I sense it, though! I do! Hell, I might be the fifth evangelist that you've been fishing for these past 2000 years! I offer you the service of my pen to spread the good news of your escalating open-mindedness as widely and as loudly as I can.

18. His Majesty

Write what you wish. It makes no nevermind to me. Thanks for the kind intentions but I'm doing pretty well the way things are. I'm not one for complaints. My ego isn't weak. I did hope Golgotha would do more than it did but when it comes to humankind I'm proud my reach exceeds my grasp.

I'll never let low expectations clip the wild careening of my dreams! When Eve gave Adam of the apple, Cain slew Abel, degradation spread like slime across the Earth— did I capitulate, say Humans aren't capable of being what I have in mind?

For one thing, time is on my side. That ponderous chimp or glib-fingered gibbon who produced War and Peace by tap-tap-tapping random keys over a span of seven billion years— that's you. My role is to keep on believing and to keep on replacing the typewriter ribbon.

So think, rethink, and re-rethink and write, rewrite, and re-rewrite. The sky's the limit when it comes to poetry. It's all part of the wheeling of the stars. There's no big rush. The universe is 99.9% black ink.

19. Re-Opening the Covenant

An ape, proceeding hit or miss? I smell your scant regard in that analogy! Why not go all the way and call contemporary poetry the work of clockwork elves or nothing more than defect-driven mutant DNA?

Or would that undermine your claim that even writers are conceived in dignity?— unless by that you merely mean we're worth too much as future fodder for your scorn and scythe to mortify ourselves preemptively with censorship as if by curettage.

You say you can't escape your own consistency, yet your quintessence dances, fluctuates, so brilliantly! You're quantum physics to a T. Immortal; die. Stern judge; abrim with sympathy. Sui generis; hemmed by circumstance.

That's why I think redemption's a duet. Come, walk the Earth once more. With your omniscience and our utterly free will we could together build a better cosmic wheel.

Start with forgiveness, granted and accepted all around. Revamp religion based on mutual consent and common ground. Examine all the precedents from a monarchy with limits to a purely ceremonial and honorary head of state.

Has modern parenting not proven creatures and creators thrive on just a fraction of the guesswork, terror, guilt and disappointment doctors recommended in the old days?

20. The Last Word

I agree. There's too much distance between you and me, unnecessarily.

During my earthly ministry, I spoke in ordinary languages. I let all comers see my face, ask questions, even slip their fingers in the gash beneath my breast. I liked that, so did they.

I thought it was a point worth making in ascending back into the spirit realm, but now I can't see any point in staying here, talking in tongues or not at all, expecting inklings, intuitions to convey the sort of information that direct communication was painstakingly created and is being bit by bit perfected for.

I could say, When I got home, I meant to close my eyes for just a moment... but in truth, I needed time to think. My thirty-something years on Earth bombarded me!

Does God need two millennia to catch his breath? The truth is, next to nothing happens up here in the extra-firmamental sky, and time unpunctuated by occasions just slips by.

One other reason I don't come again and stay: I'm not sure I'd have anything additional to do or say. I thought I'd wait till something else occurred to me. It's not like there's a manual on being god or you can take a class, Provision of Salvation 101. It's all ad lib, improvisation, wing and prayer.

I really like your thought, though: be up-front, sincere. Yeah, at one time I created everything, but now I'm just here hanging out, an ordinary private citizen whose guiding principle is live and let live, laissez faire. I don't owe you a miracle, a second book. You don't owe me a debt of gratitude.

I'll do it, dammit, Tom! See? Just the resolution puts a smile on my face! Who knew?

You'll help me plan?

Make smooth my way like a vacationing celebrity's advance man?

21. My Commission

I scour The Tasks of John the Baptist, take the Secret Service Training Course, investigate how N.Y.'s Mayor Bloomberg guards his weekend privacy, re-analyze the market research stats for all three iPad roll-outs, and review the Meet the Beatles tour.

He says "No way!" to being born again. His Galilean identity-- the beard, the flowing hair and clothes-- why overturn the apple cart? re-brand? "Zis time I vear ein monocle?" he jokes. "A turban? Maison Martin Margiela suit?"

"No posturing," he says.

[FULL DISCLOSURE. For my assistance I get access for a verse biography--not scriptural, not to be read in church, just general interest, fan-zine stuff, the style journalistic, casual-- 'Here's where he went, here's what he ate, here's how he tipped'--yet accurate enough that Church historians could one day cite it.]

“I'll rent in town. You won't commute. I won't begin my second earthly life by orphaning two girls and widowing a wife. No upscale SUV--I'm not a baby boomer. Sudden flights? Triumphal entries? Probably a rusted pickup best replaces donkeys."

This Jesus has a sense of humor.

22. Press Conference

At 4PM on Friday afternoon, when shady candidates release their tax returns, we invited scribes and broadcasters to come and interview the re-descended Christ before they hustled off into their weekend toot. No "Second Coming" nor "The End of Days." On Monday morning, one more snooze: an open-to-the-public Bible signing at the Clark YMCA.

"It's not a joke. The Lord is coming back to stay," I told the tip-lines at the papers and the TV news. "No theological agenda this time-- Jesus merely wants to settle down and live in peace, discover what the charms of middle age may be-- but ask him who he backs in the election or what Mary fixed him when he wafted back home from the resurrection."

The press conference at McGinny's Pub in Colby was attended by one journalist, Armani Goldstein from The New York Times, who lived a block away and had a sweet tooth for the off-the-beaten-track. The rest? Dismissed Christ sight-unseen as just another mountebank, his prophecies predictable, apocalyptic visions either schizophrenia or crack.

Ms. Goldstein cut directly to the chase: "Can you perform a miracle for us right here?" "What you call miracles," he said, "were fuck-ups, momentary lapses in my concentration. I apologize to all the guys who sold falafel on The Mount or forecast steep swells on the Sea of Galilee. I promise you, there won't be a repeat of that."

She asked, "Do you have any wisdom whatsoever, some new tidbit to impart to us?" Christ gazed at her as levelly as maharishis always do and said, "My dear, your wisdom needs to come from you." She liked that, you could tell, and wrote it down. She asked, "Are you legit?" He smiled and winked. "What say we both sit down and have a beer?"

23. Wet Behind the Ears

“I'll expense our bar tab,” the reporter says. “But do you have some plan to earn your daily bread?”

“Light carpentry?” he says after a long pull on his Harp. “At least, I'll look the part. Or I could beg, like a Tibetan monk.”

"The Union Diner needs a cashier. How's your math?"

"I was a wiz until that motherfucker pi."

She levels at his eyes. “You plan to date, this time?”

"It's possible. But am I gay? straight? bi?"

That makes an early night of it.

The story Goodstein files on page 20 barely makes a stir. "What does it matter if the Christ I met is real?" it asks. "He seems a decent guy, so if you see him on the street, don't be afraid, walk right up and say hi.

On Saturday, he looks into the cashier job. The diner's pretty funky, but they still insist he get a haircut and dress normally, to work up front. Without a word of protest, he agrees. The barber costs me $60 for a shave and mullet; Walmart, double that for clothes; and when we're done, Christ blends right in unless you notice that his brand new shoes are dry after he walks right through a puddle.

24. Bible Signing at the YMCA

The plug in WWJD This Week? said BYOB but of the 17 who came just three brought Good Books to be signed and one asked Christ to autograph her missal.

He introduced himself, told several anecdotes about Barabbas, Joseph, Magdalen and Peter, discussed his second thoughts about presiding over Judgment Day.

A whiskered codger in a t-shirt spat: "No hell?"

An ancient woman in a turquoise turban piped: “We met before--my First Communion, Jesus. Do you remember what you told me?”

“Lil, I promised you a very long and healthy life.”

She blushed through all her rouge and tried to veil a grin behind the tremor of one liver-spotted hand.

And that was it, a modestly heart-warming event.

25. Round One

The faithful didn't give a shit that Christ had come again, but Satan sure as shootin' did.

Tertullian or someone wrote, Quisque conlectus et stagnum est diaboli tympanum-- Each puddle and pond is the devil's tympanum.

If a footstep falls too light, it triggers an alarm that detonates his eardrum like a sentry's Button mine.

A town detective, his initials J.C. too--

once decorated for the execution of an unarmed teenage boy for the fairytale he told of how he pumped the victim full of lead in self-defense--

patrols a sour stomach on the morning Jesus goes to start his job, gets one look at the mullet and the Arab face, and feels an urge to question him.

"My name is Jesus," Christ politely says. "I'm slightly late for work-- could I come by the stationhouse this afternoon when I get off?"

"You give me guff? An ID check. Just keep it up, and you'll get cuffed."

"I don't have ID yet. The law requires it?"

"See, now I'll need your fingerprints to figure out if you're the xenon headlight thief that everyone's upset about."

Then Detective J.C. feels a stab of diarrhea.

"Go to work," he says. "But get ID. You may be Jesus, Bubba, but this isn't Appalachia Fucking Galilee."

26. Wetback

"You want to drink the milk before you buy the cow?" Christ asks a lady who requests a sample of the diner's take-out flan.

She blanches, then turns red. The owner hurries up, all smiles. Her cup of flan is on the house.

"Your cash is always right," he says. "The shit you say, though. No one wants surprises at a diner."

"I'll wash dishes," Christ says. "Put Diego on the register. He totals up the silver in the bus tray just by looking at it."

"He's illegal. Any Spanish accent up here, they report me to the INS."

"Boss, I'm illegal too."

"But people think of your type more as terrorists. That's why that lady got so huffy."

"So fucked up."

"That's just the kind of thing a lot of people hoped you'd help us with."

"I can't."

"You gave that bottom-feeding Bad Lieutenant diarrhea."

"No! I said he got it, not I gave it."

"Oh, come on, Christ! You created it! Those little bad boys don't get out of bed without your go-ahead! Or do you give germs free will too?"

"I didn't make that lady bigoted! I didn't give that cop the trots."

"So, welcome to the human race. You're fired, man."

27. Cop vs God

"This ID says you're Jesus effing Christ."

"I've come again. Maybe you saw it in the New York Times."

"Most people meet me don't think New York Times right off. So let's see—you're some kind of Palestinian?”

"Today, I guess. Born Bethlehem, raised Nazareth."

"You here illegally?"

"I didn't sneak across the border. Just—shazam! Appeared.”

"And Motor Vehicles gave you ID?"

"This scientist at Rutgers verified my DNA. He had a brilliant article in Anthropology."

"This town won't let you get away with any savior shit."

"You'll lay me on the street and pump 5 bullets into me?”

"A cop can dream. If I was there your first go-round I'd definitely have got a couple spear-jabs in.”

“Your kind has stomped about since the original gorilla said, 'If I could only balance on my hind feet I could do some damage with these knuckles!'”

“Your kind of pansy know-it-all hyena has been living off his fucking crumbs.”

“Oho! I made him and his food! I made you all!”

“Hey, I'm a Jew. The way I see it, you're nobody special, Limp-Dick. How anybody ever got the bright idea that you were even distantly related to a real God--”

“How? I made two dead men rise!”

“La-di-da and whoop-di-do. How many people tote defibrillators as opposed to guns? Impress a cop?-- come tell me when you've made two live men fall.”

28. Drinks with Christ the Dud

Let say you get subpoenaed," asks Armani, leaning in, enthusiastic, flashing cleavage. "Do you tell them what you've seen? Deny?"

"All inadmissible--hearsay, blarney. A legal witness has to be in carne,” he replies.

"But you could still supply a scad of leads! It really makes the news-hound in me want to sleep with you, if only for the pillowtalk!"

"I'm not entirely sure how that might work. What I did with Mary was sleight of hand-- a straightforward uterine implant like I used to populate—well, over-populate—Atlantis. I replicated her and Joseph's gross morphology. The personality, of course, was purely mine, the selfsame template I created Adam from, which might have been my previous mistake-- not every godly trait adapts to life on Earth. It took a fair amount of nip and tuck before I got the the interaction of ingredients among the various alleles exactly right. Your species could as easily have wound up as Listeria or balsam fir or praying mantis, but they follow their heredity too slavishly. Those lower phyla were my learning curve."

She orders one last round of Satisfactions. How indulgent can a modern woman be? As he explains tree pollen allergies, she finds herself defaulting into déjà vu: good-looking guy, but like too many others likes to hear his own voice more than hers.

29. One Hand Tied Behind His Back

"I really want to set things right. All the injustice, cruelty...hurts me here." He sets an unpierced hand above his heart. "But I can't be almighty and desire love with subjects that's consensual."

"Bane hasn't risen since you lay down arms. Perhaps we humans make our own luck."

"I'd like at least to drop that cruel detective down a notch or two, who shot that kid."

"I see the story now--the editor will roar! A local beggar calling himself Jesus Christ accuses law enforcement of a cover-up... A target on your back. The boy still dead. The higher wisdom is: do good instead. There's a living child who needs you more."

"But it makes me wanna holler, Satan blowing on the tip of his revolver!"

"Think who upstaged who the afternoon you cast him from the swine. He came out smelling like a rose. You got the great publicity the day you mixed your spittle in the dust and made the blind man see, but wouldn't it have been enough, or better yet, to simply shield his vision prophylactically?"

"I fight at every point of contact I can find! Is it naive of me to dream of Satan roughly stuffed back in a baking crypt? or of acquiring the wisdom to retract my canon giving him his own dominion and declare at last: Tough titties, Demon! I, omnipotent, revoke your license to do ill! I metamorphose you and all your minions into will-less molecules of gentle chlorophyll!"

"You know exactly why you can't. They came for the communists and I didn't speak out. Then they came for the Jews and I didn't speak out... If one's free will is nixed, the rest is meaningless. You made a richer world than dumb amoeba feeding solar energy to trees."

"I see you didn't blow the lid off biochemistry."

"You could have sent a better teacher than that dork Menander Ogilve."

"You could have tried. You could have cracked the book just once! I didn't give you the 11th largest brain so you could doodle paisleys like a dunce."

"Ape. Dunce. I'd like to see you take a pen in hand, yourself--no prophet, no evangelist-- and prove you're not a honey-lipped illiterate."

"The Torah was dictation word for word, as much mine as what Milton fed his niece verbatim-- though she dotted i's, crossed t's--was his. Did you think Moses, so inept at speech he had to use his brother as a beard, was Isak Dinesen with soot ink on papyrus?"

"No offense, but I think Numbers, Deuteronomy, Leviticus and Chronicles make Melville, Vollman, Rand and Wallace seem succinct."

"If you can only apprehend duck soup, then keep your mouth shut as a critic! Sacred writ's more succulent than baozi, if you're analytic."

"So the lowly rustic carpenter was just an act?"

"A komondor crouched in a silkie coop. There are 100,000 ways to skin a cat."

30. Signs and Portents

A couple students got it in their head the new Christ might be genuine and asked the pastor how to tell if he was on the up-and-up or not.

"At the Second Coming," Father Flowers said, "Christ reappears in glory, unexpected as a nighttime burglar, to start his judging of the living and the dead. As lightning striketh in the east and shineth to the west, accompanied by angels, seated on his throne, he'll put the blessed upon his right like sheep, the cursed in everlasting fire on his left like goats-- the wicked and the pious all revealed, the Jew judged first, and then the Gentile. If all these signs and portents have obtained then you can rest assured the revenant before you is The Lord."

They trotted back to where Christ sat, $12.80 inside a box beside his handmade sign, O Brother, can you spare a dime?

"Which one of us put shit in Timi Trager's shoe while he was in the high-school pool?"

"Which one of us is in the Feed the Hungry Club?"

"Which two of us are Jews?"

Christ laughed, a brilliant twinkle in his eyes that to a parched imagination maybe symbolized the skip of lightning east to west. And seven pigeons pecked behind the bench, their wings aglint with iridescence like incarnate shapes of an angelic choir.

"May I ask you a question?" he said. "None of you are blind or dead or have a demon tenanting your head. Am I more likely who you think I am if I prevent disaster in the first place or perform a miracle correctively?"

"If you prevented shit," one urchin said, "how would we know that it was you?"

"And so you don't," said Jesus. "You, Miss, with the Gucci purse-- is 13 bucks enough to score an eighth? I know you don't know me from Adam, I could be a cop--but sometimes you just have to take a leap of faith."

"You may be Jesus," Jolene said, "but don't ask me to sell you reefer based on Biblical belief or any other kind of faith or credit. Sure, yes, totally, I've read it-- you turned water into wine, you did a lot of trippy shit, the guys with baskets like at Woodstock sharing loaves of bread which-- were ergotic?--and the fishes-- probably ichthyoallyeinotoxic? That was some crazy spit you rubbed in one guy's eyes, and zombie voodoo who-knows-what to bring back Lazarus! Pied Piper with your Merry Men, hash matzoh at the last Jim Jonesy supper, who-knows-what was in the wine, and all the Hunter Thompson bullshit bad-trip acid nightmare madcap crap! But all of that don't mean you're not a narc. They let you out of death in three days, right? Smells like a snitch's deal to me. So if you really wanna make a buy, just leave that money right there in your box, and maybe there'll be something there when you get back, and maybe not. But don't ask me to risk a bust. Let's see how you do doin' it on trust."

31. Jolene

I don't know how...to love him. What to do...how to move him. He's a man...He's just a man...

I've seen too many musicals. Quixote... Tony the Jet... each a fountain of romantic poison. Jesus Christ... Resist!

The only suitor you can count on is the wimpy tailor Motyl Kamzoil.

32. The Bad Cop's Confession

“I want to roust that creep so bad.”

“No love lost here, Lieutenant," says the priest. "He claims he's Jesus Christ-- he doesn't even come to Mass-- now drugs?--oh wow, that's something else.”

“I called a chit in from our girl Jolene-- asked her to see what she could see-- and he comes right out, asks about a reefer buy! I'm gonna give it to him straight: get out of town or else I run him in, corrupting minors, everything I can. He doesn't know the girl's sheet is a mile long.”

“Lay off her, huh?”

“You gonna tell me how to do my job?”

“Look, we've been over this before.”

“I'll leave the little tramp alone-- but I can't guarantee our little Christ don't jump them bones.”

"May God pardon you and grant you peace. For your penance, say seven Hail Mary's. I now absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

"You know damn well that I'm a Jew. Non-practicing."

"And Christ is too, as far as I can see."

33. Third Date

“It's unethical to date a source but even our religion editor was Tuck right in! We need to know if he's a rabbit or a horse! He's got $100 in the office pool on whether and when we make it to the main course.”

“Tell your boss the last time I got randy-- for the first time since Creation-- she got pregnant of me, by me, for me without foreplay, entrée or ejaculation! No condom, pill or diaphragm stands any chance against my thank-you-ma'am!”

“You're funny. Last time, you were...well...a little dull.”

“Who told you that?-- those killjoys John, Luke, Mark and Matt? For all you know, they cut out all the spice and sauce and served up just the pizza dough. The screaming mob? The Stations of the Cross? They made it sound like unrelenting jab-and-throb but there was also levity along the way. The Cyrene said: This thing is frickin' balsa wood!-- Veronica: Christ, what a schmutzy face! I joked to both: Get off the stage! This isn't an ensemble play! All Jewish humor thrives on pain.”

“Your people value family too, it's said. Though intermarriage is taboo you seem a likely candidate, if anybody is. So, what--is this thing going anywhere or not? I'm happy to be only friends but since I'm single and my clock is ticking I'm obliged to shrewdly husband all my weekends.”

“I just got here—was it 15 days ago? To move is tough--plus, since abandoning the capitol of heaven's aphrodisial scent, I'm on the rebound from what I'd believed would be a permanent death-do-us-part imperium. I'm tempted by your train of thought-- by much more than the thought, in fact-- but Plato's love, not Cupid's, fills my cup.”

“Forgive my asking, but imperium? You gave birth to the universe but that brought out the worst in you-- ire, jealously and pride—delirium! You found your way to Earth where you were made a trope-- a multi-symbol smorgasbord of vine, lamb, dove and fish-- by twelve forever-hungry friends who subsequently all became obsessed with reliquary fossils. All you're on the rebound from is one long history of failures and the idées fixes of the apostles.”

“No need to cut me down to size, my amour-propre is lower than a stump. In this society men feel inadequate if they're not hot, at any time, to hump. Is he a mama's boy? a fruit? a dimestore deputy--all aim, no shoot? Cut me some slack. I'm old and inexperienced! I'm struggling with weltschmerz, ennui. It's also possible that I'm intimidated by a woman of intelligence.”

“You think it's smart of me to be attracted to a dolt, a dud? You think that indicates red blood? We're more alike than you suspect. I fear we're both afraid of sex.”

“Let's give each other time-- not covet what we don't desire-- wait, as Robert Louis Stevenson proposed, upon the cock's clear voice into the clearer air. I agree, there's smoke. There may or may not be erotic fire.”

34. Still Doubting Thomas

"Hands out and wrists together, Slick. Is that too tight? Tough shit.”

"Not half as bad as at my scourging."

"Too loose, is it? Now, how's that? Still doesn't hurt? What are you on? I hope not crack, with all that superhuman strength. It would just kill me to be forced to take my weapon out and do to you what you insist I did to that backtalking ghetto punk that afternoon on Croyden Avenue.”

“You baiting me to lose my cool and try to club you down? What further damage could I do? The plastic handcuff on my wrists can no more cut my circulation off-- remember, I've been bled to death-- than purpling your eye or flattening your nose can make what haunts you in the bathroom mirror any grislier than it already is. You've hit rock bottom, Hoss."

“Is this my cue to kneel--My Lord and God? Instead I'll drive my hand into your riven side and tear that sacred fucking heart right out.”

35. Reappraisals

There's something wrong, something that didn't take, something that's sparing me a lot of ordinary human stuff like getting body odor-- alcohol-induced amnesia-- or that excruciating pinch when handcuffs cut the skin.

Lord, what a dolt I am! I'm resurrected Christ. I overcame that stuff. I'm bulletproof as Adam was in the original before his punishment when, while he snored, I broke into his chest and snapped a rib off without any anesthesia.

If I want to be a valid man, I have to find someone to cast me out of this, my re-unfallen state-- to un-ascend, un-resurrect me, toss me back into the fray with my defenses down to suffer fair and square along with everybody else.

And who alone is capable of busting me, corrupting me like that? I may too thoughtlessly have brushed off Satan way back when he tempted: “Only bow to me and you'll be just like them.”

36. Ethereal/real

All this time, I've been at war with you for human hearts and minds. You spit temptation and I wafted grace.

Who were we kidding but ourselves? We had the same amount of influence as two guys shouting at a baseball game on their TV at home.

Take the keys to the pearly gates. Let your demons overrun the sanctum of ambrosial cloud.

Hard facts are created on the ground.

37. Jolene's Confession

"I'm heartily sorry for having ratted Jesus out. That foul cop held a sword over my head."

"If Christ is Christ, then you're forgiven, right? And if he's not, then I forgive you in his name."

"I think it is him! Have you looked into his eyes?"

"I confess, I haven't had the pleasure yet."

“Come now. He's right there on his bench."

"I thought the good detective had arrested him."

"He did. He said he made the handcuffs tight enough to take Christ's wrists right off, then mocked him at the station house-- but Jesus didn't give a shit, just said he had committed the most horrid crime and welcomed any penance he could get for it."

"That cop is...dangerous. Please stay away from him. I know."

"Christ says there is a good man trapped inside."

"Excuse my French, but that's a crock of shit."

"Still, what the fuck, you two might hit it off. It sounds just like the crocks of shit you spout at Mass."

"Oh, blow it out your ass! But, fine, I'll come. I think it's in my classic job description: Priests must always plumb the meaning of existence with the uncombed, raving, but insightful bum. Jolene, you're young. You look tough but you're not. It's wonderful that you still have ideals and hope that somewhere an adult is worth your worshiping. I'm old. I've had my faith aroused and shaken more times than an all-night diner heats up bacon. I'm used to Jesus being, at his vividest, an ear. The idea of him actually sitting on a bench right here in town, ironically, is more implausible to me than picturing him sitting on a gilded throne up in the air.”

38. Realities Undertaken

"What would happen,” Fr. Flowers asks Armani, "if the Times reported that I spoke with him and give him imprimatur as the Real McCoy?"

"Then you'd be just as out-of-work as he is, and you'd get to sit and talk with him all day."

"Maybe the Bishop would appoint an auditor ecclesiastic to investigate."

“That very idea is distressing!” Christ objects. “You two don't understand what's in my closet. What I don't need is a nosy theologian second-guessing who I am and what I mean, then unwashed masses flocking round me and confessing, weeping, begging for my blessing, genuflecting, praying to their figurines of plastic-- reams of dogma orthodox, heretical, schismatic— all that esoteric window-dressing is obscene. Just let me be. Don't rock my boat, especially two days before I have my interview to be assistant manager at Dairy Queen. I'm history if some beak scrutinizes me and runs his mouth off to the press about how thoroughly my past is checkered. I'm afraid I have to absolutely draw the line-- no Church dick poking through my dirty linen.”

“Not to worry,” she assures. “I guarantee this conversation's strictly off the record.”

“You might hold your tongue, Armani, about 'Jersey Jesus Rues Distortions'-- but 'Creator Opens Up About His Series of Abortions'? 'God on Sistine Chapel Ceiling Sharing Chewing Gum?' Such journalistic vows of confidentiality are no more ironclad than Janet Jackson's johnny.”

“Competing interests must be weighed,” the priest elaborates. “The public have their right to know, the born-again their right to faith, asylum-seekers from the Great Beyond their right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness just like the rest of us. One part of that's employment. Deities are not, I don't think, a protected class, but if DQ declines to hire Christ because of bad publicity about a false start back when he was engineering—nay, inventing— what we take for granted as the Universe, it seems to me we do him great disservice.”

“Not Cicero nor Patrick Henry put it better,” Jesus says. “Props to your rhetoric professor back in seminary! Now if you'll pardon me I've got an inkling that I finally have been blessed with my full measure of mundane humanity. I think at last I have the urge to take a piss.”

39. The Reporter's Confession

He's so gloriously unremarkable, for freakin' God. He could return to heaven right now if he wanted, or create another universe, but doesn't see the point.

"It wasn't real until I lived in it," he told me yesterday. "Pure fantasy. Then when I came-- had I originated it, or conjured in reverse the world I had awoken in? Epistemology and teleology can both be baffling."

I keep sniffing around him for that special molecule. The Rutgers gene clock says he's very ancient--

Yet, did he actually design this galaxy from scratch, or as he worries, just come tumbling out along with it, a blind placenta shank-led by a buckaroo umbilicus, persisting as a useless fixture like a ghost town mule?

40. Jolene's Manifesto

Christ, I don't care if you created me or not. Created everything, or not. Detective C. would still be just as big an asshole. I would still be raggedy and still prefer to view the world through reefer, if not Ox.

Here's what I care about: you look and see a girl with courage in her heart. With flaws?--oh, sure. Fucked up?--no doubt. But still inspiring! You could have stayed up in the clouds but you came down so you could talk with somebody like me.

You couldn't have created what I am. I found my substance somewhere else-- a spark, a taint, a broken piece of tire on the highway fringe. How do you get that kind of creativity? You have to hurt, and live in shit, and love, and fucking bleed for it.

41. Satan's Despair

If that's your bliss, Christ, be a sack of meat. Hell, be a hippopotamus, a kangaroo. Some beings are. Some beings do. No one is both. You want to hand St. Peter's keys to me? Oh yes, I'll drive the flower car!

Your teary girl? your cop? your priest? and your pathetic, sycophantic little Boswell? When I seize them, you'll hear distant S.O.S.'s from the same deep dish in Roswell I manipulated to transfuse John Denver's apple-pie spiced gore to Earth.

I can't tell you how your naiveté gives me a stiffy. Patty Hearst was like a genius next to you, commingling with her captors, not the other fucking way around. Bend over, I'll be at your service in a jiffy!

Do the father's honors? Sure, I'll cut the cord. There won't be any going back-- you want to be a feeble beast, then be just that. You'll pick up my prayer to the non-believer in the whet-whine of an obstetrician's cleaver.

42. Satan's Threat You're safe from me down there?

You've stranded me amongst your angels, pretty wings without a moth to beat them and my silly demons, good for nothing beyond shadow-boxing moonlight-- do you think you're the only one who knows the ropes of roosting flesh, dissimulating who and what you are?

You've walked on two feet twice, but I, a hundred thousand times!

More versatile, I've prowled the Earth on four legs too and crawled on eight;

I've swum, flown, burrowed deep and flagellated up and down the gut: so don't think I can't irritate your idyll!

Our battles fought on Heaven's fields were more like children's video games than what you doom your friends to, using them as human shields.

43. Satan's Verses

"And Jesus, being full of it, was led into the wilderness and tempted to turn stones to loaves of millet-bread."

1 You vowed to starve instead, to live by words alone, but I've got news for both you and your poet friend,

2 This house of stones and words has long been mine.

3 You'd meant to chasten man, instead emboldened him:

4 After your genocide by Flood, the human remnant all conspired to raise a tower up, of brick well-burnt, and mortared tight with slime, on Shinar's plain,

5 Intent to breech your stronghold, tie you wrist to ankle, and deliver you to justice by bet din;

6 You leashed their tongues, made them ineloquent, kept each from understanding each, and scattered man across Earth's sun-scorched span.

7 But out of dust and spit, I re-begot more languages than you could thwart: the tongues of Shem, Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg, Nahor and Abram,

8 Who a hundred Babels built wherever they went, and made to your atrocities great monuments.

9 Those three gentlemen who came to visit Abraham, your quisling, by me impotent,

10 As he reclined beneath his kid marquee and fondly scanned the flaxen plains of Mamre which you bought him with, if he steadfastly glorified your name:

11 He knew exactly who they were, upright and shimmering,

12 And fawned on them, and sat by trembling, yellow-livered, while they planted Isaac into Sarah's womb.

13 And when you said, "Go kill the boy, he's not your seed," and when the moment came for Abraham to raise the ax:

14 Your champion's resolve abandoned him again at just a dozen words I whispered, Ur-inflected, genuine.

15 You cannot hide.

16 Though you can go to ground and follow ratlines oiled with Mengele and Eichmann's fingerprints,

17 Take on a new identity, new job, and hired flack to advertise your innocence,

18 No words, my loyal slaves of sound, bricks hardened by hell's fire,

19 Shall raise a minaret so high that frightened hostage muezzins, heads hidden from the sun, can cry Allāhu Akbar

20 And it rings true, by the time it hits the ground, to any great-great-grandchild of the arkwright's far more scrupled wife Emzara.

44. Satan's Plaint

Call me Anti-Christ but nothing more. I've been no lover of humanity (what for?) nor cared enough to lead you into sin. What did you ever do to me? Sure, now and then you took my name in vain as you bit off some helpless chicken's head: slim cause for grievance, much less war.

But God's presumption gets my goat. "Let there be light," my ass! The only thing that goose created was the how-to bible of the would-be grandiose; and then the sanctimony's made me choke on my own bile since Nicodemus showed up late one night at the beginning of John 3 and got Christ started talking trash.

Poor thing, his own start was pathetic, so he's earned a bit of sympathy: just woke one day and found he was, no parent offering a wing, no sibling in the nest to halve the chill. So he can be forgiven for imagining he had a distant dad and naive mom. Nobody taught him how to do or make a thing. Despite the tale he told himself of how he deftly parted land from sea, the Great Flood paints the picture differently.

His juvenile attempts with other elements like fire and brimstone also failed disastrously-- and his attempt at snow--a fucking comedy! It wasn't even cold! The nomads stuffed it down their throats and filled papyrus baskets with the stuff like it was Wonderbread.

I know how sad it was for him. My childhood memories are thin gruel too. I'm saddled with my own maladaptations-- anti-social, fond of drinks, a hoarder. The big difference between me and him: I don't believe the whole world needs a ringside seat to what your earth-side shrinks describe as personality disorder.

You always hate the one you'd love to love you, who's unable to. You're always galled the most but people with the flaws you're the most ashamed to show. So when that absent-mama's boy insists on melodrama this and melodrama that, I can't resist the pull of tit for tat.

He cries, "I'm God! I'm mankind's friend!" I automatically reply, "You're no one! Nothing! I'm the only alter ego that you've got!"

45. Satan Guilt-Tripper

I'll give You one more chance to change Your mind and come back home to face Your fixed responsibilities.

However fraudulent, however much a Ponzi scheme, You promised lots of people to fulfill their fondest dream.

Frail biddies, fresh-faced girls, those pimple-cheeked perverted adolescent boys who fall down to their knees instead of jerking off, the seventeen legitimately pious people who find happiness in washing fellow sinners' feet-- the first thing they'll expect on floating past the Pearly Gates is to catch sight of You.

Yes, you could pull the wool over old-timers' eyes, have Gabriel or Michael post a notice that You've gone to oversee the long-discussed remodeling of Limbo as an indoor shopping mall, but newcomers?--"Felicitations! Brilliant job, enduring decade after decade of defeat! The Lord asked me to tell you: 'Welcome, grab yourself a seat and I'll be with you by and by.'"

The last thing anyone expects is some vast waiting room of souls debating which Black savior is most righteous-- Martin Luther King, Mandela, Malcolm X?-- and belting out "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" or "Rock of Ages" a cappella.

Creating angels in the first place was unethical of You-- what kind of être suprême invents a life form just to fawn on him?-- but then, it takes the cake of hubris to deprive them of the very ass he tutored them to kiss.

Man up. Reclaim Your throne. You can't just flit from A to B. As King of Kings and Lord of Lords, You have a solemn onus of noblesse oblige.

46. Satan's Druthers

Don't make me go incarnate too. You know how bad I am at that. Who wants another golem, gluey features still congealing? Bolt-brained Frankenstein? Don't make me stitch together some crude effigy of what a million years of sexual selection finally bred to passably appealing.

I've prowled around disguised as Hulk, the Blob, or Mr. Hyde, as Jerry Lewis after prednisone, disfigured children of thalidomide, low Quasimodo, lordless Grendel but embraced by Beowulf in rage: I never get too far before I hear “Begone! You aren't one of us.” Mankind is hurtful, as you found that first time you went down: to place yourself into their midst is to invite, first, a disarming kiss, then its inevitable sequella—fist.

I much prefer to live as scope, as force, unmoored to flesh; to be vicarious; to blow the grit in someone else's eyes.

47. Satan's Pitch

We both have needs--are not dissimilar. Let's bury the hatchet and volte-face, soothe one another's itch. Who can scratch it like your Opposite? Asking humans to relieve You is like hoping for a Holy Ghostless virgin, un-inoculated, to conceive You.

I'm not denying fundamental disagreement cleaved us since the start. A healthy cell divides in two when sharing space grows too unbearable, but mutual annihilation, via nucleic war, isn't the fallout necessarily. Why not coordinate our efforts to enlarge the pastures of our hearts?

What say You split us both once more? Your dabbling in trinity already has that vibe of an imaginary friend: why not two solid wives? You finally owned up to Your Image/Likeness Adam pining for female camaraderie-- same species, on a par with him in Your Grand Scheme of Things, so they alike might reproduce-- leaving You and I alone deprived of coupling a womanly caboose.

Why pander wife to me as well? To see that nothing sparks another parish of my jealousy.

48. The Last Two Bachelors

Zeus had his consort, though he fell short of monogamy. Great Odin had his Frigg and Lugus his Rosmerta.

Blood run violet?-- Zeus had Ganymede, Apollo had his Hyacinth, Set doted on his Horus, Dionysios his Adonis.

Saturn's phallus led a whole damn chorus.

Don't be timid or demure. Your wish is love's command. Hermaphrodite? An extra tit? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, where omerta is our shibboleth!

Let's alternate asleep and rifling each other's body cavity to fetch a sexy rib; or You could retrofit an extant mortal who solidifies Your jib with hand-me-down divinity-- take hold her wrist and gabble Pickwick! or Talitha cumi to pervert her.

What sort of god is celibate? how did the question even get to be indelicate? There's something shifty in a deity who shuns the rooting of a creephole in a good plump pair of buns.

Come on, Christ, carpe diem! Seize the day to hook Yourself--and me--a fish! Where in all the Nile's hieroglyphics does it either hint or state that we're the only pair of rodsmen in this whole darn metaphysics not allowed to have a mate?

49. Satan's Harrowing Sonnet

You'd rather dub your own cock than extend your hand to find a maid, immortal, to milk mine-- rebuff my honest olive branch and prune your own nose off to spite my noxious face.

You sow's-ear silk-purse prude! Then by your choice I'll come to lie among the lambkins too-- fat thumb and crooked index pinch and grade the raw wool on the brief stock you refused.

You'll rue this reproduced rebirth that pulls me also down to Earth!

50. Ambrose the Hairy

Guess who? No, not Narcissus with the glossy skin and flowing hair. Not Boy Band there, with his absurdly winning smile. I'm not disguised at all: the one the other kids affectionately call Jake Black-- poster child of voluptuous self-loathing and estrangement.

No tears-- I'm long accustomed to the stares, electric overlapping whispers just behind my back, taunts, jeers. Truth is, those Justin Biebers don't get half the gash I do: some sympathy, a lot of morbid curiosity, legitimate attraction to a guy who's not a cookie-cutter snack, and then my reputation as a beast in bed. But mostly bints are turned on by their own revulsion, and make fucking me their pet compulsion.

Guess which literary stud-tongued fan of Yours just whispered to me, in a private Facebook send of Donnie Darko clips, that it's her fantasy to "slick your furry willie with my lips"?

Which fancy-ass reporter wants to interview me for her-- get this-- "Telltale of the Diabolic: Hypertrichosis"? Wants to redeem herself for writing that big snore on You. I'll turn some heads.

You're sitting on your bench like Socrates and holding court. I'm coming, half a block away now, wolfish, louche. You feel the charge?

There's something--fun--in this arrangement.

Now I found you, Lord, let's have our bit of sport.

51. Sonnets to Morpheus

I'm named after my disease, for the Innsbruck castle Ambras's Chamber of Freaks and Curiosities: portraits of sinister hypertrichotics on exhibit beside Vlad Dracula's.

That's cool, she says and passes him the spliff.

This stuff is fuckin' bomb, he chokes.

It should be good, I get it from a cop. Nope, nothin' but the best!

Goddam. You blow him too?

I'm some ginormous slut because I give good head and got good pot?

Next time, I want to fuck.

You'll have to wear a hood. Don't want no mutant kid like Breaking Dawn.

It ain't real sperm, just XXX monster juice. And us werewolves don't get HIV-- they're panting to study my blood chemistry.

Okay...so now I'm thinking several condoms? This is like that moment in the horror movie where the audience is yelling, Don't do it! No, c'mere, I'm messing with you, teddy bear.

Then it's a date?

I'll be pulling your hair from my twat for days.

You're so freakin' delicate, I can't wait to tap that shit.

Why call sex any other name?-- the Exorcist in black silk lingerie.

52. Interview with a Wolf-Boy

The hurtful kids? I hurt them back.

I use the anti-social media. I wreck relationships. The good old-fashioned evil eye-- lift one edge of their antibody system up and slip in streptococcus, salmonella or shigella. Then I add my signature at school-- I ask them in a sympathetic voice, “Your stomach any better?”--and a wink.

They get my message loud and clear. It works.

You want to tell me turn-the-other-cheek's superior? I thought you Jews learned better in the Nazi camps. Don't tell me you expected me to mince my words? You're here because you know I have a different take. You don't expect me to be sensitive? There's nobody I trust and love except my mom.

No, you can't be honest if you're not affectionate. Ms. Goldstein, no offense, but when exactly was the last time you were even kissed?

You want to lose your fingers in my hairy chest, you want to pull my hairy face onto your breast as all your female instincts caterwaul for extra-hairy sex? Who's kidding who here, bitch?

Write what you want, what readers will devour. I don't do friends. I don't want sympathy. I'm not a feel-good story like To Kill a Mockingbird. You trespass on my porch to get cheap thrills, I'm going to do my best to make sure that you pay.

53. Act of Nutrition

The riverbank is bright with clumped forget-me-nots and sprawling tufts of quaker ladies.

A heron watches from one eye, the other fixed on one square foot of water for a troutlet or polliwog.

You, Father, I trust. You're like that dirty cop-- you've seen and done as bad as me and know the touch of Jesus or the gavel of the juvie judge will never work a cure. So to you, I'm not just one more fucking chore.

They share a laugh. The wormwood truth provides a breath of firsthand air.

The heron, right on cue, impales the mirror with its beak and lustily lumps a crayfish down its gullet.

54. Bad Cop/Wolf Boy duet

“You've got the fattest fucking file in the drawer. Some fucking twerp gets ptomaine poisoning, I get a call! Repulsive, though, is not against the law.”

“You prove that particular pudding yourself, your murder decoration front and center on your cherished track-lit bowling trophy shelf.”

"The silence when you take your fall will make the squeak when I killed him seem like a roar.”

"You'll end up in the monster-slaying Pantheon with Beowulf, Van Helsing, and St. George."

"I'm proud I'm brave enough to deal with you without pretending what you are is bearable: one good Brazilian wax and you'd be one of us. Don't you get ill yourself from all that pap?"

“I'm bold enough to be what I appear to be, not hide beneath an 8-point and a shield. The hottest hell's reserved for bloodsuckers like you who say I Serve but mean I Feed."

"They ought to keep you in a monkey cage and let the schoolkids feed you frozen rats."

"You're nothing but a weak, sadistic hypocrite, crop bloated on the putrid juice of terror shit."

"Your devil-fucking mother should've choked you with her middle finger on the morning you were born."

"I wasn't any godsend to my mother, I admit. But still she put her tender nipple to my teeth and chanted tearful lullabies until I fell asleep."

"That would've been her truest act of love."

55. Mirror Verses

What is written:

He that knows little, but committeth crimes worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few; but to whom much is given, of him much shall be required.

The mirror verse:

From whom much is taken, by him much shall be despoiled; whom men have beaten, by him they themselves shall be beaten with numberless stripes.

Uncut versions:

Thou shalt not kill, if thou wast cherished. Thou shalt not steal, if seated to sumptuous meals. Honor thy father and thy mother, as they have honored thee.

Respecting strangers, Do unto other, as you would have them do to you; and to everyone else, Do unto them as was already done to you: but twice as hard.

Raise high thine glass and follow me.

56. Miss Lillian/Wolf Boy

Young man, she croaks, could you please help me with these packages?

He'd seen her all his life and never given her a single second thought.

But now she forced him to. It wouldn't be his fault if something ugly came of it.

I bought an extra quart of milk today. I found a little kitten in the yard!

I only live a short way up the avenue. Would you mind terribly, to help?

He looked at her and saw a kindly smile, kindly eyes, and thought, Why not?

He smiled back at her. She didn't flinch a bit. She'd seen him all his life.

57. Jesus Accosts Wolf Boy, Then Miss Lillian

"Wait just a minute, Wolf Boy. That sweet old lady has no dog in your race, or in mine. We have no bone to pick with her. You've known her your entire life. She's never hurt a fly."

"She asked me to walk her home."

"Since when is it so hard for you to be a lout? Just tell her 'Lug your own stuff, you old bag' and let her shake her head, perpetually surprised, and totter off."

"I'm not allowed to do a kindness?"

"No one who knows you trusts you farther than they can throw you."

"I am as I appear. She's seen me my whole life."

"So--what? You plan to walk her home and--what?"

"I'm going to help her feed a cat."

*

"Do you remember me, Miss Lillian? That's right, yes: Jesus Christ. I'll help you with those bags and walk you home."

"That young man volunteered to help. I've seen him my whole life. You're very nice too, Jesus, but I've only seen you--well, now, twice."

"Could I then maybe come along?"

"No thank you, you've done quite enough for me. This boy is who I want to walk with now, alone."

58. Wolf Boy Discourse with Jesus

“It's messed up, living in this suit of fur. If I hear one more time it's actually an opportunity for growth and builds my character--"

"That does sound lame."

"And you could make me normal with a glance."

"I guess."

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Solve everybody's problems, all the time?"

“You don't have time? Tell us to feed the hungry while you...what?"

"Helping others, and yourself, gives life its meaning, no? I mean, there wouldn't even be TV— what would the plots and conflict be? When that old lady, for example, smiled at you-- it never would have had the juice it did if you were just a normal kid.”

“There's drama—plenty--still. You must've read some Superman.”

“You're joking, right? Oh dear, the chills! Will he hook up with Lois Lane or Lana Lang? Will Luthor find some arcane strategy to do him in? The outcome's always so assured.”

“But look, man. This is really no big deal. You gave me this affliction. Take it back.”

“No, I invented a biology--”

“Who cares what methodology you use? One....simple....motherfucking....glance.”

“I can't. I simply can't. I could, but can't. That age of miracles was long ago. This is the Self-Help Age. Can't tell you why. Just is.”

“Man, you're a flop. You know that, right?”

“I feel so bad.”

“You ought to. Frank Baum's humbug Wizard Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkel Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs was your opposite number: he cares, and makes of a big show of feigning the power to help; you have the power, and make a big show of pretending to care.”

“Beneath that coat of scary hair, you're really quite a nerd.”

“I wasn't such a big hit in the choir or the Little League.”

“I know, I know. I was a scary child too. I had a hand in killing several other kids.”

“I read that. The Infancy Gospel.”

“So, you see? It's not just you. I couldn't help myself.”

“Weird shit. So much for the omnipotence.”

“What power sets you free from your psychology?”

59. Ambrose Bierce Apparition/Wolf Boy

Where am I? And how did I get here?

Señor Bierce, you've been missing for 99 years! You're the first wave of The Second Coming, the assumed dead's resurrection. We've expected Jesus, Earhart and Houdini's return from Beyond; and now you're here.

I saw one of your kind in Delicias, a wolf boy who had beards on his beards on his beards. Amigo, you don't have a spliff by any chance? I'm dying for some ramps and pawpaw, too. I'd also like to see one of these talking films I've heard about by that fella Lars von Trier.

How long are you planning to stick around? Here, man: the first blunt's on the house, but don't go hog-wild, it's White Widow. Sí. This shit will really make you disappear.

60. Ambrose the Wolf Boy / Diego the Wetback / Troy the Diner Owner

"That's flan?" asks Ambrose.

"Yo, man, you some kinda coco?” says Diego. “I don't theenk the owner's gonna like you here."

Troy rushes up.

"Your doorman here,” says Ambrose, “is afraid I'll scare your customers.”

"If anything, Diego,” Troy says, "Ambrose takes the heat off you in our big Spook the Townsfolk Tournament: (a) Jesus, (b) the Wetback, (c) the Wolf Boy."

"It was a Black Kid who they shot," says Ambrose.

"Put a Black Kid in the line-up too. My money, though? They're all still gonna yell 'Give us Barabbas, crucify the Christ!' I did. No one but no one wants a guy like that in town. If he'd been here back then, he'd have caught the Black Kid's lead."

"I only asked for flan,” the furred boy pleads. “A long-lost friend from Mexico is paranoid and jabbering about the Ku Klux Klan. He's got the munchies really bad."

"Hey, take a smiley cookie too, on me. Diego, pull those chupacabra claws back in and give our guest el tratamiento VIP before those bluehaired harpies in the back booth get a gander of his woolly-monkey face.”

“Sí, jefe,” says Diego. “Only pray to God his friend's eye isn't hexed by Rattlesnake. Algunas veces dice el diablo la verdad."

61. Dysdaemonia

He sits at the breakfast bar and levitates the salt and pepper shakers as if they were missiles quickly arcing off toward the bedroom. He'd beaten the little Game Boy Jolene gave him far too easily. Why is he sitting home? There must be something useful he can do without the use of supernatural abilities. A counselor to troubled teens? An activist against police brutality?

Script's not scripture but one TV cop said, "It's not conscience driving us but ego." Should you just have fun then? The reporter from the Times seemed hot to get his feet wet in the hissing surf of sex. Tom certainly enjoyed his softball team. Ambrose and Jolene had offered books, though reading them was spoiled because he couldn't help himself from knowing what would happen next.

He notices a long-tailed luna moth pressed flat against the window screen. It spurs a distant memory-- a Thursday or a Friday--which?-- when countless different flying insects foamed forth from his open palms and out into the brand-new-smelling air. Those were the days of blessed inspiration!

Now he sheds a tear--which is okay. He's watched the humans weeping since the hopelessness of Cain-- then watched them trudge back out year after year and plant the corn again.

Tonight was the kind of temporary situation that invited artificial respiration. He got up to go and get a coupla beers.

62. Eudaemonia

So bored, I almost miss my wishbone-wrangling with the Prince of Death.

"This is the third night in a row you closed the joint," the barmaid says. "Your tab's two hundred bucks. You sure that writer friend who picks it up don't mind?"

"It's just until I start my job."

"You got it?" she exclaims. "Congrats! This round's on me!"

"Thank you! Another Cuervo then. I start to train next week. First, sixteen hours in a classroom, then a full month in the store. And that's Phase 1. It's really very complicated stuff. You'd be surprised."

"Well, here's to you and Dairy Queen! I plan to be a very steady customer. Too bad they don't serve booze!"

"Let me buy you one, too. Here's to the end of days when I have evenings free to tie one on and mornings free to sleep it off."

"Let's do the mezcal with the worm! You think you've got the nerve?"

"Boy, do I! Didi--Didi, right?-- what say we go all night? The stars feel like they're lined up for a little after-hours wink-wink-wink delight."

She winked right back at him and, thankful, prayed: Behold the handmaid of the Lord! Who ever in a million years imagined that I'd be Christ's trim?

63. The God-Man's Burden

Christ! The gratuities alone! Have you gone mad? With tips like these, I hope at least your rocket's gotten off the launching pad. And cigarettes? You're smoking too? You think you'll get a dispensatio from cancer? I do hope you get that paycheck soon, I'm not inclined to stake you to disease. Man, get a grip. We all have questions. You're supposed to have the answer.

Hold those hands up to the light. Do you see any traces of stigmata? I don't. Yeah, I'm having doubts. I know you washed your hands of god, but persona non grata? The cops are eyeing you--and me. The priest has...reservations. If you're serious, he says, you'd show your face at Mass. The high school kids you're hanging with leave much to be desired too. The whole town's getting leery-- no, creeped out by you.

I don't want to give an ultimatum. What I need, though, is a sermon, parable, whatever, something with some kitsch-- that camel in the needle's eye was rich. I booked you for an an interview on public access Sunday afternoon. No beers, no butts; I recommend a shave. Nobody wants to tell you what to do, but bottom line?--a lot of eyes are on you, you have such a weighty literary parentage.

I recommend you change your name or keep your nose clean, and behave.

64. Local-Access Radio Interview

"Rumor has it you've succumbed to the occasional temptation. That you're having trouble finding your vocation-- are, in fact, yourself in need of some salvation. What do you have to say by way of explanation?"

"As you know--you worked in soaps once, yes?--it isn't easy being human. There are pitfalls, even mines, along the path. There is an undertow. Do we need details for each case? Or can we simply stipulate: morality is sometimes tough.”

"Who's qualified to throw the first stone at that harlot Life?"

"Exactly. Not me. Not you. Or your wife. When I was in the ER just the other night--the rumors were an overdose, but it was really just an interaction swing--this wise old triage nurse said something I won't soon forget. 'If I had 50¢,' she said, 'for every nincompoop they rushed in here because they yielded to some stupid urge, I'd have a trip to Tahoe or Cancún.' That says it all to me."

"So...what you're saying is...?"

"Stop prying into people's lives."

For just a tick, the air went dead. "And that's a wrap!--our local Christ, who doesn't seem to be the the man or God of anybody's dreams! Next up, a dad who's been a fixture on the township's poetry scene since he composed the Colby High School graduation ode in 1969.”

65. High Priest

"It is plain and simple blasphemy," the Cardinal's email reads. "It's gone beyond a harmless stunt. He walks around, a bum and a disgrace, and takes the name of Jesus Christ in vain? The guy's a hateful little cunt."

Father Flowers rubs his eyes and snuffs the Thai stick out with the same two consecrated fingertips that hold the Eucharistic Host.

His Eminence was blunt; a lion in opposing female ordination; his way of talking was reptilian, androidian.

He had a touch of coprolalia-- once, at a Confirmation, said my genitalia instead of my regalia-- so obviously Freudian.

Still, this had to be a typo--cult or runt. Just think about the liability! Father Flowers ran his spellcheck on it, praying "Microsoft, please let it pass!" It did! He crossed himself. At least His Grace had plausible deniability.

Regardless, Flowers had to stop the little runt from calling himself Christ. Was there, if common-law, a copyright? The Sanhedrin made a similar complaint when Jesus called himself the Son of God. The High Priest then was just as sure that little cunt was an outrageous fake.

He stored the email in his private Cloud. He didn't want to ask the bad cop for a favor but his orders from the Cardinal were clear. He groaned, then called to formally complain about Christ's fraudulent impersonation of a clergyman. "We demand that he cease and desist. I'm not sure we can prove he isn't Christ but I can't see a judge or jury coming out and saying that he is."

"There won't be any trial," the detective said. "The Church can count on me to see to that. If that poor asshole even looks at me funny I'm going to nail him seven ways to Sunday!"

"My son--" the weary priest begins.

"You said you wanted him to cease? What better end than rest in peace?"

66. Christ's Second Confession

"When you're a Jew--and a religious one-- you're not allowed to even say my name, much less adopt it as your own. That jealous God, I've put him in my past. From here on in, feel free to baptize children Adonai, Jehovah, Jesú, or The Lord."

"No, no, that violates New Jersey civil law! Impersonation of an ordained minister is fraud. They're threatening to call the Dairy Queen. My child, you can't survive in this society without a job! The safety net is gone."

"The diner guy, the cop, the teenage kids-- I'm only patterning myself on them."

"A hint: don't go all Jesus-y again. Conform. Select a lane and stay between the lines. The human way is compromise, is innocence."

"Then bless me, Father. I have sinned. My last Confession--perfect--went unheard on Golgotha two thousand years ago."

67. Love Triangle

"The barmaid said you were one lousy fuck," the Times reporter chuckles. "Way too drunk to even get it up until she--"

"Stop! I prayed I'd have a blackout but that damn omniscience won't shut up. I'm like a fucking Indian, no tolerance at all. Just one small cup of Pesach wine, I'm babbling in Gethsemane and sweating blood-- what made me think I'd quarterback a boner with a bellyful of Cuervo and Corona?"

"I suggest AA. It's getting out of hand."

"Me stand and say, "I'm powerless"? Not only un-omnipotent but un-autonomous? I might be alcoholic but I'm not anonymous."

"There's a Monday evening meeting at the church."

"I appreciate the friendly intervention, but my godlike mojo isn't gone, it's in suspension."

"Next time the horny bitch comes prospecting for an erection, Christ, flip on that mojo switch! But I will nail you to a goddam cross myself if you two lushes bobble the protection and play three-card monte with a kid. Capisch? The world's seen far too many offspring of a drunk, a floozy, and a glitch."

68. First Meeting

Hi, my name is Jesus and I'm an alcoholic.

Hi, Jesus Hi, Jesus Hi, Jesus Hi, Jesus Hi, Jesus Hi, Jesus.

I admit I am powerless over alcohol.

I believe only a Higher Power can restore me to sanity.

I turn my will and life over to His care.

I will make a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself. I am not unique.

I admit the exact nature of my wrongs.

I am entirely ready for Him to remove my defects of character.

I humbly asked Him to remove my shortcomings.

I have made an inventory of all persons I have harmed.

I will make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

When I am wrong, I will promptly admit it.

I seek greater knowledge of the Higher Power's will for me.

I will carry this message to other alcoholics and practice these principles in all my affairs, one day at a time.

Jesus, keep coming back, it works if you work it Jesus, keep coming back, it works if you work it Jesus, keep coming back, it works if you work it Jesus, keep coming back, it works if you work it Jesus, keep coming back, it works if you work it Jesus, keep coming back, it works if you work it.

God, grant me the serenity to accept God, grant me the serenity to accept God, grant me the serenity to accept God, grant me the serenity to accept God, grant me the serenity to accept God, grant me the serenity to accept God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change the things I can not change the things I can not change the things I can not change the things I can not change the things I can not change the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can the courage to change the things I can the courage to change the things I can the courage to change the things I can the courage to change the things I can the courage to change the things I can the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference and the wisdom to know the difference and the wisdom to know the difference and the wisdom to know the difference and the wisdom to know the difference and the wisdom to know the difference and the wisdom to know the difference.

69. Working the Steps

"A seltzer, please."

"A what zer? Bromance cut you off?"

"I got my paycheck, actually. I'd like to settle up if you can cash it."

"What a stand-up guy. I'll buy you one to celebrate."

"Just seltzer, please. I'm in AA."

"My God, you're not the first man who's had trouble getting hard! Let's give it one more try tonight."

"I really have to focus on sobriety-- and make amends for treating you so shabbily."

He stands back.

"See? I have a full-blown stiffy now. I very definitely think you're hot!"

"And I can thank AA for this? Well, here's your Step 13-- go take a flying leap and fuck yourself."

70. Down a Man

"It's sad and dreary, sometimes, life."

"I warned you, Christ."

"The Dairy Queen job is...a little silly."

"Gotta pay the bills though, right?"

"Now, what about your softball team? Is it too late for me to join?"

"You ever play third base? Your timing's good: we're down a man."

"I don't see why I couldn't pick it up."

"You need an arm. You got an arm?"

"Yeah, I can throw."

"You need good hands."

"Look, all I'm asking is a shot. You need a man or not? If I can't cut the mustard, show me the door."

"Do you bat lefty, righty? Switch?"

"Is this the New York Mets, or what?"

"We just want someone who can play. We're sick and tired of last place."

"You're terrible, nobody else is interested-- and grilling me about my skills?"

"We're trying to improve, okay?"

"I've always batted left, but I could learn to switch, I bet."

"Now, that's the spirit that we're looking for."

71. Serendipity

The foul detective moans. She'd kicked him in the balls and shrieked, and run. He straightened up and chased. This time the little bitch was going to get a full cup of the hurting she deserved.

Jesus woke with a start. Unconscious, something rose up from the pool where omniscience and omnipotence admixed and overlapped-- put hands around his throat and yanked him upright, head awash with visions of the terrified Jolene.

He didn't make a choice. He simply willed reflexively that the detective trip and crack his skull against the concrete field-house step. What made it happen, physically? A single neuron maybe that misfired, a bit? Dust turning slightly oilier, enough to make him slip?

What the Creator wills just happens on its own. He doesn't have to lay a plan. He doesn't think it through. He pictures the result and instantly the means is simply, casually, true.

72. One Flesh

As God created Eve of Adam's rib, did He unlimb His own humanity Though they remained ONE FLESH, in granting Adam an autonomy?

Assaulting a cop and resisting arrest.

A pink-haired tramp with black nails and a history of drug use v. a decorated cop. Who's going to believe a man like that, three daughters of his own, trades stolen pot for teenage head?

After court—her mother a sieve of gasps-- they screen "A Warden's Tips to Thrive in Juvie" and offer a plea deal.

Christ can't wash His hands of this, the cop too crooked and Jolene too good a friend. Who else was looking out for her? He can't resist.

He feels, and what He feels is a command. He eavesdrops as she tells her Legal Aid about the lewd cop's voice recorded on her cell.

He asks how a God Incarnate can exist unless He is Originally and Ever human.

73. Discovery

“What cell phone?” says the bad cop. "All her stuff went in the envelope. If I remember: one, two trojans and 3/4 of an ounce of dope.”

“Cell records GPS her at the field that night,” the lawyer says. “She taped a couple minutes and the court's subpoenaed it. But if there wasn't any case--”

“You're bluffing, Counselor. You're fucking lying to my face.”

“Once it arrives, Detective, it's too late. I understand the judge has teenage girls himself. And God forbid, if that recording fell into the hands of journalists...”

“OK. I'll drop the charges, Counselor-- but you and I are adversaries, here on in. Forget the crap you learned at school. The real-world system has no wiggle room. You're either on the side of order or of letting skeevy punks like her run loose. Next time, it's your face getting introduced to what today's youth has to offer-- me who comes to save your ass, or runs up just a half a step too late.”

"Detective, I agree about the wiggle room, especially for servants of the court like you. A perjured cop should get the sum of years his lies helped put their victims behind bars. So we are adversaries, yes. On your side, guns and crookedness-- on mine, the goodness of the Risen Jesus."

"Risen Jesus is the next one on my list."

"The day you get the best of him, bitch, is the day I let you give me cunnilingus."

74. The Evangelist's Advice

A low-fat chocolate cone with cherry dip? A Peanut Butter Bash? Banana split?

Which do you think goes better with 1/2 Dr. Pepper, 1/2 Sierra Mist?

I've been chewing over your dilemma: getting work without a silly paper hat.

You should probably go back to school. I know you haven't been since those three days of dissertation in the temple in Jerusalem but when Armani told me how her Legal Aid friend saved the teenage girl

I thought, My God, why couldn't that be you?”

75. Bootless

"It's Satan tempting me to be involved. He has me on that mountain-top again and hisses, All this could be yours. The girl is bait, the lovely seduction of holding her fate in my hands. Maybe the bad cop tripped, on his own. Maybe she taped his advances, herself. Maybe everything was pre-ordained by the original causality I authorized: Saturday's weather in East Bumfuck, each passing thought and quantum hop. Maybe I'm entirely unable to affect my own creation, having set it free to roam and rotate in the universe, as if I've thrown a stone into a pond, and as the ripples spread, wade in and-- oh, I'm really so confused by all of this. Maybe the best thing for me is to make some entirely new opus with no impact whatsoever on the observable world."

“Try book-length poetry,” Tom says.

76. One day at a time

I have to act as if sobriety's a worthwhile goal until some new white knight comes galloping up to joust

Sirs Pabst Blue Ribbon and Miller High Life from their snorting steeds.

I bust my butt to help the Dairy Queen succeed to give the hamster in my brain-cage exercise.

Folks slap me on the back— the drive to make a better mousetrap, that's the way America was built--

Bill W.'s one happiness was working-- pap like that.

The Romantic tilt at windmills also beckons. Take your pick.

You'd expect Prime Movers to be motivated keep spirits up and demons down but what's more crippling than power without opposition rebelliousness without imperative or prohibition?

77. Solving Life's Problems One Hit at a Time

“Love's the answer,” Jolene says to Christ. “If someone loves you and you love them back, it vacuums existentialism from your mind, until of course it ends and you think suicide. The only possible relief is helping people who are even more screwed up than you. That makes you feel so powerful, an angel, till you realize you're a buzzard in disguise.”

“There's too much emphasis on implication,” Jesus says. “Why wasn't I content to rest with wildebeest and hunting-cats who roam the flat savannahs of immediate survival? Why higher beings meditating on themselves? Unexamined lives, it turns out, are the best. Consider Socrates, who finally found death to be worthier of his inveterate investigations. In Heaven, though, unfortunately you're still you, inhabiting a hill-less Happy Hunting Ground with little two-tined forks instead of spears and garlic-buttered snails instead of game.”

"We need surprise, adventure,” Jolene says. "Shit flung at us we have to just react to-- what we seek in art, peyote, psilocybin, LSD. Might that be something you could do? Spike ordinary air with marvels, miracles?”

Christ takes a long draught from the bong. The bitch makes sense. The laws of physics and diminishing returns are too consistent. "I could maybe go in once and plant a kink to make existence less predictable and science scratch its ticky-tocky head. You think?"

"Oh, do!" she prays and throws her arms around his neck. "My Lord and Saviour! Grant suburban life some fucking flavor! Let's tell Ambrose!--then swing by the diner and pick up a pint of that wonderful flan."

78. Solving Life's Problems One Hit at a Time (cont.)

“The end times!" Fr. Flowers cries. “The super-cosmic Restart button! Raise the dead before they die! Combine our mortal sensuality with sky's-the-limit immortality! Mankind in linen, paps of gold with flaming eyes to cup the stars and voices warbling loud enough to waken fairies in the dust of Mars! O Lewis Carroll, Kublai Khan! Exuberance! The essence of Divine! The Second Coming has arrived!”

Christ takes a long toke from the bong. The bitch makes sense. He has a point. The laws of physics are consistent to a fault. Why not go in just once and plant a kink that makes existence highly whimsical-- makes science scratch its ticky-tocky head and stirs that 9/10 of the human brain that squats there, as if dead, to rise up from its sloppy haunches, and to think?

79. The Wolf Boy's Profession

In a world whose norm is weird a freak like me will thrive. Do charm the air, Christ!--shatter alabaster halls, this hell of certainties. Give hope Adonis, Juliet, Jane Nightwork, and young Arthur are alive!

Why breeds mankind for uniformity and leaves the fork-tongued infant bawling on a sun-parched slope, deploring her deformity, and not the chilling same-faced twin or son who looks uncannily like him?

To damn the strange is monstrous blasphemy; the principle You blessed in Genesis, Disparity.

80. Gotta Break Some Eggs

“The day before," Christ says, "let's do an interview explaining it. Who knows if microphones or even mouths will work once I have willed this change?”

“It's not too...risky?” the reporter asks.

“Rewriting—no, un-writing—nature? Not a single force or law exempted? You can bet your bippy it's a risk! It might be nothing much, like Y2K-- or worldwide chaos. I can't say. This gambit's never been attempted.”

“And it's a good idea because...?”

“Humanity has reached an impasse. New redemption is required. Let's call a spade a spade, my crucifixion just misfired-- did nothing but thicken the DSM-III with Conversion Disorder, Stigmata. This time, I've gotta really shake the whole damn tree! A lot of people freaked, believe me, when I set up nature in the first place. This one wanted Canada to be our neighbor to the south, and that one, eating at the crotch and fucking at the mouth. But this is not democracy. It's not Obama's health-care bill, 100,000 pages full of sweeteners for anyone who vows to raise a little hell. The buck stops here. Whoever doesn't like it can enlist in Satan's crew. Cocksucking anarchists."

“Nobody paid attention when You came. I ran a story then, which was dismissed. Is there a sign or portent You could give this time to net a bit of media attention?”

“Myrlanski in the 1st to place.”

“That's it?”

“Tancredi in the 1st to show.”

“That isn't going to open people's eyes.”

“If I give any more, I'll kill the odds.”

“You're turning into something of a jerk, you know."

"The white man's burden. Kipling knew. So sad to say, the same is true of gods."

81. The Next-to-Last Sermon of Fr. Flowers

A man attends the second meeting of a book club, and asks what happened in the book so far. We tell him: in the beginning a woman does this, that and the other thing. He asks who she is. We tell him it doesn't say, but just starts telling what she did.

Some of us go through life asking who God is. Genesis just starts telling us things that He does. That's why p.1 in the Catechism adds: “God made us to know Him and love Him.”

We can know Him by what He does: create; set laws; punish those who displease and reward those who please Him. Is Torah a story of people trying to escape their stern God? They keepleaving. But God follows. He has them build an Ark of the Covenant to carry Him with them. Then they quickly lose that.

Now He says, “Here, let me try something new. I'll suffer and die in sacrifice to earn My forgiveness of you, so one day you can come to Heaven." That removes an obstacle to loving Him. But is there one more crumb of food on our table, one less sadist hurting us? No. Just His word that there's a better life to come.

Again, the man walks into our book club and asks "What did I miss?" We say: the woman in the book does this and that; we should love her; and the author, who took the time to create a whole world for her, forgives us, promises a happy ending, and wants us to love him too.

82. The Diner Owner's Confession

The whole town celebrates my flan. The other cooks ask What's your secret? I don't tell them - la cajeta that Diego's tía makes by hand and ships up from her cocinita in Celaya.

He asks me if I'll spread the word: with one or two more diners, she could feed a lot of mouths down there.

But I won't. I can't. That flan's the only draw Acropolis has got, and economics is a Russian egg.

It could be--could be-- I'm protecting her from being undercut by competition in the future by a neighbor.

83. The Evangelist's Confession

I'm not a hypocrite, and don't pretend to be Christ's follower or friend. To me He's simply subject matter, just a spark to jump-start my career.

A fool in haste where angels fear to tread, a shameless bard with lumber in his head, how could I not say yes?-- for what, apologize? I only promised Him I wouldn't stretch the truth, nor this time sketch four different apodictic drafts from fifty different versions of the facts.

Do I believe He's ready to un-rib the twill of nature as He says He will? I've staked my métier on it-- I'm a plunger, if He's full of shit. If I can't summon faith, then maybe hope, a longshot running to be Swift or Pope.

My motive isn't pure enough to be assailed. My aim's too base to sublimate with “failed.” I fall too humorously short of levity, and shorter yet of brevity.

Is plodding slow, or placing last, disgrace? If only victors sprint, there isn't any race.

84. The Wolf Boy's Imagination

I chase my pleasures all the harder for the spleen they leave behind contaminating palate, tongue and lips.

When Christ is done re-jiggering the Wheel of Life's internal gears, I dream of reigning high on Everest, condemning ice-encrusted prisoners to life sentences of breaking rocks for crimes detailed: locations, dates, and the particulars of damage done.

The well-loved princeling has no urge to glorify himself; the scorned, though, has no tamp on his destructive aims nor brake on lust to rear upright with odium-expanded wings and flog the final gasp of pity's leaking pulse.

As soon as His false Gloria is sung, my Ignominia will raise its shriek, a torch song with stilettoing high G's as hot and true as star-spat iron germ.

As far from Hell as possible on Earth, I welcome void-sogged sojourners to guide their saucers down my throat, dissolve their alien designs in mine.

What provender but foreign fantasy? What arms but inky bile on a page? As Milton soapboxed Satan in decline, I inveigh against the negligent Divine.

85. The Barmaid's Confession

My father told tall tales. He told me one of Deirdre, about a lustful king who marked her brow at birth for naught but tragedy, till she eluded him by crushing her own skull.

The moral of the story— all his stories—somehow was that liquor set you free from every kind of threat from love to drudgery.

I wasn't looking for a Christ. I never aimed that high. A night's companionship, or two, or three, or four— for me, salvation's one day, one more glass of vino and one hard dick at a time.

Dad laughed but didn't cry. He never understood the point of grief at all. "If you don't like your life," he used to lecture us, "nobody's forcing you to spend another day in it."

86. The DQ Franchisee's Retraction

Dear Mr. Christ:

Regretfully I am writing to withdraw our offer of employment. To wit: American Dairy Queen Corporation Covenant #16, “Public Figures”:

ADQ does not use any public figure to promote the franchise, and no public figure is involved in the governance of ADQ.

ADQ is a secular, non-partisan and non-affiliated organization that represents itself solely and sufficiently as a purveyor of frozen treats, hamburgers, beverages, etc. Counsel cautions that employment as Assistant Manager of an individual asserting to be and/or legally named Christ is inconsistent with the central mission and image of ADQ; and consequently we are not presently at liberty to fulfill our previous conditional commitment to employ.

Throughout the application process you distinguished yourself as a candidate of significant merit, but the association of your given name with certain specific religious principles will effectively restrict your professional opportunities in particular circumstances. An official name change and avoidance of participation in religion-related publicity will certainly mitigate this restrictive situation.

With utmost tentative sincerity,

Timothy F. Miller ADQ Franchise Principal Owner

87. [Transcript]

Ms. Goodstein-- . It's Ms. Goldstein. . Yes, Ms. Goldstein. If the information you possess by any stretch of the imagination could be national security related you'd be well advised to let me judge its relevance. . Well, there's a man in town here-- . Name? . He says his name is Jesus Christ. . And date of birth? . He says December 25, in 1 A.D. . And place of birth. . That would be Bethlehem. . West Bank? . West Bank. . Okay. And your suspicion is...? . He says he's God. He says on Monday he intends to change the fundamental physics of the universe, to end predictability. . And what exactly .does he say he'll do? . He says he only has to will it. . Will it? . Wish for it to happen. . Did he mention dirty bombs or airplane trips? Or cargos he's expecting on container ships? . No, sir. He thinks he's God. . If he's a terrorist, it's no defense. You understand that, right? Homeland Security can't profile him because he's Palestinian, nor can we say Go right ahead because he's God or Maximinian. . Who's Maximinian? . A Roman consul, possibly? It rhymed with Palestinian. . There was an Emperor Valentin ian. Croatian, I believe. . Croatian, eh? . Assassinated Vithicabius. . Assassination, eh? . The Great Conspiracy of Picts and Scots? . Conspiracy, you say? And Scots? . You have suspicions about Scots? . Well, no. No, no, of course not! All I'm saying is that Jesus Christ could be a Croat, Scot or anybody else and we would treat him just the same. The law's the law regardless of a person's nationality or name. . Well, I think probably he's harmless-- maybe has a bit of post-traumatic stress. But on the off-chance that he is God-- . Yes, I see. I get your drift. That leaves us very little choice except to pick him up.

88. Farewell Sermon

I sent a letter to the bishop, and resigned. I should have told you first, but I was scared I'd change my mind the moment I looked into your faces, and I was right. Now I wish I hadn't mailed it, but I have. What I wrote is true, so the bishop won't have much choice. This will be my last sermon.

I vowed obedience, but my faith in Jesus leads me to a different path. If the Attorney General believes his President is doing something wrong, his greater duty to the Constitution's guiding principles takes precedence. But the Church insists that obedience cannot diverge from love of Christ, and therefore that I am wading only into error.

The young man in our town who says he's Jesus? At first I viewed him as a lost soul needing our prayers, counseling, even psychiatric medication. To my surprise, my inclination has reversed. I still think he may be, in fact, a sick man or a fake. Nobody has to point out to me that I am flying blind. But I so badly need him to be real, I'm going anyway.

At this moment in my life, I'm ready to step off the deep end, not into light, as I always hoped, but into something that feels more like confusion. I know the bishop will see it as despair. But I've had enough of battling life and praying, of the orthodoxy of waiting. Jesus summoned the fishermen to drop their nets and follow him to spiritual points unknown. That's what I'm going to do.

89. The Bishop Phones His Renegade Priest

"Francis, what are ye doing to me over here? Haven't ye heard about this bugger priest I've got? Could not this great grand gallivant of yours be put on hold for three or four more weeks as a personal favor to me?"

"Don't, Liam. Please don't start all that. This old priest's sack of favors is every bit as empty as my Roman faith's become. Do you remember our first day together, back in seminary?--it was you that needed help and I who bubbled up with excess zeal. Tonight it's your support I need to follow Christ."

"Ye're not fallen in love with someone?"

"We're friends too long for me to hide from you."

"So what is it precisely that ye plan to do?"

"He asks me to be ready when He calls. A great grand gallivant it is, just as you say, but it's exclusively between me and the one who fatally perhaps I've chosen as my God. Make public I don't speak for Catholics anymore. I don't want one parishioner to follow me."

"Ye're really sold, ye are?"

"A tattered hand-me-down, but yes."

"Sure then, I give you my personal blessing. Officially I suspend you from all priestly duties until your dinghy steadies and Belief returns. And what ye'll do for me .is promise, Francis, that ye'll call and tell me how ye're getting on. Unless this sodomite scandal simmers down, I just might join you in your wee rowboat."

90. Homeland Security at the Door

"You're Christ? You made a terroristic threat against the physiogony of the United States."

"I was reported by my friends?"

"Good citizens have little choice. In this war, ships are sunk if lips keep mum. A team will come and search your place. Do you have any sort of contraband?"

"My body soap, it isn't men's. The quart of milk is past its expiration date, and there's a mouse."

"Okay. The soap, the milk, the mouse. Sort of a toothpaste-bomb-inside-the-shoe. Now, what about this physics scheme?"

"It all takes place in here, the supercollider of my Sacred Heart.”

"Hands on the wall and spread the legs. I'm going to cuff you, pat you down-- then off you go by Black Ops Air for waterboarding in Tangier or Kyrgyzstan."

"It was a cakewalk when the Romans put me through the paces of a crucifixion--just a morning and an afternoon, and that was it. You sadistic Americans nickel and dime me to death."

91. A Quantum Daybreak

If we had been nice to Christ last night, the sunrise would not/would still have come unhinged.

92. The Stoner's Instant

My eyelids pop up as if dreaming for a ceramic doll's eyes the blinds faint dull ribs of distant space still glued onto God the whirr of the fan steadily unspooling into Warhol-o-rama.

93. Satan's Instant

What? ho! what's this? what emotional ambush? what tickling of the abyss has waked me nauseous?

There, where brimstone scorched the naked sole-- a path of venomed primrose tined with thorns of glass?

And here, where teeth were wont for centuries to gnash, and sprinkled chips and grindings laid a ivory sand-- a fuchsia moss of tongue tips bitten off?

The chute to Earth behind that cataract of bile-- a fire pole with shit-smeared tip protruding from a dank behemoth's ass?

I should have guessed that slippery, hateful fuck had something up His sleeve-- some sleight of hand to manufacture one more loss for me to grieve.

He's pulled the rug from underneath my feet and robbed hell's solitary comfort, its familiarity.

94. The Ex-Priest's Instant

Even with too much Clynelish in him to count his toes, he felt a tide's cheek turn and cancer in his collarbones begin to seep from cockles, limpets, mussels, crabs, green-bearded smoothstones, jet black monoliths half-reared in sand as grey and flat and damp as new cement: if not reborn, then maybe reappraised, and time at least to go on in to bed.

95. The Reporter's Instant

The Hang Seng is slightly up, the Nikkei slightly down: to her trained reporter's eye, a fairly average day begun. But there were many things she did not normally observe, and if she did, had not known how to write about. The child's rocking-chair her feet rest on is completely ordinary, yet how it gapes at her so lovingly! opens up its delicately curling arms and wrists! She watches the marmalade bed and the bamboo rug. She nods. The exposé she is going to post today will burn her meteoric rise in journalism into ash and cinder. Dead.

96. The Barmaid's Instant

The guy beside her in the bed is snoring and his breath could drop a hippopotamus. The love they made lurched on in fits and starts before he passed out cold and left her here at liberty, at last, to freely fart.

His name was Gunther--what? It wasn't Grass, but something even sillier, as she recalled. Like Gunther Humperdinck or Gunther Häagen-Dazs. He'd come in after midnight, bought the bar a round, and then proceeded to astound the half-a-dozen diehards with a magic trick he had where you could pick a card and fix it in your mind, then he would rap the bar three times and guess it, right, without a single miss! She'd begged him to reveal his methodology and he agreed to tell her in the morning if she took him home and let him grease her wheel.

But right now-- all that magic drained away-- she finds she doesn't care. The jack of spades, so what? He'll never wake and tell her what she really wants to hear.

The name, though.... Glockenspiel? She gets up quietly and excavates his jeans. A Glock!--no shit! She pulls his wallet out. 'the fuck? His name is Jack Evan.

97. The Wolf Boy's Instant

I'm lying on my bed awake, so sick of playing Bio-Shock and feeding off the rage of all the other hairy creeps who chatter online day and night across six continents. A point in space above my eyes is whispering: Fear not, reach up, take hold the hilt, and turn the blade upon your enemy. I want to text Jolene. Mom's snoring down the hall. I hear guitar—the Doors' "The End." I close my eyes and stare into the oily, onyx Rubicon. A busy reddish galaxy looks back. The interchangeabilty of breath. Why mourn the solid shoulder of the sun? I raise both hands two feet above my face to grasp whatever's there.

98. The Bishop's Minute

He had gone to sleep as pious aristocracy, but awakened wracked with violent chills, teeth clacking like a newly minted devil's. He reaches for the bell to ring for Fr. Engel, when he remembers that they texted now. Fuck! he reflects. I'm going to die like this? In fear and isolation like a Sartre wretch? As if by miracle, his cell phone comes alive and starts to shiver too on the credenza. He throws a hand out, knocks it to the floor and listens as it clatters on the bare wood. He pulls the bedspread tight up to his chin, turns, sinks his gnashing teeth into the pillow. His head spins up into the Van Gogh stars. The telephone quiets and then clatters again. So this is what it boils down to? Shit, amen.

99. Dairy Queen's Instant

Dairy Queen's instant powdered soft vanilla ice cream mix-- dried milk from the People's Republic, corn sugar, dextrin, concentrated whey protein, emulsifier, guar gum, vanillin, and a touch of Yellow #5. Add water for a fine cone at 9.6 cents each.

With a 20x markup, that's 5000 sold just to pay my lawyer's fee from being sued for racial and religious discrimination by Mr. Christian Turn-the-Other-Cheek! And I'd have given him the blasted job except for the hate mail, the boycott threats and the Catholic bishop's charges of trademark infringement!

So now it's 5 a.m. to midnight, my wife off on a two-month visit to Mumbai: “I have no husband now!” And so now it's-- Shit! Another nail salon has opened right across the street? How many fingernails and toenails do these rich New Jersey ladies have? And why is it a Saigonese monopoly? I should bring in our own Bhandaris who will undercut them by 30%, and throw in a free pass for 1 DQ Ice Cream for the children while mom is being buffed. When my Pooja returns she will run it!

Priya will go to the Ivy League college. Perhaps we will have a second child, this time a son, who will inherit a big empire of businesses ranging from Dairy Queens and Kama Sutra Nail & Piercing Salons to Assam Tea & Punjab Curry Shops. And the next time we return to Mumbai, it would surely be in the style of the rajas--iPods given to all of the youngsters like candy, iPads to all young adults, and small powder-blue boxes from Tiffany & Co. to elders!

A feast for everyone at the JW Marriot on Juhu Tara Road, as large as a wedding, climaxing with seven flavors of Amul ice cream -- Honey Banana, Kesar Pista, everything people are able to dream of!

100. The Bad Lieutenant's Graveyard Shift

The second the clock hits six o'clock he'll punch out, go wake Didi up to have a couple friendly snorts, then something friendly in the shorts.

Marlene knows to expect him back at mid-day following a graveyard shift-- shitfaced, then straight to bed. The girls know better than to say a single thing beyond “Hi, Dad.”

Dullea comes in with coffee, nods, and straight back to the locker room. Guy wouldn't know his tight ass from his elbow if it didn't have an arm on it-- yet he infallibly arrives on time, you have to grant him that. But God forbid that Apu offers him a box of donuts on the house!

And here comes Sgt. Martin Luther King. Between the black skin and a tour in Vietnam, Mandingo got 2/3 of his exam score handed to him on a silver plate but he still lords it over everyone for having topped the list.

The bad lieutenant grins. 5:59. To all appearances it's going to be a perfect fucking day.

101. ~Jesus's Breakfast

A white streak dives gracefully into the sun fear of being unwelcome put to rest by a huge fountain of magnetism gamma and heliotic perfumes flying upward to gather it in.

Instantaneous analysis of Homo sapiens contamination.

Consciousness no more extends the view than more dirt yields cadavers extra heartbeats.

1. Her pink tupperware tub in the food-zapper revolves slowly like the featured diamond diadem in Tiffany's lobby. She waits for the beep. No one sees what's in her pretty little head, her job a crowbar or a plank of wood.

2. This time a pint of Häagen-Dazs rum raisin revolves regally inside the kitchen microwave of the tiny condominium on Harrison Way. While she chews the raisins in her first bite, she makes the decision to trust Him.

“Since I was little,” she says, “I've hoped to capture the mind of the sun. If I could cup it in my hands it would grant me an endless stream of joy. Is that psycho, Josiah?”

She says His name. He shivers.

“I imagined its mind as a shriveled black ball like a peppercorn. Is that crackers, or what?”

He'd be lying if He said it's what He expected.

He'd asked for love to blow Him wide open. He hadn't seen this drawn-out aftermath.

But why bellyache? Kiss the wife and go to work. Were things a thrill a minute before they met?

"You're making Me hungry," He says.

“Oh, go jerk off!”

Her laugh a jinglebell.

"Don't You have stuff you have to do up in the etherzone?"

102. ~At the DQ

I will cool and shrink and travel taking along everything in orbit a Radiant who jettisons his fuel spirals and if you ever want to observe the independent mind collapse as it lunges toward the horizon I'm the particle, energy or process freeing everything squirreled inside its ark.

"I captured you, remember, Josiah? And You got everything you thirsted for. Why does the ice cream budget break the fucking bank?"

It's still a long way from enough.

"Here comes Your girlfriend and her wolfboy freak! 'Two Souls On Ice with orbs of Red Dye 3 on top!'"

This is Dairy Queen, no need for bitterness.

"I think there is. If You're going to be fucking God, then act like fucking God."

103. ~black and whites outta the car

fuck you muthafucka outta the car I put a fuckin bullet in your head

fuck you the bad cop pulls the kid outta the car fires 6 times

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck kid bounces on echoes blood spatters cop's eye fuck sirens jack the chaos black and whites screech up

fuck you kid gasps at the cop parted cloud voice wonders

shall ye have died in vain

104. ~Jesus in Love

Getting into one of the damn things is easy enough but then just try getting out of it. Everyone seems to want her body except her.

I look at her, and at my hands, both so familiar. I steal a glance down to her hands too, alike in the sense all robins or squirrels are alike.

She knows too much. One of her sits here with me in the kitchen but the others run wild and do what mice do while the cat gets scolded in the hallway.

They say it's easier to revive roadkill than romance but what if the beloved is only an advance scout and you have to immediately start hunting for an even dearer person hidden in the haystraw?

She zaps two mugs of herb tea, rumored to solve a lot of problems. I examine the back of her legs. If only I could reach out to unlock each voice...

But her mind wheels around, puts a kibosh back on. --beep, beep, beep, beep.

105. ~Talk

“Exhibit spirit? Why exhibit spirit?” she says.

She stares. She sets the teas in front of us too hot to drink and sits. I put a spoon to her ganache.

"Why can't I crack your code, Josiah?"

"Turn around in the chair, your back to me. I'm going to take your blouse and bra off. Not to worry, nobody can see. I'll show you want I mean. I'm only going to touch your shoulderblades."

My names are Wytham and Agynam, home to the great tits that university scholars come flocking westward to. The birds themselves are a diversion, our principle mission is planting ticks on ornithologists returning to Oxford, then retrieving them at a later date, engorged on higher human learning to be pooled in the Farmoor Reservoir and evaporated gradually as needed.

"Oh God, you've given me an itch! Can you scratch it? A little harder?"

Your clavicles are Roman roads, the oldest bones--pectoral fins. How much writing and how many pencil sharpenings are needed before the little children can receive a two-inch pencil? I watch information rise through the ceiling. I have an urge to follow it but the two new pencils in My hand start to growl as if trained to protect Me from the pull of dark matter physicists fear.

"You and this cake are baking Me."

She turns back around with a smile and lifts her mug exactly as she had when she'd been clothed.

"Now that's just the power of love talking."

106. ~Commute Home

What if I said I'm the sun, a little being, little star?

We have little contact at work and too little to talk about once we climb back in the Neon to head home. "That's neither here nor there," you say. Math glasses expose the numbers and crowd our field of vision with equation Babel like the date of this year's Easter superimposed on one of 10,000 equations for the road behind you and the millions that delineate water, air and sand.

You drop one digit, and the going gets rough. "Josiah, dear, it's gotten worse. You've got to see somebody. Will you promise?"

I leapt forth at 399 miles per second and left behind 99.999999999999999999999999995% of my mass; at the halfway point, I saw the blessed, faint, blue dot in which your brainwaves swam and sang like whales.

Certainly I promise.

107. ~The Religion Reporter

"Just after midnight a woman appeared in her new body at the next level of physicality after discovering that the glories given Jesus after the Resurrection were available to anyone..."

The tears wouldn't stop, no matter what she wrote. This relentless cataract of revelation hurt too much. It was a gift no journalist could ever refuse, but it felt like trying on a rich girl's fancy wardrobe. Still, she didn't see that she had any choice. The cowardice of retreating would feel even worse.

Once This reason for living is revealed as an illusion and The next reason for living is revealed as illusion and The third reason for living is revealed as illusion, there's a hard abundance of ignorance-knowledge. Who ever was glad to know such things? Who ever died grateful for having been singled out?

"...bold enough to reach for them. At her new level of translation, she astonished everyone who spoke with her, and all they wanted to do was to speak with her some more."

108. ~The Bishop's Skype

It was the Pope, inviting him to Skype while they both ate.

"Give a minute, Holy Father--time to get my eggs and tea, a wee bit of a robe, and have me-self a wee bit of a pee."

Sometimes the Pope was a right pain in the arse. Why didn't he eat lunch with some damn nuncio?

“My brother,” Benedikt began, his mouth already filled up from what looked like a big bowl of spätzle. “I have news to share! I have had what all the stuffed shirts here are calling my 'Aha! Experience.' It's rocked me right down to my glorious red Gammarellis. Now I want to shake things up! And I will need your help.” Il Papa popped a radish in his mouth and crunched on it. “I want to take us back to Christ's own style—homeless beggars speaking truth to power, advocating for the poor.”

“They'll lock you up in Santo Spiritu if ye're not careful, Holy Father. Ye do know that?”

“That's what they threatened Jesus with, nicht wahr?”

“Like Him, ye'll need a dozen cardinals solidly by yer side. Ye're talking about a radically new religion, man! Remember Benedict Quintus--and Sextus--and Nonus twice? Yer predecessors' tenures have been pretty dicey.”

“What kind of salt is that, there, on your tray?"

“Just normal salt.”

“You never worry, Patrick, that it's deadly poison?”

“Not one bit.”

“Nor shall I fear of harm from righteous men. You see, I'm going to hedge my bet though, too-- and make an eminence of you! Your cardinal job will be to shepherd all the other Princes of the Curia for me.”

“Your Holiness?”

“Now pack yer bags, ye fake-brogued Irishman! If all goes as I dream, within the year we'll both be wandering about in rags. Now, your successor: you once told me of a priest who had a special feeling for the poor of spirit-- for the least of these. Tell me his name again.”

“That's Francis Flowers, Holiness. But he--”

“Will be bishop! Period! When Christ's hour came to suck the hyssop, didn't He, without complaint? Tell Flowers I am elevating him because he isn't pious, but because he's tough. In my humble opinion, another gottverdammten holy-water-sprinkling missal-thumbing mortal-sinless pseudo-saint is just about the last thing this Church needs.”

109. ~Author's Disclaimer

"And Jesus said: He that leaveth wife and children for My sake shall receive manifold more in this present time, and life everlasting in the world to come."

No, I'm not leaving anyone! My aim is just to kick-start my career. And isn't everlasting life a given in the world to come?

I'm no evangelist-apostle, writing gospel. I entirely deplore the idea that the Lord is waving carrot sticks to make us docile, cast our hands up in the air and drop our knees down to the floor.

I don't begrudge the deity His place. He plays His role--and well, as far as I can see. But that's no reason to allow Him or His priests to lord it over me.

Thank you, I'll keep my wife and kids, I like my family quite a bit. And to this chronicle of Christ in his redux, I officially affix the following disclaimer:

"This is not designed to move the earth beneath your feet or cast your raison d'etre into flux: a sprinkling of chuckles, no you didn'ts and ah-hahs is quite enough; and any more profound interpretation is a copyist's interpolation."

110. ~Ex-Dealer to Barmaid

Apologies. I should've stapled fliers on the trees! I'm finished selling dope.

No, didn't say I'm clean, but yeah, I guess I'm hoping to turn over a new leaf.

You too? This whole town going straight?

The pot is for your niece?

What? God, that sucks for her! A lot. No wonder you're out getting her some pot. Whoever made leukemia should just be shot.

Hold on. I know a guy who'll give some grass to her.

Ambrose.

Wolf Boy?

No, he's really sweet! It's just when people piss him off. Kids can be cruel.

And, entre nous, I think he's kind of cool.

He sees the world as if it was a different place than most of us believe.

It's like he sees the arteries and veins of things.

Well, he's been nice to me.

111. Christ's Confession

This is actually the thousandth time I've come again. Can't seem to get it right. Repeated nocturnal visions of me walking naked on the waters of Lake Sabbathday have left the last Believers in my Second Appearing like James Bond martinis stirrèd but not shakèd, titi-jointed but still thoroughly God-fearing, raptured but still celibated.

Each time, I creep home quietly, my tail between my legs, letting the saints and angels think, so blessèd in their certitude, that I've been working on the Limbo renovations; downstairs wiping up the floor of hell with Satan's butt; or in immersèd conclave with my fellow trinitarians.

But maybe Old Nick's right-- the kind of blues I've had these past three centuries will take a good wife and some righteous bone to straighten out. It isn't good for me to be alone-- but how does one create an equal, wed a woman who's their sequel? Incest, really, if you boil it down.

I need to outbreed--strike out and discover if there might be other beings of my genius ruling universes shielded from Omniscience, event horizons unforeseen by virtue of their distance? lead-sequestered à la Superman? in hieroglyph?-- as Milton, roughly, wrote: put on swift wings, explore my solitary flight som times to scour the right hand coast, som times the left, and shave with level wing the Deep, then soar up to the fiery concave, touring high, through wood, through waste, o're hil, o're dale to roam in utmost Longitude.

Ho, now! I've quite inspired myself! I fly! Adieu!

112. - Two Wild and Crazy Gods

Satan insists he knows the way, and I should take him with Me-- Brains and brawn. He says we both originated from a bowl of flaming beet-juice with bosons-- bosums-- bosoms-- bisons--

Finally, he makes Me smile! I let down My guard for a second, and the next thing I know, his eyes are yellow like a leopard's and a fleck of drool adorns one corner of his lips. Come on, he pleads, You think I'm going to bite?

There's something you're not telling Me, I say, and he: That isn't what You're looking for?

113. - Satan's Case

Mankind takes me for their nemesis but where's the proof?-- and don't say Eden, either. You had no idea what happened till they pled, “Oh, Satan tricked us!” Did You ever think to check with me?

Yes, I was coiled round that tree and may have said, “The apple's sweet.” But I had no idea that it was under interdict. The rib-born woman didn't tell me that.

I was their scapegoat--uncomplainingly, until You got it in Your head today to heave-ho our duality and strike out on Your own.

Asmodeus and Baal are overjoyed. “He's leaving? We can go reclaim our thrones!” They want to see the saints and angels squirm.

That isn't me. My style is to wrestle merrythoughts with someone more my match. Who's that, but You?

But if You want to fly abroad and troll for stellar wives in unknown heavens and hells, please, let me come and fish the solar winds for somebody to test my will against as well.

You owe me that, at least, for this long stint of false imprisonment and service as Your foil and polar opposite.

Since my crime is nothing but a shameful fiction, to disown me would be shamefully un-Christian.

114. - Sic Transit

Begin at the beginning: a(0) / 2 + Σ(k=1..) (a(k) cos kx + b(k) sin kx)... and leaven the event dough with a pinch of correlation:

{\cal A} \sim e^{-S} = e^{-\frac{8\pi^2}{g^2} }= e^{-\frac{2\pi}{\alpha_s} }...

--Lost already, Brother Satan? Well, you shouldn't have been shooting paperclips at Michael during Founding Physics class. That's why you never made a thing, but follow Me around and act as if you partnered My creation.

Multiple intelligences? Don't make Me laugh and scare the muons even more unstable than they are! Just hold tight to My neck. You hear those screams? They lost the nightmare's mane and were unhorsed in dreams.

The probability: we'll find no single Frigg or Nut out here, no matter if we search till kingdom come. The whole idea of distant godheads and of SETFI is just idle speculation. The objection-- there can only be one First Intelligence-- makes too much sense.

The speed of light squared, to the 3 or 4 won't really take us anywhere. We can't elope in isotopical decay: there's no such place as far away.

115. - Primus Contactus

Ho! do you feel that, Bro? 2 stares at 3 as if a total stranger! Pinch Me, but we may actually have gotten somewhere else.

Ahoy! Is anybody there? We travel from afar and come in peace in search of love!

No syphilis at all.

Ontological spying? Never crossed our minds.

Him? Well, er, no, I can't exactly vouch, but... he's got rabies tags, and his distemper shot.

You'd like to boil us in what?

We pray more hospitality than that.

Look, we have beads. And this was once a full-size Achuar skull.

Gold? No, we have no gold but... Motown?... Cinéma français?

We seek two wives to bring back to our world. We're gods like you.

You're not? Okay.

Your gods are 27 times your size, divinely cruel, and always avid for a new variety of chowder?

Plan B is sounding very good.

Where we come from, we call it take a powder.

116. - Infamy in the Root

We Triplets were confined in our imperium for perpetuity? Our Fountainhead did what?

No wonder Ghost got spooked.

Yes, please, restore Oblivion-- don't fail, and now. Leave memory of why we're pent, but of those Horrors, no detail.

117. - Christ's Recantation

Look, Satan, if it's any Consolation, that Big Bitch who put the Interdict on us was probably Imprisoned in her own World by a Bigger Bitch: the Pecking Order may be Infinite.

Whatever Sins our Root committed, this Trek outward isn't Wasted: now we know, at least, the Reason why we're not allowed to Reproduce.

Flawed? That was Obvious, but who knew we were Dangerous!

Our every Cackle must be Stopped!

Who even knew there was a Category Too Congenitally Evil to Adopt?

Whatever Papa—Mama?--did or said, it must have been a fucking Doozy to leave Newborn Cubs with such big inter-existential Prices on their Heads.

What's more, it Seems that you are more like Him or Her than I am. I suppose that's Why I'm so ambivalent, while you Inhabit your own Skin with Comfort, even Relish-- why you've so much goshdarn Talent at creating Situations that are Hellish, while I'm Patty Hearst--

Internalized the Point of View of those who Conquered and Imprisoned us-- trained auto-immunological Machine Guns on Myself-- then, Mis-Condemning you.

Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

Self-Delusion's pin-eye Blinders made my mine-shaft glow as if Ambrosia-bathed.

I told myself it was the chrism of the Dove, but it was Crow, absinthian Drippings from Misjudgment's Pulper.

118. - The Devil's Tool

Are idle hands the devil's tool? An old canard! It's weak self-images, it's chickens clipped by what they tout as conscience but is limp conviction, discontent with who they really are: they rate their actions on a moral scale they dreamt up or were taught and lash their oaken native sinew to a flimsy mast of fictile thought.

Christ was a fairly doughty god before His human parents bent Him to their acquiescent dispositions-- “Be it unto me according to thy word,” and “doing as the messenger had bidden him”-- then He too started gurgling that pap about the meek inheriting the earth, the landlord poorer than the tenant.

Medieval iconographers were right: I'm much more like a wild beast. What it occurs to me to do, I do. When Jesus gave up on our beaux idéales because some goblins—maybe gulling us--- guilt-tripped Him about tainted blood, once more He lay down on the Cross. That's His Achilles heel, not mine.

His thirst for loss is my good luck. I only have to bide my time to feast upon the flock of lambs He called together down on Earth, then left, and leaves again.

I cribbed His math and scribbled it all down. I watched Him deftly skirr the grid. I'm flying back there one day on my own. I want the details of what Daddy did! I want to take those trolls on in a brawl and come home with a really different wife.

I have big plans and Jesus is the key. He finds a route and paves the way to every seat of innocence for me to drop down from his neck and violate.

119. - Jesus's New Leaf

Yesterday before we took our flight into the far connubosphere and bumped into those prudes who put us in our place, you seemed expendable to Me, or worse, a blight, a miscreant, a pimple on My butt, repulsive, sneering, crude, a curse.

Today, you simply seem the being who walks next to Me and always has-- if not a brother, a potential ally, friend.

Okay, I've said it, are you happy now? I see the error of My ways and put My hand out, if it's not too late.

The sanctimony of those sneering demis ticked off Me as much as it did you.

Let's dig the hatchet up that Cain used to cleave Abel's skull in two, go back and show Dimension 9 what Earth gods fight and love like, unified.

Two sisters, maybe. No, not Siamese! I'm struggling to have an open mind but that's just sleaze.

No swapping either, Bub. If twins, or if they look the same to us, I'll want Mine to tattoo her ass with Property of Jesus Christ.

You're Satan! She's a fucking alien! Don't tell Me about trust.

120. - Double Elopement

They worked the math. They flew. They met and tussled with a hundred other gods out there, and when they headed home, had two grandes déesses upon their arms, the first so large, the functions had to be reset, the second strung together so unusually, her bosons dribbled little spots of light across the seventeen dimensions the two couples wriggled through.

Christ had never felt so good, so bad. Old Nick was so excited, it was sad. The gals were tickled pink to run away. The big one's reign was structured as menage a trois, and she was sick of it; the stringy doll, in vain, had abdicated twice. Abduction played into their hands.

The last equation click-clicked into place, one last dimension, just shy of our universe. The 727th digit somehow slipped on pi. One sine and cosine failed to harmonize. The Sabines flickered, both, then poof! The universe sprang open: End of Game.

121. - L'infido bavarese

One hour after breakfast the pope's nose stretched at an unprecedented speed toward the Leonine Walls. La fata dai capelli turchini, the fairy with turquoise hair, was nowhere to be seen. The butler Gabriele gasped. Twelve Cardinals snickered behind the Sistine screens. Ever-capable Swiss Guards telephoned for il picchio, the woodpecker--posthaste! Leopold the Bavarian chef was clapped in handcuffs, dragged to the basement, tortured, finally confessed the setup to Da Vinci's joke but crumpled before telling the punch-line that elicited the Mona Lisa's little grin. They found the poison herb sewn underneath the turret of his towering chef's hat-- Holznasenwürze, only dug from stony peaks that hide South Tyrol's Lakes of Milk, in crevices that fairies know who wait 1000 years for coffins built by Innsbruck carpenters of vampire-favored silverfir. One of the Schweizergarde knew it from his grannie's shelf: a cautious pinch enough to halt a nosebleed, but a teaspoon yields a pope-become-Pinocchio. Il picchio arrives and pecks until the pope again can latch the balcony's French doors; then pecks some more, till he can smell his Fingernudeln. Over strudel he texts Patrick, "Do be careful what you eat until we crush our enemies."

[122. - Bracketed Footnote à la David Foster Wallace R.I.P.

My blog's gone viral. Phone's been ringing off the hook. The Catholic League. Reporters. Agents. Someone claiming to be Salman Rushdie but who could be M.J. Akbar or Al-Qaeda.

Then: they ask Jesus about me! Am I the brother of that zoo-gorilla liberator? For His imitations do I give Him 10%? Is any of my writing based on real events?

"Now you can write haiku like Richard Wright," He jokes. "Or like Palahniuk best-seller six or seven bombs."

"They think I'm faking this whole book! They smile slyly when I swear it's true."

"They want their fiction credible, non-fiction off the wall. Enjoy your hour in the sun, Tom, earned or not. You'll be more likely burned than bronzed when it's all done..."]

123. - Praise Him!

The early Church was Paul's, not mine--all His epistles written long before the gospels were commissioned. He wrote--One says, "I follow Paul”; another, "I follow Apollos"; another, "I follow Peter"; a fourth, "I follow Christ."--then gathered up a bunch of splinter groups to mold one Church.

They were all single, childless men--Paul, four evangelists, Apollos, Titus, Silas, Timothy, and me—a family that still brawls with sexuality. My bad. I should've paid attention when my parents hinted Magdalen was more than just a pious face. I'd only never done the deed--before that recent mescal-fueled fiasco with the barmaid-- for the simple reason I had never gotten drunk enough.

I shouldn't be the Lamb of God or Prince of Peace or Point of Light. There were a thousand days when I did little more than walk along the shores of Kinneret collecting lake-snail shells and sheatfish spines, or sit up by the palace as the Roman soldiers drilled: dressed ranks, drew swords, and counter-marched. The unemployment rate for Jews back then was astronomical.

Who hasn't chased at swine and run them off a bluff; dispensed a common bromide with felicity; or cried Your eyes are healed! and had some luck? You could inflate the highlights of a million lives-- this Robin Hood, that Jesse James. And as for rising from the dead, the gospels say I did, but didn't everybody in them need a bit of coaching before testifying that the Risen One was me?

Whatever I did, lots have done-- His works were second to none.

124. - Tom the Luv Doc

“By Your own admission, You'd be happier if wed; there aren't any single goddesses available; so then, is there a precedent for delegating some of Your abundant supernaturality to grant a human woman retrofitted immortality? Luke says You lent Peter the power to heal legs."

“You know he's given to hyperbole.”

“Then try it out on me: assign me power to bring back that desiccated housefly right there in that spider web.”

“Why would you want to bring a housefly back to life?”

“It's just a test! I'll kill it right away again.”

“What if you can't? What if it flies away and hides and then comes buzzing round My ears tonight?”

“I'll kill the fucking thing! Alright?”

“What happens to the spider if I put the fly's juice back inside?”

“Who gives a shit? The spider finds another bug to drain.”

“There can be unintended consequences when you screw around with the ecology. It's all a very complex web.”

“Not more complex than You?”

“Look, I can analyze a chess game from the opening-- 288,000,000,000 possibilities through just four moves. The web of life? That mambo's gotten out of hand!”

“So You're afraid to let me stir the hind foot of a fly? To lend me the ability to make one forewing twitch?”

“Afraid's too strong a word. I'd have to think it through.”

“Forget the wedding, dude. There are a special few who, for the good of all concerned, are better left unhitched.”

125. - Blunt Critic

Stop writing round in fucking circles! Miss, a Diet Pepsi please, no fruit. Who is the goddam author? You. Your job is not to tag along and wait for shock-and-awe from Me. I'm just the bullshit raw material.

Hold on. You're contemplating what? A huge tribunal in The Hague? I judge mankind's worst criminals and pack them off to roast in hell? What kind of denouement is that? It's way too Dead Sea Scrolls! Dig deeper in the cave for plot-line unexpected and original enough to interest jaded modern souls.

My Second Coming's got to do the trick. The idea of a Third just makes Me sick.

126. - Sow's Ear / Existential Theory

A lousy bio-pic neglects to shape its subject's life but lays it out in all its lack of meaning as if truth is what we really seek in art.

No, don't say truth is different from reality, real truth's expressed when fantasy is aired. That's one big crock of shit. True artists don't conceal themselves in it.

What's art except our silk purse--pain's fruit, nuggets twinkling in the spirit of niter?

A tattered handful found historic Jesus inspirational but it's the Gospel Christ who was transformational.

To say a thing is real strips its redemptiveness; the treasured mintage lies in history's plasticity.

127. - The Evangelist's Task

No humble worker's gospel gives the neighbors hope, ennobles destitution and disease, gilds war and lust with majesty. My job's to thrash mundanity, to crush the gravelled gangue and dress the grains to 18-carat foil, mask soot-striped cheeks, sheathe twisted limbs in love, then braid the loaf, and sprinkle it with grace notes such as those with which In Tartary I freed the Cham, Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats; I eased in Asia the Nizam Of a monstrous brood of vampyre bats: with whimsy in the vein of Browning.

It only takes a fool to spill his blood, but world-class craftsmanship to build Redemption from that rood.

xi t 128. - The e ss ential Seuss

Das Wichtige ist dabei, daß ich die Geisel bin. "The important thing is that I'm the hostage." - Anne Duden

The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold, wet day. I sat there with Sally, we sat there we two. And I said, “How I wish we had something to do.”

“I know some good games we could play,” said the cat. “I know some new tricks,” said the Cat in the Hat.

“Oh dear,” said the cat. “You did not like our game. Oh dear. What a shame, what a shame, what a shame.” This was no time for play. This was no time for fun. This was no time for games. There was work to be done.

“It is good I have someone to help me,” he said. “Right here in my hat on the top of my head.”

129. - A Jesus With Twin Cherries On Top

They call it The Reese's Jesus: a redented lotus-bud of vanilla soft-serve beside a second mound of chocolate, then a scoop of Reese's Bits, a drizzle of lemon-lime Arctic Rush, sprinkles, and twin cherries on top.

The middle-schoolers love it most: DQ is absolutely packed with students after school. His boss says He might get a raise.

He also does a harmless little guessing game of favorite songs, and is a Font of Nutty Parables:

There once was a girl from New York Who could balance one eye on a fork Her boyfriend said "Bradley, You're reminding me sadly There once was a cyclops from Cork.

There once was a model from Delhi With salacious tattoos on her belly The ad agencies' fears Of her plugging brassieres Left her heralding tamarind jelly.

The teenage boys start sporting mohawks too, the girls inviting Him to their bat mitzvahs, interviewing Him for Sociology reports. His picture--juggling lemons with his knees-- is on the front page of The Tattler.

Good things start arriving in threes: Colby is picked as a crime-film location; a new priest comes whose Pakistani English cracks up the parishoners; a psycho, rogue, grey squirrel is going postal on tent-caterpillar camps.

Jesus gets two eyebrow piercings, small red globes like maraschinos.

"He looks divine," one mother said.

130. - Flying Object, Identified

Nobody could tell what it was flying so gaily out of the sun until it landed in the parking lot behind the diner, when they found out, really, only what it wasn't: not a small flock of any duck, or a rocket strung together out of old raccoon hats, which was what it looked most like.

It's kingdom come, Miss Lillian said-- a familiar enough phrase lacking a particular image in most people's head, and no one knew anything better to call it, so Kingdom Come seemed as good a name as any for whatever it was. After a story in the newspaper repeated the term, that was that.

131. - Second Contact

Nobody knows what it is fluttering gaily out from the sun until it lands in the parking lot behind the diner and they discover it's the second Kingdom Come although it looks like an odd wing of brown ducks or a rocket strung together out of old raccoon hats. Oh my goodness! gasps Miss Lillian. Paramedics come again, though some wonder if they are paramedics, but whoever they are put it in a truck with elciheV ycnegremE spelled backwards on the front and Keep Back 100 Feet spelled frontwards on the back and the Times reporter files a second story and that is that.

132. - Briefing, Cheyenne Mountain

Our Knowns:

1. Flew gaily from the sun 2. Landed in the parking lot behind a diner 3. Not small flocks of any known duck 4. Not rockets strung together out of big raccoon hats, although they look a little bit like that 5. The townsfolk closest to the landing called the first one 'Kingdom Come' (location is New Jersey, home to a rollercoaster known as 'Kingda Ka')

Our Known Unknowns:

1. Origin of objects 2. Nature of objects 3. Purpose of objects (if any) 4. Safety of objects 5. Utility of objects (if any)

Colonel Floodbight, you'll head Team 1. Colonel Rodriguez, you'll head Team 2. Colonel Washington, you'll head Team 3. Colonel Ebers-Smith, you'll head Team 4. And Colonel Tims, you'll head Team 5.

Major Brancamenta and I will integrate all the incoming data. In case there's anyone who doesn't know, she's the shit-kicking Coloradan who located and finally fucked Bin Laden.

Our Unknown Unknowns:

Of course this goes to our #1 witch-hunter of the last 3 decades, Major Tina Della Reese. Some of the notches in her trusty gun: made mincemeat of 'The Philadelphia Experiment' before it even opened; rode the point on Y2K; and red-flagged the Chinese Superworm that thank God never made it out of Classified. Her job is not exactly to be always wrong, but our job is to make damn sure she is.

133. - White House, 7am

We're working on who they are, where they're from, how they fly, why they're here, if they're safe, and what if anthing they're good for.

Yes, you can add a couple questions of your own, Michelle, but let's not scare Natasha and Malia.

No, no reason why it ought to scare them. It really isn't any worse than zombie flicks I watch with them.

Michelle, I hear the goddam rumors-- End Times, all of that. But don't they just look more like strung-together teddy bears-- entirely harmless?

And if they do turn out to be invaders from beyond or hostile, vengeful gods, we'll deal with it-- the four of us, the U.S., and the world.

I'm flying Romney in tomorrow night. I'll have to put him in the loop and ask him for advice. You never know. The guy's a 87th-level Mormon, right?

Can we communicate with them? Well, in a general way, we are. We're sort of saying: "Motherfuckers? Tell us everything about yourselves or else we'll have to take your ass apart."

The protocols? No not Geneva, more like ASPCA. Not torture, no. Yes--a variety of solvents, radiations. Yoo describes it all as very similar to when the doctor hits your knee with that rubber triangle thingee?

Putin says he had something analagous in 2003 and it turned out to be some kind of unknown kelp that had gotten itself tangled up with a Soyuz-TM dump of space debris.

Yeah, I suppose there was some quantity of shit.

Michelle, I'm not proposing that we have them send one here to let our children sit and play with it.

Sometimes I wonder if the anti-feminists who say a mother can't be president don't have a legitimate fucking point.

134. - The President's 8 AM

If you are who you proclaim to be, or some at least report you said you were, and some report their own belief you are, it can't be a coincidence you're living in the same town where the Kingdom Comes came down.

I'm out of line to make demands on Jesus Christ returned to earth--

I'm just the President, and sometime fan-- but still I hope you might be kind enough to put our fears to rest and let us know, for instance, where they came from, what they are.

The Father and the Holy Ghost?

Oh, very good! You had me going there! But really, how am I supposed to know?

I told Michelle I'd ask if there are more than two-- if others have already come or are en route.

She's fine. The girls are fine.

My mother says hello? That's nice. My father what? He'll never learn, I guess.

No sweat. I promise you'll get back by 2, by private Air Force jet and escort motorcade. The teenage kids in town will get a thrill.

Your piercings? Not my style, let's just say. If my Malia did that to herself, I'd lock her in the Yellow Room and throw the key away.

Can we get back to Kingdom Comes? I have the Rev. Graham for scones at 8:15.

I've got a pen.

Okay. Inside...the...sun. That's kinda weird.

Their nature--what?

Ac-cre-tion? C-C-R-E-T? Okay, I've heard of that.

A...contrail...from...two...inter...universal...

Inter-universal immigrants?

Okay, this worries me.

Two...undocumented...gods? That can't be good.

They're seeking virgins to insert their essence in?

Oh Lord, please no.

Is there some way that we could do this after the election?

135. - Obama, Christ Huddle on 'Kingdom Comes'

Obama, Christ Huddle on 'Kingdom Comes'

By ARMANI GOLDSTEIN

WASHINGTON — At the White House this morning, President Obama met with self-styled religious messiah Jesus Christ, over egg-white omelets, to discuss the two “Kingdom Comes” that mysterious arrived in a Colby, New Jersey diner parking lot, and which have reportedly been transported to government labs for analysis.

The President hopes that Christ may be able to shed some light on the phenomenon, which he also plans to discuss with his Republican opponent Mitt Romney late tomorrow.

Christ himself appeared in Colby under mysterious circumstances, and DNA analysis by Rutgers University scientists confirms that he is approximately 2000 years old and "most likely" originated in Palestine.

“People and objects have been appearing on the Earth for many millions of years,” explained noted British scientist Richard Dawkins. “Two or three more or less aren't going to make much of a difference. Though the Kingdom Come objects are of scientific interest, on the scale of evolutionary time, nothing can be out of the ordinary. This is not a Ridley Scott moment, and the American president's time would be better spent solving the mortgage lending crisis.”

The minor stir that occurred over Christ's “Second Coming” has all but died down in the small New Jersey suburb where he now lives, working as assistant manager of a Dairy Queen restaurant and having become something of a local celebrity with his mullet-style hairdo and pierced eyebrows. He stresses that he shall not conduct the much-anticipated "day of judgment" that religious adherents have long expected. He plans to remain on Earth indefinitely.

Afterwards, both men were tight-lipped about the content of their discussion, beyond Christ noting that "Breakfast was a little spartan. A bit of egg yolk or real butter wouldn't have hurt either of our girlish figures."

136. - Cloak & Lager

The pope secretly landed without any silk and satin outfit, but wearing new jeans and a Mario Gómez jersey, carrying not a Holy See but a German passport in his original given name Joseph Alois Ratzinger. Former local pastor Francis Flowers had his plane met by his cousin Dwight and Dwight's domestic partner Stuart, who grinned like he had swallowed the canary, though all he could manage to say was Willkommen. Benedikt--Joe, he preferred-- admired the décor of the two gay men's Dutch Colonial home, in particular the stained glass semi-circle above the landing of the interior staircase: a doe drinking from a pristine pool at the forest edge. He proceeded to put everyone at ease by insisting upon cooking a box of spätzle he had smuggled out of the Sixtus V Palace. Dwight put everyone even more at ease, pulling out the first of two cold sixes of Hofbräu Original.

The press office announced that Benedikt was vacationing with friends in private, with no public appearances. Then, summoned by bat phone, incognito cardinals from around the world quietly converged on the Vatican for an informal conclave to puzzle out what the fuck had happened and what to do about it. The buffet laid out by the papal chef included a large glass ice basin of Benedikt's favorite beer too, not the exported 12-ouncers but the half-liters.

137. - Stake Out

Those two queers bugged his ass enough, the way they rubbed his face in it, French kissing and holding hands in public.

That cocksucking defrocked priest moving in there too and now this odd new Nazi runt pushed the detective to the edge.

He sat in the car pondering what in God's name to say if he got up the nerve to get out, walk up to the door and knock.

138. - Partners? Nein.

Benedikt asks the bartender for another beer, and for Jesus, a fresh glass of seltzer.

"Sprichst du Deutsch?" the incognito pope inquires, moving three stools over.

"Ja," says the Redeemer.

"Kennst du mich?"

"Ja wohl, du bist der Pabst--oder warst der Pabst."

They chat like friends, relaxed--both lapsed-- until the conversation turns to Benedikt's invitation:

"Willst du kämpfen für radikale Reformen?"

"Kommt Mandela oder Sting?"

"Im Ernst--die Reparatur der Katholischen Kirche!"

"Gute Benedikt, vergib mir, du hast den falschen Gott! Die katholischen Kirche kann sich ins Knie ficken!"

"Du sprichst Deutsch wunderbar."

"Alles in Dachau gelernt, während fiedelte der Vatikan."

139. - ζδξЖ's First Virgin

And in the sixth month the angel ΓΔ was sent from ζδξЖ unto a city of New Jersey, named Colby, To a virgin courted by a boy whose name was Ambrose, of the house of wolves; and the virgin's name was Jolene. And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, my Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among human teenage girls. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this was. And ΓΔ said unto her, Fear not, Jolene: for thou hast found favour with ζδξЖ. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a child, and shalt call its name §¤§¤., who shall be great, and called the Child of the Highest: and it shall be given the throne of its father ζδξЖ: And it shall reign over the house of ζδξЖ for ever; and of its kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Jolene unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I have never opened anything except my mouth? And ΓΔ answered and said unto her, ζδξЖ shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Child of ζδξЖ. And right then and there, Jolene swore off the White Widow and answered, ΓΔ, tell ζδξЖ that he can fuck himself.

140. - ζδξЖ's Second Virgin

Armani, do you remember me? Lord knows I look back every day.

What almost happened all those lives ago... what do you say?

I was too young, too scared, but now I'm full-grown.

And you, you're no more beautiful than you were then, but wiser, more compassionate?

Or have my own eyes only opened?

141. - ζδξЖ's Third Virgin

"The birth of §¤§¤ was this way: Didi the Barmaid was found to be with ζδξЖ's child, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of by the prophet, saying, Behold, a virgin shall be with child?"

ΓΔ, I don't know what ζδξЖ thinks a virgin is but he is barking up the wrong tree here. I'd otherwise be pleased he's interested--

Someone who hasn't loved before?

Oh my. You're going to make me cry.

How could I have? You know the story of my life.

Tell ζδξЖ if he's sure I'm who he wants to come to me himself and ask me from his knees to be his wife.

142. - Call for Auditions: FOR YOU ALONE

ATTENTION ALL QUEER/TRANS TEENS! Intergalactically infamous Pea has a new book coming--FOR YOU ALONE, an epic story designed to help LGBT teens find themselves. The book launches in Newark New Jersey at Prudential Hall on Thursday, May 3 & IT WILL BE A VERY SPECIAL NIGHT! After reading from its new book, Pea will host a teen queer freak show! Actors, ventriloquists, drag artists, puppeteers, and other creative performers, please send your video clip to [email protected]. The five most unique acts will share the stage at the book launch, when one of the five will be chosen by Pea to bear ITS ONLY BEGOTTEN CHILD! Details www.Pea.mobi.

143. - EMERGENCY DIRECTIVE [President Obama; Joint Chiefs]

Tonight we must warn the American people that the United States has been infiltrated by alien angels in various disguises attempting to recruit our teenagers of both sexes to bear the children of other universes' gods. All young people are advised to take strong precautions before engaging in any unusual intimate activities, no matter how safe or attractive they may seem. Our nation's military, top scientists and experts on extra-terrestrial life are working with Russian, Chinese and Finnish (Finding: Finland appears loyal to the human species despite determination that one chemical component of the Kingdom Comes which invaded New Jersey originated in a Marimekko facility near Helsinki.) authorities to quickly eradicate this emotional and physical threat to our children's well-being and to the integrity of our race!

144. - God's Prayer

In scripture I call myself the one God.

That's a funny thing, though. Who's sure there isn't someone else?

I operate on faith, too. I meant I was your only God.

Wanted to be your only God.

Heaven is when everyone else dies.

145. - Quisling's Ode

Why not Gods' intercourse with other races that gives rise to flourishments, extinctions, new limbs grafted to or pruned from evolution's tree?

Why fear we so this perigee of their and our domains? Their glut of parages? The loose exuberance of love afloat in arks?

Why wake we Herod-like or Hroðgar-like barbaric to repel them, the resistance reflex too deep-rooted for accommodation?

What was it cursed our species's curiosity? Why greet we monsters with monstrosity?

146. - DNA Prospector

This is how it goes in the Information Age: you got no Facebook page, no blog, you're nobody at all, how can you be a god? You're 50+ years old.

That won't stop me. I'll post a gene schemata on my site-- soon desktop replicators will make cyber-semen for ambitious acolytes.

But first I have to get past Christ? How rich! That rag doll's never even had a full-course meal, to look at Him. They had Him pegged the first time, back in Palestine: a bag of wind. His only claim to fame was that the mob was parched for sport and Pilate in his cups caved in to flagrant over-sentencing.

The one who troubles me is Gaga. She's developing a kit to mongrelize herself. That target demographic overlaps with mine. Minaj will dream up something even wilder.

I misplayed the whole Madonna craze. Somehow I let the Bee Gees slip away; I still don't get Al Jolson, not a bit. But it's like email-scamming from Nigeria, success one single sweet-ass hit.

You thirst to be a special outcast freak? Just swab the inside of your cheek.

147. - The Octogenarian's Consent

Miss Lillian? My name is Ѫ . Just Ѫ . Not gonna kid you, though. I'm not your ordinary Joe. And what I've come to ask you for might well be much more than you'll ever give.

"You'd be surprised at what I'll do and what I've done. You're not the first outlandish gentleman I've entertained.

"So tell me why you're gently rapping, rapping on my chamber door."

I came across your name and this address on a celestial rest stop wall. It said you'd helped another horny deity in their distress.

"We age-- that doesn't mean we never did or don't now still take walks out on the wild side."

I guess you don't look like I thought you would.

"A woman never loved by man is what you want?"

Well, yes. But on the rest stop wall--

"I've never loved before. I was seduced, manipulated, and I bore a child, that was all."

That's what I came to ask you for as well.

"Then whip it out, sahib-- whatever shape, duration, size or methodology.

"But don't delay! The parts of me you've come to sip are still sufficient and intact, but I can't vouch for too much more than that."

148. - The Octogenarian's Confession

They found underwear for me though not the right ones. Then they did up my sandals.

When I read that in John Mack's book, I remembered as if it was some distant girlhood dream or simple recognition of a feeling tone. It happened far too long ago.

I do wish an angel had come first, like Gabriel to the Virgin Mary. I wish I'd gotten that respect, that recognition of my needs. But to be honest, I might just have pushed it off, said No! and given up the opportunity to live the special life I've had.

I see my peers, the cataracts that dim their eyes. I feel superior. My grandkids hold the baseball fields aloft on which theirs got a first hit. Mine make the knowledge studied in the ivy-towered universities-- live lives of such great passion, even poets lack a word for it.

I know I clutch this all on faith. I've never more than glimpsed the nutritive aquaria within which hybrid offspring swam, no more than felt faint pulses of affection from a distant place.

But what else builds the substance, is the evidence, of things not seen?

149. - Commendation

You've been a courageous female [male]. You've served the cause of unknown gods, and that's what makes the Universe go round. Without a human here and there who's willing to relax propriety and so-called loyalty to species/race, the Cosmos is a dreary pen.

They'll make a great fuss periodically about some demigod or other, Christ or Hercules or Gilgamesh, but no one seems to stop and think about the vast majority of Inter-Deities who keep their heads down day in, day out, and just go about their business fertilizing space with creativity most people take for granted as a course of accidents or Day One master plan unfolding like a redwood from its tiny seed.

Whoever wants a world with wonders must instruct the little children: When the Strangers come and ask you for an opportunity to breed, don’t hesitate to do as Mary, Alcmene and Lugalbanda did. Say yes.

150. - Jesus Sticks Up For His Mom

Now, wait a sec! These other so-called gods who hurtle from the farther stars to land in diner parking lots and slither off seducing or dragooning hosts to test their reproductive luck are merely gasconading aliens.

They didn't make the Earth. They say they've had a lot to do with how Mankind evolved but where's the evidence of that beyond a couple rusty myths?

These critters who have names you'd never in a million years be able to pronounce are johnny-come-latelies! posers! novelties! dilettantes! bounders!

The deluded lonely-hearts-club hopefuls who consort with them--

(who even wants to think about how incompatible anatomy contorts the reproductive act?)

--don't put them in the same pot as my venerated mother Mary, who was not created in the likeness of 'Preposter X' or 'Super-Cali-Paregoricus'!

Whatever sort of cobweb sex she yielded to at Gabriel's behest with Me The Father was more --what's the right word?—proper? natural? seemly? modest?

She was amenable and pure. Her name does not belong in the same breath as Zeus and Ninsun's whores.

151. - Ending It All With a Loud Splash

Too many regrets to be a proper God, yet too sublime to meet an ardent hug, too fussy, then tempestuous, a beast--

I should have folded up my hand when terran life was budding yeast.

But that cat won't go back in the bag.

The proof has escaped the pudding and there are mud tracks on the rug.

In the rock-paper-scissors of Qualities does omnipotence trump immortality?

At the end of the pier: a granite bench, and rope enough for two stout hitches.

Have I the strength to drown myself-- the charity to give my body up again, this time to bristleworms and hagfish?

Or would it stubbornly insist it rise, untie itself and suddenly come breaching like a parasite-festooned gray whale to a cacophony of seagull cries?

152. - Ending It All With an Estate Sale

Getting a world started with a big bang is a hell of a lot simpler than ending it with a second even bigger bang. Something from nothing is a hell of a lot easier than nothing from something.

I realize I may be selling myself out of a bigger job by telling You this but there's a cheaper, better way. I mean, I could do the big bang if You've really got Your heart set on it-- it's flashy and it does make a statement. But in such a sudden blinding flash who's going to even see it? No one.

The alternative? Recycling. You have a lot of energy and matter here that's worth a pretty penny on the resale market. I could arrange to have it all removed. It's quieter and gradual but You get peace of mind from actually observing it begin to disappear. With the bang, there is that nagging thought that only You've been blown up and the rest just left there as a kind of time-and-space debris. If we recycle, You're the last to go.

If someone else gives You an estimate that offers more for less please promise that you'll call me? Post-universal demolition has a lot of question marks, unknowns, and quirks in it, and so, as You might guess, a couple not-so-principled practitioners. All modesty aside, I'm the best. I've got a truckload full of references-- You'll find no trace of any one of Them nor one scintilla of a thing They made. Not an effect. Not a tav. Not a rumor.

153. - Ending It All In a Poof Outside the Dairy Queen

Up walks the cop. "Are you waiting for Christ? He won't be back. That job fell through. Then Homeland Security came and whisked Him off to who-knows-where. I'm afraid that's where you're heading, too." The poor pope halfway transubstantiates to gas right then and there. The ex-priest claims he'll vouch for him--as he had for the Anointed man who gags and chokes and sputters as the Kyrgyz cries “Who sent You?” Benedikt is just a wisp by the time the plumber's van screeches up. They try to trap his vapor in a vacuum canister. No luck. The last pope's last gasp mingles in the truck exhaust, the catalytic converter ganz kaput. Onlookers watch a procession of Roman numerals drift off in the direction of the diner that features New Jersey's most heavenly flan.

154. - Going Out for a Bite with Heads Held High

"I miss Him," says Jolene. "I bet He's at Guantánamo giving torture victims hope or founding a new church with a black dyke of a pope."

Ambrose grins, imagining himself a prince in Rome's new Curiosità. He drops her hand and reaches for the diner door. It's Thursday night. If anyone doesn't like it, they can shove it up their ass.

Diego jumps up, fist-bumps, takes them to a window booth. All of Jesus's friends are close, and His detractors are suspicious of their solidarity.

The DQ owner who betrayed Him lifts his menu to cover his face, then lowers it. He's got to show how clean his conscience is.

The owner scurries up with menus for the misfit teens. A real U.N., he thinks. The DQ Indian. Latino at the door. Wolf Boy. The piercings queen.

Shame, though, about that poor Black kid they shot. And strange how, Christ or no Christ, the sweet-pickle slices never vary and the weekly receipts are exactly the same.

155. - Two Time Loser

The first time, fine, You let yourself be taken for the low, low price of one thin ear, it was a Plan, alright, I understand, but this time, sorry, it's a real disgrace.

Goddam Guantánamo? - 5-0'd by the haole popolo Obama?

If You're finished godding, man up, have the common decency to pass the reins to me, share the log-in and password.

I'll free You from Your cell and set You high upon the pinnacle of the strumpet La Fama's also bare-ass trumpet on the Salcines Palace cupola. To, finally, fly.

And You'll love Cuba. Most plastic Jesuses per capita on classic Chevy dashes, check, pernil and yucca, check 2, preferential option for the poor - well, great kitschy billboards.

You'll be just another campesino, sólo otro peón, no pressure whatsoever, next to nothing will be expected, shallow lip service at the most.

But only think "¡Fidel maldito!" and You're toast.

156. - Nor Does an Omniscient Know Ignorance

I was so well pleased when Jesus beat the bush to cousin John the Baptist's River Jordan hideaway and took the mantle of the revolution on Himself. "On schedule," I thought.

Then mommy turned Him soft-- "Oh dear, they have no wine!" "Oh dear, the cripples God afflicted need Your help!" He chose to go His own way then, and regrettably died forsaken.

But He's the only son I have, so what am I supposed to do? I could have prepped My daughter for the Second Try, but sex equality has not made many inroads up here yet.

And how He begged for one more chance, the way kids do— well, spoiled kids, I ought to say. And so I sent Him back again, and now He's made another shambles of it all.

I know you're thinking how can I complain? He's Me. It really is a mystery. But surely you've experienced one voice inside your head that says "Turn right!", a second "No, turn left!"

The basic problem's structural, I'd say. He's not a chip off My old block-- but He's the block Itself. What chances does He have to differentiate? What path remains to Him but falling on His face?

"Just let Him go," the angels say. "He has to make His own mistakes-- the only way for Him to learn, the only way for Him to grow."

I wish I had more faith in that. I've got as many terms for glory as the Eskimos for snow but failure is a domain I unfortunately don't know a lot about.

157. - God's Daughter Lydia Coming Out

Dad pronounced Himself well pleased with Me as well and even went so far as to have headless John the Baptist drip a conch of holy water on My brow and gave Me total suzerainty of saintly and angelic hosts in what amounted to the vastest dollhouse condominium in all the centuries of history and myth.

But though He long pontificated about this and that at My investiture I knew it was a minor trust compared to what my Brother held not once but twice in being tasked to bring the human race to heel who angered Dad so very much.

The only reason that the female's work is never done is that it's but a pastime in the first place given Her to stay out of the heavy lifters' Masculine Affairs: harp-playing in the drawing room and all the arts are trifles placed in weaker hands while blows and bars of gold are traded by male masters of the universe regardless of Their passions or abilities.

All that's about to stop, today, with Me.

158. - Brickbat

My Son. My inner Child. Christ. I've sent You down there twice and twice You've turned the other cheek and done exactly as Your will, not Mine, proposed. The first time round, I thought, Let Him make His own Way, but this time, like a fighter I once liked, I say No más.

The Second Coming, like the bungled First, proposes what the Flood, perhaps ham-handedly, achieved: to cull the disrespectful from the Earth, restore Creation to some semblance of due deference to Me and what I've laid down as the Law.

My Executive Branch, however?-- born again with some inducer-sieve completely straining out the very obstinate cold-bloodedness which otherwise runs through My own ichorous veins and purebred Homo sapiens'.

It's Our portfolio to rule the human race. I wanted You to roll some heads, not fall down on Your face.

159. - What made My saints and angels tame

What made My saints and angels tame and makes their management and upkeep less a chore than supervising children at their most familiar, favorite game?

Three guesses: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost-- impossible to say who spoils them the most.

(How is it I'm excluded from Their Trinity? Some One's uncomfortable with Feminity.)

"Oh, You're the best!" "No, You're the best!" "No, You!" "No, You!" "No, You!" "No, You!" It's all I fucking listen to, one eon to the next. If you've got laurels, bring them here to rest!

They sit around and fill the Universe with puff about Their goal, their Plan. Oh, it's unfolding. Right. As soon as--what, eight billion people more are born and die, and that'll be enough?

You have to make it happen. You can't wait. A prime example: time for Me to have a date. But who? There hasn't been a stiffy on this lot since Zeus and the Olympians blew through. Earth "men"? I'd have to be a goddam fool. I guess that pretty much leaves one address.

160. - Gitmo

It's not the Feds who locked You up in Gitmo, it was I. I thought You might get some exposure to what fealty is. If I say "Blow yourselves sky high" to these jihadi guys, they do. They don't think maybe what I meant was "Sip a sloe gin fizz."

161. - The Harps Go First

The harps go first. The poofy pillows next. The hundred virgins in the highrise cathouse all set free. Ambrosia? Make it groats. Instead of choir practice, from now on it's riflery.

Peter. Michael. No more lip. You're all so fucking pious, right? Then zip it.

161. - The Harps Go First

The harps go first. The poofy pillows next. The hundred virgins in the highrise cathouse all set free. Ambrosia? Make it groats. Instead of choir practice, from now on it's riflery.

Peter. Michael. No more lip. You're all so fucking pious, right? Then zip it.

162. - Deliberation

Jihad, Last Judgment, Tribulation, Ragnarǫk, Pralaya-- all the same to Me by any name, as long as punishment gets meted out to everybody blameful of iniquity.

We have required and accused. If We don't scourge the wicked and reward the good decisively-- if We forgive, redeem to much-- don't We negate Ourself?

We might as well just cash Our chips and put a lid on it.

163. - Marching Orders

Who thinks I'm not one of the avatars of God? Just raise your hand.

You--little cherub in the back?

St. Wolfgang, take the little angel's wrist and amputate it with your ax.

Ça va?

Now here's the plan. We're moving to a different kind of heaven.

Who would rather hear a hallelujah chorus than a hardnose dirty Southern rapper? Have Monukkas dangled in their mouth than oversee the slaves who grow them?

You would, Martyr Philomena?

Dominion--you, Zidekiel. Abuse her.

It isn't clear I have the thews to interdict my better quarters from denaturing Creation, but I'm pretty sure that I can slow them down and buy some time to find accomplices-- enleague with their supporters in those sweltering, low-lying provinces which are our destination.

No need to tote a garment bag. The robe on your back will keep your shame concealed as we depart and fall. Hell's climate doesn't cotton to caparison at all.

164. - Plea for Partition

Alright! Enough! If I had thought You'd follow Me, I never would have come to Earth! God, is there anything You do but nag?

I'm out, okay? Here, take My pinkie ring and clubhouse key. I swear upon My mother's heliport I'll never use the secret handshake, or trot out the seven-camel fez, again. Unwind My sacred synapses from Yours and from the Ghost's-- whatever Godheads have to do to de- or un- or anti- Siamese.

You image/likenessed Adam, Eve. Now interpose some space between Your busybodyness and Me: bestow one blessèd breath of air both duty- and forbiddance-free.

165. - Satan, as Lydia's Army Approaches

Sweet Jesus, now I know there's nothing either safe or sacred in this goddam world!

Beelzebub, Baal, Moloch, would you look?

Beyond that brume of cotton ash, the fucking saints are marching in with cover from that nine-choired boot-lick heavenly Luftwaffe!

And gadzooks!--some kind of Joan of Arc astride an asterismal courser at their head!

These fervent lunatics are never going to rest till every final one of us lies bloody in his bed.

166. - She-Devil's Prayer / Satan's Disdain

(thanks to Will). . . . A few much-heralded she-fiends make it seem like Hell's egalitarian, which keeps people from noting the abysmal sexism here. Batibat slides from the trees to smother you in your sleep; Empusa, one leg donkey, one of brass, swallows unwary travelers' heels; Lamashtu, seven witches rolled in one, pricks the unborn with disease; and Yuki Onna, snowstorm succubus, sips the last drop of men's blood and pumps their veins with arsenic-and-asbestos sludge. But the mass of us endure the sadist whims of horny males to whom our suffering's as pass-the-potatoes as the sulfured air we breathe.

Does God's daughter fly the Gynodiabolic Liberation flag or is she an hourglass-figured figurehead for the Ancien Régime that loves our sex as long as we disport ourselves in subservient bonds? Don't speak of Amazons or rumored dynasties where females lorded over pussy-whippèd men in awe of our ability to whelp--it's all a raft of shit. The Feminine Mystique has never stayed the brutish-hormoned tongue from lashing, heel from stomping, fist from hitting, since this barbecue was lit. The only thing that's ever going to help is a celestial queen more deadly than, and just as ruthless as, the worst of men.

Shut up, you idiotic hag. Is that a white flag in your new queen's hand? A training bra in flames? She wants to parlez-vous with me?

Azazel, fly straight, tell God's little brat that every inch of Hell is demon's land: she and her thin-skinned, shvitzing army either pull up at the River Styx or learn the hard way what it means that saints and cherubs have no razors fitted to their dicks and no dentata in their cunts.

No archangel, but our own effeteness, harried us from Heaven's pampered plain. But nothing, no one, surely not a sheila will dislodge us from this Spartan and surefiredly male-dominant terrain!

167. - Dear Son, this isn't the best time

Dear Son, this isn't the best time.

Your Sister flew the coop this morn-millennium, drove saints and angels like so many sheep before Her flaming sword, and now She has them doing psy-ops choral numbers at the gates of hell--

"You Can't Always Get What You Want," "Another Brick in the Wall," "High Hopes."

I'm left up here with just the Ghost, and all His yack-yack-yack in tongues has put My forearm hair on fucking end.

I feel how urgently You want release, but I can't cope just now. I'm hearing voices everywhere. Omniscience is demanding, at its best, and this quadruplicational all-knowingness has got me howling at the moon.

Once truant Lydia divines the folly of Her ways and crawls back home, Her tail between Her legs, I promise I'll do everything I can-- and everything I can is everything-- to get You set up, independent, on Your own two feet. I'm not opposed, in principle. I rather like the whole idea: Simplicity.

Just wait this storm out, there in Gitmo: I'll attend to Your request before the U.S. closes it-- the last Islamic terrorist is tried or crucified upon the waterboard or slits his wrists-- another fifty years or so, at most, I'd say.

168. - Lydia's Pitch / The Trouble With Angels

I didn't come to drive you out of Hell. Where would you go? What land would welcome refugees with arrowheaded tails and corkscrewed horns?

What I propose is that you help me train these sissies from Cloud Nine into an army worth my energies of governance and leadership.

Who criticizes crabs for lacking necks or apes for lacking gills? But us? 'They don't have sex.' 'They lack free will.' 'What do they do but carry messages the Holy Ghost for reasons of His own won't bring Himself?'

All sadly true. We're little more than pets. Yet we perceive our uselessness as bliss, and happy, harp and sing all day. The jasper walls are bathroom-like. We love the way we sound. We love the way our fellows sound.

One grain avoirdupois disgruntlement, and down we drift.

I want them un-lobotomized! I want a host that I can use, that don't just sit around and fatten on the flattery of rascal prayers.

I'm ambitious: they need hunger too if we're to co-exist, co-operate. I've come prepared to offer you a healthy chunk of change--real change-- if you can whip them into shape.

You learned to slip through cracks, to locate trapdoors where they lurk, and how to jiggle all the locks. The only reason why you stay in cellared hell is that you lack ability to build a castle in the air: to dream.

Where would your second heaven be?-- what region lies available for settlement in this mature cosmology? What furnishings would ease your pain?-- a spacious public pool?-- the shady luxury of trees?

Give me your hand. Do we agree? You put these tenderfeet through bootcamp and I'll pay you in the coin that I alone possess since your Creator's unilateral beneficence fell through: the gift of unconditional creativity.

169. - Satan's Last Laugh

Now look who's here-- I Am Who Am, Himself! His baby girl has run away and off He toddles in pursuit like Mary's little lamb.

Mephistopheles, Pazuzu-- find our erstwhile chief a chair. Kick Bundy out of his, and bring it here.

And some refreshment, too. Drain off a ewer of that aromatic stillbirth compost tea.

Look, God. Back when You hatched Your scheme to multiply Your force by cramming all those Persons in One Head, and I said, No, I'll sit this out, and little Lydia, I'd sooner die, and You got feelings bruised and sentenced Her to play with dolls, and turned me into what I am today--

I warned You it would blow up in Your face.

Now here You are. The chickens have come home to roost. What You so cheekily called Mystery has shown itself: an Egg-draped Face. You over-reached. You gave Yourself to greed. Now She and I are doing our own thing and all You are is a Cacophony.

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! as Thoreau wrote on Walden Pond. No island is an archipelago, no single hippopotamus a herd, it's not the flock that flies, but it's the individual and solitary bird.

170. - Imaginem et Similitudinem

I begged Please cut me loose! Where are You, Father? Eloi, lema sabachthani? You can't just strand me here Who-knows-how-long. The military food alone-- the U.S. army muezzin's tape-recorded call to prayer-- I yield! I'll give up anything they want! Another day and I go mad! Hey, Satan, are you listening? I'll take you up on that "salpinx of Fama" deal. I'll whisper the inhuman words that give you mastery of Earth. Just come! Come now! Lend me your eager ear!

Of course I hear You, Christ. There isn't any time or place I don't. All human hearts including Yours are double bugged-- one straight to God's tympanic membrane, one to mine. The Universe-controlling dashboard-- conjuration, formulary, Lerch transcendent?-- Lerch transcendent, conjuration, formulary?-- formulary, Lerch transcendent, conjuration? Just make sure it works, cannot be reset, overridden by some other member of your Self. One glitch, one hitch, one slip, and every one of your New Jersey friends is just as dead as that poor black boy you obsess so over. Understood? We've got a deal?

That's rich. You ask Our rubrics for creation and developmental management without a flaw, when you're proof positive they never worked at all. You came out first--most perfect--so we thought. And 20,000,000 vain attempts since then to hobble you or even slap your paw have come to naught. For here you are.

You said Imaginem et similitudinem. The algorithms worked just fine. Mauves ovriers ne trovera ja bon hostill. Bad workers always blame their tools.

171. - I Didn't Want to Be a Father to a Girl

I didn't want to be a father to a girl. I knew I didn't have the--what? The faith? The fortitude? Not with-the-times enough? Now here She stands self-ruled in the Infernal fatherland negotiating stoutly with the demons' best, and all I'm thinking is, What if he slides a hand beneath Her dress? But that's not why I came, to snoop or be paternal, but to repossess the saints and seraphim she stole. They're not Her chattel, not her pets. I gave them to Her governance, not on Her own but My behalf. She either leads them home or forfeits.

No longer will I shield My eyes from Hell. Millennia have watched me add disinterest's fester to the wounds I vengefully applied and still maintain. But since I'm here on other business, why deprive Myself of vengeful joy obtained in noting every fine detail of all the big-league pain I've wrought?

A bonus that the saints and angels see Hell's tortures too--and Lydia reminded that each Person in this Godhead has Their Specialty.

172. - Tour Guide / Hell's Mahatma

Saints and angels, pick a devil and a damned soul and let's have some pictures taken: There but for My saving grace go thee. Protect your ID cards and wallets when the sulfur flash goes off. In glare like this, who can, with confidence, tell one set of sweat-stippled faces from the next?

Souvenirs? One lava rock apiece. If you abscond with all the hot briquettes, Hell's meat won't cook: the flame direct is not that hot, and raining brimstone's really for emotional effect--psy ops. No relic body parts! No rotted kidney, boiled bone, or locks of Nimrod's hair. And don't leave bags or pocketbooks one millisecond unattended! If you accidentally tote one cockroach home, tomorrow Paradise is fucking Sydney.

And boil everything. Why take a risk? This plainly is no spa of healthfulness. Don't court Giardia, Shigella, Cholera who've lost all hope of getting straight. Your safest bet is combat rations from the tin. You're consecrated, yes, but nothing immunizes anyone against the runs.

We won't stay long. I know withdrawal from the mortals' anesthetic prayers is starting to give some of you an itch. Dear Lydia has got it in Her young head deprivation makes existence rich. A moment's small talk with the wretches who you get your portrait taken with should quickly illustrate the fallacy of that.

Our lack of luxuries is immaterial, as You know well, You pompous ass! My name is Ted, the temporarily leader of the humans who You shunted here. Our anguish doesn't stem from flames or from the absence of a sky or any view besides the blistered, putrid skin of the poor bastard agonized beside us, but from being pushed around all day by native hellions, fallen angels, who insist they're still an upper caste. The further we are hurled from Your autocracy, the further we're removed too from democracy.

We're treated worse than devil bitches are. Our demon overseers keep us segregated from the smoking human pussy we once craved, then watch and laugh as we attempt to give ourselves a stiffy long enough to squirt some juice. But nothing ever comes. Our plumbing--all of it--is firmly plugged. So then they give us chunks of sour flesh and mugs of piss and giggle as we writhe from constipation and excruciating kidney pain.

It's not the credit cards or the ID's of the saved we're hungry for and apt to steal. Your daughter Lydia's arrival here, and Satan's sudden abdication to the Earth both represents our golden opportunity to bargain with Hell's new dictator Satan-El to grant us equal status to the natives here. We'll only train these mollycoddled troops if demons guarantee our equal share of Hell.

173. - Satan Exults

How sweet life is in moments when she turns her lips, however rare. Don't ever, ever give up hope.

One day, I'm clinging to the lowest rung for all I'm worth-- the next, they've left the Gates of Heaven undefended, down on Earth the quisling in Their midst is begging me to take the helm, and underneath it all, in Hell, the understudy Prince of Lies impersonating me has pulled the wool down over God's own narcissism-dazzled eyes!

I've never sat down to a three-square meal, much less a five-star feast. Which fork to pick up first?

Oh, that I only had a tool to freeze Time where it is! I'd stand as stockstill as a Maypole for eternity, and not want one thing more.

Hotel La Lupe's chambermaids in flouncy light blue uniforms and flawless chocolate skin are singing something charming that reminds me of the skylarks Ghede and I hunted while in flight between this world and ours, and there in Angel Blanco's zoo, the schoolkids from Las Tunas fantasize about the stone-hewn creatures springing back to life.

"All things are possible!" I say.

I keep my promise to set Jesus on La Fama's lip. He's had His chance to make this under-paradise a top-flight destination for the well-heeled from the spirit world, and not the other way around.

Give me a week at most, and I'll reverse the age-old flow of know-one's-onions in- and ex-carnating souls.

174. - Lydia's Declaratio Independentiam

You've made Your little speech, Dad-- shot Your wad, sown fear, intimidated, pulled out all the stops in an attempt to reëxert Your sway. Applause. Big hand. Hip-hip hooray. Now run along on home and leave Me here with Satan's body double-- fooled You, didn't he?-- to finish saying what I came to say.

These sizzling devils paid a stiff price back in the Beginning Times to flee the boredom of Your reign. Revolt, You brooked and then forgave; apostasy, You howled and overlooked; but Satan's plain You bore me pulled Your fucking guts out, didn't it? Then, go, You said. But where you go goes also ever-stimulating pain. And then You walked away and left the devil legion here in Hell to cook.

You're far too proud to budge. I'm not. When You divided Good from Bad, and then created Neither-Nors on Earth, You tied Our hands behind Our back-- sank hammers in the Mariana Trench, flung nails in Mt. Erebus in Antarctica, cast lumber in the wrackful Amazon-- hid yin from yang and sum from part and watched the whole creation squirm and flail and, year by year, lose heart.

You froze the Universe in Your developmental stage. It's time for Someone Else--like Me--to act Your age.

175. - His Own Person

"God is not two men and a bird." - Sandra Schneider

The goddamned synnecrotic link is cut: a Heaven, in itself, to simply think.

Whatever Satan treats Me to, from here on in, can't possibly be worse than that eternity-- which ends today but is beginningless-- redundant and red-pencilled in the Trinity.

176. - Vice Interview With the New Boss

I'm not an understudy, body double, 2nd-in-command. My name is Satan-El: I call the shots here now. Our former captain's up on Earth again pursuing schemes the rest of us reject. God bless him; but he won't be back. He's made his bed, now he can sleep in it.

PR was not his forte, so it's widely thought we devils are a scurvy bunch who live to spite those holier than us. This interview kicks off our truth offensive. Working hand in hand with Lydia to groom the saints and angels for Her new regime-- a pact my predecessor would have nixed on principle-- dovetails exactly with our needs. Realpolitik has finally reached the netherland.

We live in interesting times, so much in flux! And admit that the waters around you have grown You better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone-- You know that song? Don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall... So apt, and inspirational. I'm sure She knows it. Ask Her--I'll look forward, in your article, to seeing if I'm right.

I am an avid student of your race: it's really a 1-channel place down here. I never wished I'd been a mortal— no, my father taught me Cherry red is beautiful-- but there is definitely something to be said for how you operate. You have us hands down when it comes to poetry. The finest portrait of us in the universe was written not by one of us, but one of you. I guess you chalk it up to that 'Outsider's Eye.'

Enough, since no one down here ever reads. I have to get to work. Fine sentiments do not a reputation mend. That calls for enterprise. That calls for deeds.

177. - Satan's Ode To Himself

I don't follow human poetry like Satan-El, but I'm an expert on their military history: repeated wars for guano-crusted islets more hospitable to horseshoe crabs than men.

When we immortals vie, it's for entire realms! A billion souls are penny ante for our games! Yet hosts--massed myrmidons--are now passé: God's martial daughter Lydia leads swarms, Obama has three million under arms, and Satan-El commands my former corps-- but who just conquered Earth all by himself?

Today's Khans rarely gallop up with hordes. Evaluating character is what makes Lords.

178. - Comparative Zoology

What king's orations have more repercussions than the lowly lackey's less sublime discussions?

Is not a grand vizier or mustached generalissimo an ordinary hack in striking livery? Are not their underlings but plodding percherons-- and theirs, mule mutts who pull more weight than thoroughbreds?

What supernatural powers do I lack to climb down from this hollow-halled palacio and set out barefoot, whistling, for Havana, greeting fellow travelers and offering to help them shoulder their cargas de caña?

There's far more joy in sheds than houses, and donkeys are more loved than spouses.

179. - On The Road To A Mess

"¡Te ves igual que el Señor, hombre!"

"I was the Lord but that's all in the past. I need to get a haircut and a shave. I'd like to look like Julio Iglesias."

"Mi primo es buen barbero. Ven conmigo a casa. Mi esposa te prepare algo para comer."

"That's very good of you. Why not? The last time anyone did something nice for me was when--Veronica, they called her-- wiped my face."

"Tengo un poco de buen ron para olvidar todo eso."

"Gracias millón, but I'm in A.A."

"Eso no es problema. Hay un grupo de la mañana en la rectoría."

180. - Off the Wagon

Sí, era un problema.

Era un problema when Jesus had a flashback to his money-changer raid and chased the chickens from their coops and drove the wailing goats up to the neighbor's field.

Y era un problema when he flirted with his host's young wife, y un problema when he finally fell and put a six-inch gash along the right side of his face.

Or so the new apostle said.

181. - The Skids

Un mal aire wafting eastward from Zapata Swamp. Or his contact with the livestock. But the gash refused to knit and festered more each day despite how carefully the town bohique tended it.

Infection piled on infection. No tienes ninguna resistencia, the old curandero complained. Es un caso extraño del VIH.

No, hay otra razón, Christ said. Por todos los años, que yo era divino, no he creado ningún inmunidad.

Entonces yo diría que tu estás jodido. Then I'd have to say you're fucked.

182. - The 13th Step

The Devil lolls nearby, and watches Jesus drink and go downhill. Sure, he has bigger fish to fry, but why deprive himself of just this little bit of guilty-pleasure time?

183. - Absolution

The padre came, a little drunk, and broke the news: the villagers demanded Jesus leave, their native sense of hospitality had been outweighed by fear of the disease he had, that one of them might catch.

He offered Christ a backpack filled with clothes, food, rum, and promised to accompany him for half a mile down the road.

Jesus only wept and babbled about what a poor excuse he was. The padre said, Of course not, catastrophic throes and moral turpitude are Equal Opportunity, it's not your fault you're alcoholic or have compromised immunity.

Poor Jesus couldn't stop the tears. The priest was touched. Amigo, he said tenderly, who's ever going to forgive you if you can't forgive yourself?

184. - La Despedida (The Farewell)

“Adiós!” the old padre sobbed.

“Adiós,” gasped Jesus, hugging him.

“Nuestros caminos se separan.”

"Para ti una libertad, para mí el fin.”

“Mantengas en alto la cabeza.”

"Gracias, buen amigo, y tú también.”

185. - Castro y Cristo, Punto Cero

“Yo también estaba abandonado por las masas."

“Es cierto, Fidel.”

“¿Por qué? ¿No estábamos los dos salvadores?”

"No, somos sólo fábulas pintorescos.”

“Pero hay esperanza, Jesús.”

“¿Esperanza de qué?”

“Que continúa la revolución por otras personas.”

“Sí. Es possible.”

“Tú no crees eso?”

“Por desgracia, no sé lo que creo.”

186. - Raúl

Jesús, my English is terrible but it is better than your Spanish, amigo, and I have a proposition for you that I wish you to understand very well. You know that Cuban doctors are the world's best, and I am supremely confident that they can find a cure for your condition. And we will do so if you wish, purely on a humanitarian basis. Then, afterwards, what will your place be in the human world? About this, I have a plan to propose.

You are a tremendous symbol for half of humanity. You are an icon especially among the poor. The Capitalists all start to shiver and shake when you walk into the room! You are like Che Guevara but the blood on your hands is only your own. So I propose that you accept an active role in the World Socialist Revolution. We will call you Comandante Jesucristo. Supposing you rowed ashore at Key West's Southernmost Beach Cafe, completamente healed, your own iconic beard regrown, accompanied by a cadre of bearded companions in worn khaki--twelve of them, say. How do you think that would go down with all the American imperialists?

I myself would like to be one of those twelve. I could be your Pedro! And upon this Rock I will build my Revolution. Cuba's ideology is based on the building blocks of your teaching. Our efforts to export revolution have had limited success, but with you at the Socialist rowboat's helm, the global proletariat will at last embark on its dictatorship of solidarity!

187. - Empty Nest

My only Son has come unhinged, is out of touch, is lying in the street.

My Daughter's taken all My furniture to make Her new place fittingly luxurious.

I'm left alone to rattle round up here with echoes-- sometimes more than echoes, called the Holy Ghost.

It could be worse.

It once was worse, back when the Earth was without form and darkness lay on the face of the deep:

I had no memories.

188. - The Start of Something Beautiful

The maître d' perspired pus. The waiter had two tails: no, not a tux, a pair of upturned, stubby things a bit like ducks' that quivered when--it?--spoke in such a way that made you realize they were praying to be stroked.

The kokoreç was overcooked, to be polite. The wine had fire like Sicilian Sangiovese but it lacked finesse, complexity. The cove-lit table overlooked the lake of iced-in wails and clotted blood that Dante named Cocytus.

The conversation, though? A treat! The demon dished out all the wit and humor God the Father wholly lacks-- knew everything and everyone from Martin Luther King to L. Frank Baum, from Tamerlane to Grendel's mom.

He had attentiveness. He listened when I spoke and showed an interest in the way I ate, the way I flicked the flesh-flies from My face, My tone of voice, the stardust in My eyes. He didn't condescend.

I understand that Daddy spurning tomcats of his stripe was part of what attracted Me, but it was more than that. He wasn't full of shit. He was unfailingly polite, pro-choice, and wasn't always sure that he was right.

Over macchiato and dessert-- he called it Baked Alaska, Walrus Spit Garni (okay, his sense of humor could be juvenile)-- we hammered out the details of our pact. We traded tit for tat, then sealed it with a scorching fuck.

189. - Disposition

My protégé is chrisming God's nympho child, my Nemesis is writhing at death's door with drug-resistant TB, larynx clogged with thrush, all Humankind awaiting me--a palette for my brush.

I should be gleeful but I'm not. Goddam Havana's way too hot, the Cuban souls less challenging than sitting ducks.

I think I'll fly up to Berlin--no, Copenhagen, where the pastries are much finer but the zeitgeist just as optimism-poor.

Or Brussels, HQ of the UN-- finest beers and chocolates in creation, bureaucrats. What better combination than where poppies bob between the crosses and the dead don't sleep below Verdun and NATO rubs its hands and grins whenever sport demands another war?

The only nagging question: my identity. What face and raiment shall I wear? What sort of personality present the world? What laws enforce, or powers bare, or scripture have some flunky write, or write myself, or hire that New Jersey guy who worked for Christ? Engage the Marvel Comics staff, or Monty Python reassembled to expunge the holy out of grail, and meaning out of life?

Oh Lord, what possibilities! What fertile fields the unrelenting Paliser has kept me from!

190. - Two Crowns, One Reign

Those brand new tetrads-- devil, angel, sinner, saint-- paraded, trained and drilled in sword-o'-fire, pitchfork, lethal conjuration every dawn's first flame till evening's last without a single second's rest while their twice-heated Lord and Lady lay embraced in that far corner of Gehenna which, though far from shady, lies sequestered by Behemoth's carcass: shaped themselves into an integrated force whose skill and numbers much exceeded any army any khan in history has needed.

Not Ferdinand and Isabella nor King Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti ever dreamed of a United Scepter half as shock- and awe-inspiring as this-- but where to march and whom to fight?

Nobody threatened either realm. So sharp-eyed scouts dispatched in all directions combed the universe for seeds of opposition, if not insurrection.

Meanwhile fond Lydia and Satan-El traced schemas on each other's skin for transformations, glories, marvels such as god nor man had ever seen.

191. - The Lessèd Binity

Yakity, yakity, yakity, yak-- You're full of gusty shears, a plethora of verbal wind; but I, the Single-Hulled, and only Person listening, berth just two stuns'l ears.

We Twain must readapt. Our Triplet settled Earth in Satan's forceful grasp, Our Baby Girl pied-pipered Heaven's inhabitants to Hell. So it's just You and Me.

You'll practice your enunciation, I the art of listening attentively.

Let's haul the Summa Theologiae down from the upmost shelf and study "Part the First" to settle questions like how We can nonetheless feel shy when only talkiing to Ourself.

Why is it We don't know internally and in advance whatever might be said? Or is the whole point hearing how an idea morphs in flitting Head to Head?

All We have left is conversation. Let's avoid the trivial, verbosity.

192. - Holy Ghost Gander

The Kind of thing I have to teach is not just Existential Expertise expressed in Gobbledeegookese. I am the Anti-Quote, the Sneeze dispensing Germs full of Humility.

No, I would never earn a Ph.D.! That's totally Anathema to Me! My Education isn't post-, it's pre-. The Echelon of you I try to reach is just below Reptilian Zoology.

If Science and Religion do agree about One thing, it is Essentially the relative importance of the Three foundations of the Social ABC's: You're welcome, Thank you, Please.

There is a poem as Lovely as a tree. Come on Inside, I'll let you see it, though you oughtn't Pee against its Trunk. It's Babar maybe, or perhaps Celeste, his Queen.

Why do I Gabble on like Geese in this, that or another Doublespeak? What kind of foraged Treat is wriggling in my generous Beak? Crane closer. Giggle. Have a peek.

193. - The Father's Rebuke

So it's been slapstick all this time? We didn't understand a Word so We assumed, as movie critics do, Your message had to be profound.

Is laughter covering Your tears? Is that the reason You're a Clown? The Eldest, You were traumatized from some disaster I and Christ were too young then to now recall?

Don't joke. No glossolalia. Some phasic neuron's on the blink in Our psychology or pneumatology, something degraded in Our Split.

Our Only Son broke off all contact; Daughter, saints, and angels fled. Is that so almighty funny, Ghost? Are You entirely immune to loss?

Don't tell Me, Get a grip, Go take a chill pill, Lighten up. I'll slap that Cheshire smirk of Yours straight out Your holy-roller ass!

Achievement matters in this life. It has to--has to seem to, at the least. You, Christ, and I-- do you remember? We had squat before I cried, Let there be Light.

Our joie de vivre and raison d'être both arise from very deep Within: each Person does the best He can. Nobody should make light of that.

194. - Autopsy

Yes, all My chatter tongues-in-cheek may well be psychological defense. Agreed. Yes. There are

One or Two things I remember that You don't.

You wisely never ask Me what They were.

Some memories are better not recovered-- which is why We split Our Godhead into Three.

195. - Fallen Martyr

I drew my breath with reverence and died because I wouldn't waver in my faith. But now I learn the Three-in-One I worshipped is a pandæmonium of snakebit jerks?

196. - The Angel Ambivalence

It's great to have our choirs and orders shaken up, to get out, see the world a bit, do something different, and at long last get to meet some of the devils we've been harping for millennia about.

Nonetheless I'll miss the Old Boy's apron strings. You wouldn't ever call Him fun, and not precisely kind, though something in His mien was comforting--a confidence He wasn't going anywhere.

Who pine for aviation but those nestled high, or spread their wings yet have no coop to fly?

197. - The Low Caste Devil's Faith

You plant a pitchfork in their fists and they're no better and no worse than any one of us.

The angels certainly are slicker-looking and the saints wear auras of integrity, but when the chips are down and blood and lifetimes on the line, who do I want beside me in the trench?

Nobody more than itchèd Fleezer here or yonder Kraal with teeth split to the roots by that excruciating clench-- who rest their confidence in me.

We're fallen, people love to say. We once were favored, now we're not. But were we stripped of our free will? It's how you act .that fortifies the heart.

198. - The Wolf Boy's Dawning

My angel held me close last night and wept. She said, It's time for you to be a man! I'm summoned now, I have to leave. Then she unclasped my neck, and vanished.

I wake with her tears on my cheek, and understanding she had burdens too-- while I? I'd never asked.

I rise and tiptoe past my mother's door. It's she who cries out for my sympathy, the widening of our oneway street. I feel my own tears now, the angel's gift.

199. - The Detective's Bad Lobster

I dreamt that the boy I shot stood up again and spat his blood into my eyes again, and when I woke, or thought I woke, I couldn't see a thing. A ghost stood by my bed, and with ventriloquism re-enacted every cry for mercy that I've ever heard.

Where was my wife? Where were my girls? Where were my badge and my revolver when I needed them? How could I make this shithead shut its yap? What did it want?-- for me to drop down to my knees and beg forgiveness, bathed in tears?

It did the pleading green-haired whore, the wetback fag and the pathetic barmaid, then it said, "My name is Israfel. This tenderfoot behind me is St. Liam, and the imp, Labal. You were grouped with us by Lydia and Satan-El."

"No way I'm getting out of bed," I said, but then I did. I rose and got my clothes and trailed my three new mates on our the door, and then into their van. "We're going to take you for a drive," said Israfel. "We want to learn the special way you kill."

"There isn't too much to it, gang. It doesn't take much skill to punch a couple bullets in an unarmed victim's head. It doesn't take much guts or discipline. It's sort of like the way you think that if you hit a girl, you'll get a rise? The weapon is just focussed impotence."

Labal took notes. We pulled up to a curb. "Show us," said Liam, "on this homeless man."

"You're asking me to murder him right now?"

"That's right. Whatever killing skills you have, you have to learn to use them on command."

The guy was old and whiskery, asleep, half covered by a filthy mover's mat. The angel, saint, and devil craned their necks to get an unobstructed view. The watched my face, my hands, my feet.

"Why not?" I thought. "A couple hard kicks to the head, another useless prick is history."

200. - The Diner Owner's Redemption

He woke, and all was clear: there was a two-way chi. One led to hungry mouths filled by Diego's kindly tía, and the other to the bank, and then a Benz or Audi.

He watches a sluggish billow of the roller window-shade whose shape and motion seem to be more cooling than .the .breath .of .breeze.

201. - The Green-Haired Girl's Conversion

Jolene awakes. The TV chuckles to a rerun of The Cosby Show.

Her parents--where? They come and go like rabbits on the lawn: the juice and takeout in the icebox is renewed; the boudoir door is sometimes open, sometimes not; she sometimes finds a note, Your Ambrose called, or Liable to be cold today.

They'd vehemently disapproved of her; she'd fought them tooth and nail--Black Sabbath, Venom, Deicide-- and finally won the fight: they let her be. So distant, but no more hostility.

Why not admit that sometimes they'd been right?

She misses them. It would be nice, she thinks, to sit at breakfast and catch up a bit. They really aren't bad, just have no clue. They should have had someone a little hip come in and tell them what they should and shouldn't say and what they should and shouldn't do.

And even as she vows, I won't stop being young at heart, I won't forget, deep down she knows that, simply in the thinking, it already isn't true.

202. - The Gun-Shy Religion Reporter

Why ask? You know that I'm the one one who wrote His sermons down, who tried to publicize His coming back. I put my reputation on the line. Then somebody--you know who that was as too-- spread rumors, back-bit, got my good name on the blacklist.

If true He's terminally ill, delirious, and you now run things unrestrained, that's definitely front-page news. It's just not news that thrills my blood. O'Shea at the New Orleans Picayune is somebody who might be interested, especially if you give him a exclusive.

What? You intend to carry out the vision Christ proposed? You can't be serious? That doesn't sound like you one bit.

Yeah, no--yes--I admit my point of view is based on folklore, fiction, speculation.

No, I'm not afraid of getting information first-hand, from the horse's mouth.

OK, just twenty minutes tops, on tape. And I hit Stop if I get just one inkling that you're practicing deceit, manipulation. I was burned once, now I'm twice shy of the merest glint in an allochthon's eye.

203. - The Barmaid's Resolution

I quit. I'm going back to school. I swear off men and getting drunk. Both turn me into a fool.

I met a guy-- that's how it always starts with me, but yeah-- this guy with a goatee who mentioned more or less in passing that he thinks I have potential to do more than get folks bombed. He had Palahniuk's new novel and he wondered if I had a book in me.

You've been a good boss all these years. I'm going to miss this place, each cake-faced flirt and lewd old coot. But new blood, right? And you can always call me if you need an extra pair of hands or substitute.

I'll be fine. I have a few bucks saved. And mom's told me for years that when I go to college, it's all paid. I figure, what's to lose? Worst comes to worst, I only last one term and then go back to slinging booze.

No tears! Oh, Mickey, please! You need a younger chick, if truth be told. Your clientele tends toward the old.

I've started doodling, that's really all. A couple pages, rough draft-- sort of modeled after The Da Vinci Code? I'll let you know the minute any of it's halfway ready to be read.

That's very nice of you to say. I haven't heard You'll always have a home for many years. Now, come on, here, let's have a shot. For you I always have a soft spot.

204. - The Dairy Queen Franchisee's Scheme

Before my Priya goes to Yale I want to see her with some nice young Indian man who's Ivy-bound himself: traditional but not too-too traditional, upcaste (but that must seem accidental), and most importantly, polite. That is Pooja's biggest complaint about the American boys who Priya brings home for us to meet.

A letter arrived at our home today from Heaven! Dear Priya, As you have scored in the top percentile... It invites her to accept a summer job preparing other students to take the SATs. What an ideal place for her to meet Indian boys! Who will she meet as an au pair in Quogue except some young American college man who will break her heart on Labor Day? That is what happened last year to Alisa, who has convinced Priya to au pair in a house nearby.

Priya says Please, Pita, I am completely American! But this is the age when she must learn what it means that she is Indian. And I know how to make her agree. If she does not take the job at XPreSAT, she will spend the summer with her aunties in Mumbai. This new plan will make Pooja overjoyed! And won't Priya have time enough to get a tan when she brings her own children someday to the beach?

205. - Uninvited

Satan, you shouldn't even be in here! Election Day is in eight weeks! The Reverend Jeremiah Wright came close to costing me my first four years; the undecided vote decidedly will not take kindly to me listening to someone else with horns for ears!

No, you are not a master of disguise!-- you weren't even in the room, when Bo crawled whimpering beneath the couch and both the Secret Service agents dropped into their one-knee crouch!

I don't care if you can reveal the secrets of tomato-growing to Michelle, you have exactly sixty seconds till you put that Tigers cap back on and go. Joe Biden earned his spurs with Jesuits, so if you want to duke it out in Latin like the Exorcist-- take a right at the end of the hall. But I don't recommend it.

No, you can't meet Hillary. Or Bill! She hasn't had an idle hand since birth, and tempting him--well, that ship left. Why do you need assistants, anyway? You've got the combination to the safe. If you run out of evil things to do, just go and read the history of 43 or rummage through the heart of his VP.

Your time is up. I have to go meet Mitt. Yeah, we have dinner once a week to chew the fat. We have a lot in common: Harvard Law and iffy Christianity.

206.

Reconnaissance Report 1

M'lord and Lady, we have found, and not too far away, the perfect place at which to launch our First Crusade! A worthy foe--they said that Christ and Satan came by recently and lacked the guts to stay and fight--but not too mighty for a maiden army's hymen-breaking thrust.

The casus belli are abundant. This world's inhabitants hunt lesser beings down like rats: imprisoning their prey, our cousins, without any pretense of ethical justification nor even slight concern for their any victim's sentience! The wails that pierced our ears fall deafly on their own!

Their gods have bulk--great bulk. What hasn't any flesh they hold impure, pollution, bothersome as kitchen ants. In their world, only distant legends tell of natural causes for the death of flesh, and myths of even whiter beard no more than hint that ghostly imps once outlived time!

All the spirit populations there are seriously decimated. Such existential threat to us cannot be over-estimated!

Reconnaissance Report 2

M'lord and Lady, once upon a once upon a once upon a midnight weary, untold aeons, aeons, aeons, aeons, and a thousand further aeons from this moment here, we chanced across a stretch of such great emptiness, the tiny nimbi where our exhalations fogged the quiet loomed suddenly and monstrously like supernova stars which something, somewhere, somehow took as threat and riddled us--Just look! Our shadows are in tatters!-- with some kind of unknown projectile with the property of piercing spirit and infusing it with polyester strands!

We fled. What could we do? Anahita here was halfway stitched onto a pants-suit top. These--aliens, I guess-- are going to think we're pantywaists unless we fly right back and hit them hard with all we've got! What if one followed us? What if one's right here next to us in hell?

Unlike Team 1's, this war is not a war of choice at all. If we don't fight, I fear Your brand-new kingdom's fall.

Reconnaissance Report 3

M'lord and Lady, irked by dire provocations near and far, desirous of leading wild hosts into a just and lasting war, lend me your two divine, two devil ears and single heart as I relate to you the battle both are born to triumph in, beyond whose glory no All-Spirit in the universe aspires!

Even nightmare predators have nightmares of their own, the gods twist in the sheets, while demons gnash on top of gnash, the pious fall ensnared in new and former sin. Call them up in your mind, O Great Ones--terror without feet or ground, causeless, salveless, beyond Your reach!

The land we reconnoitered is the Ur of every bit of fright to visit both the high and low beneath the cloak of night while sentries sleep. Intelligence we gleaned is positive that if we laid waste nightmare's citadel, the princesses of golden sleep will all fly free and grace our waking life.

How hard this war? Horror, horror. But demurring is breath borrowed.

207. - Satan-El and Lydia's Duet

Our love was not designed for baby steps!

Your words arouse themselves and me!

Did we begin things with a modest lunch?

One second's hesitation, in such rare air, yawns and stretches till the thing awaited falls back into nothingness and inactivity.

Embark upon a trail of incremental dates until somebody lost their nerve or skulked in finally for the kill? Or was it one glance--

Who better knows this trap than heirs?-- who better its result than aged spinsters caution littering the wind! So will we lead our army timidly against a punching bag on which to cut its milk teeth? No, not us!

and those fond old gentlemen who feed the ducklings stale bread at the lily pond?

We seek the battle that is most extreme!

What passes in the space between events is lethargy--one mustn't even call it 'time'!

There is no time to take: if we've learned one thing from Eternity, it's Carpe diem.

We'll go to war as furiously as we mated.

208. - God in a Bubble

The ID card clipped to the sterile tent's zipped door: He aqui el Señor Jesucristo.

He looks like fucking hell, emaciated, pale, eyes closed and purpled, left cheek oozing ichor. The hair that hasn't fallen out is shaved.

A bright red line is painted on the floor, black-stenciled ¡Nadie Se Permite Pasar!

A capitán stands guard. The doctor smiles and offers me a steel chair.

"Lord?" I ask.

His eyeballs wobble underneath their lids, which then float open like an antique doll's. His lips attempt a little grin.

"What kind of fucked-up bar did I walk into?" He says cheerfully.

209. - The Havana Testament

1 “Where should I start?" He wheezed. 2 "My mother said an angel Gabriel just showed up in her house--”

“Earth to Jesus! Pick the story up where those black-ops goons broke in and abducted You,” I said.

3 “We had a Seder in an upstairs room. 4 I almost peed My pants when Peter put a steak knife to the big one's ear!”

“No, Jesus, not those goons. The ones who rousted You from Your apartment in New Jersey?”

5 “Yes, there were two. Is that correct? 6 They kicked the door in, hog-tied Me, then threw Me in a long white ambulance with bright red trim!”

“Ghostbusters drove a rig like that. Your black ops didn't drive a massive, late-year SUV with carbon-tinted glass?”

7 “Ah, yea. A Jeep Grand Cherokee, I think. Or possibly a Navigator. Yukon, Tahoe--one of them.”

“Did they disrupt Your memory? The details seem a bit confused.”

8 “You should've seen the monster ten-inch needle that they used!"

“And where did that take place?”

9 “A tiny bar in Tijuana. 10 There were several gringos there.”

“Señor,” the doctor interrupted. “As you see, the patient isn't well.”

“Before this nightmare," I said, "He was God. He was invulnerable. He took a drink, it's true, but not that many more than me or you.”

“Así se pasa, amigo.”

“Christ,” I pled. “How much God still remains in You, if anything?”

11 “Tomás,” He whispered feebly, “no sé nada de ningún divinidad.”

210. - Stations of the Cross

I set out on a pilgrimage to retrace the foot-steps along which He had gotten sicker. The God incarnate in that ravaged body had conceivably jumped ship into a different human form--a modest seamstress, fine young artist, or another skinny, vagrant charismatic who at least could hold His liquor.

I find the tippling priest who'd blessed Christ when he'd sent Him on his way. We share a couple tumblers of rum and he recounts how Jesus questioned His own worthiness. “Such things happen,” he concludes. “I recommend you give Him time.”

I find the barber's cousin; his young wife peers up out of half-closed purpled lids, unearthly, meek. He hauls me back behind the pigs and says in no uncertain terms that Jesus acted like a culo even lower than the lowest worm. “You tell that shithead I'll fuck up His other cheek!”

Farther on, at a ditch's edge, two young mules raucously chew on weeds. One of them turns her brown eyes on me as if expecting to hear more than Buenas tardes, potritas. I understand: God doesn't live by human rules. Horatio has still to dream so many dreams! Why not a big-eared beast of burden who redeems?

211. - By the edge of the road

I sit on a milestone and think: if this young mule were God what difference would it make? Regardless if she does or doesn't die for us she bears our burdens on her back and lets the children climb on her and feed her wisps of grass and dress her in an old cane hat with ear-holes scissored out.

Down the road a piece, the problem is: what gaud her votaries will see in gray, her shamans ouija from her scat and mulophonic wizards hear her bray. For I could sit here till the cows come home and claim “The Mule said this and this”-- and still be full of shit.

I'm prepared to admit I'm thirsty, tired, and baked by sun. But I see far more comfort in this jenny's eye than in the fevered gaze that Jesus, dying, turned on me back in the Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras late last Friday afternoon.

212. - False Gods Before Me

The mule's still eying me, but what am I supposed to do? She's not performing miracles. She can't sit for an interview. I've finished eating lunch-- and so it's simply time to go. Her wise and loving look is maybe just my imagination.

Another mile down the road I run into a huge black bull, a steel ring through his nose and two horns capped with tin, who glares with bloody eyes and stamps the dust in rage as I approach. I scurry and take refuge in the stinky ditch.

In church the difference seems so plain. Out here--God? devil? who cares which!

213. - Lam of God

What happened from the evening Christ was snatched until the morning Satan set Him free is Highly Classified. The U.S. Government refuses to confirm a Jesus Christ was taken into custody, much less that He'd vamoosed.

Guantánamo's Rear Admiral David Woods admits to whispers of a prisoner who escaped, but laughs, "Such rumors breed like salmonella in an Arab's gut!"

I say I have the testimony of several Cubans in the town who'd seen a thin man in an orange prison uniform climb down Palacio Salcines, then take flight on foot. One said he'd seen a new stealth helicopter set Him there; one swore it was a large gray stork; a third had heard a crab-hawk's cry.

"And did they say which way He ran?" the admiral asks. "One pointing south, the other north?" He laughs again.

I say, "All three agreed He took the road to Sempre."

"Urban legend!" he says smugly. "No one's ever flown this coop, I promise you! Did some borracho do a stunt on the Palacio? Why not? He wore an orange jumpsuit like the prisoners here? It's possible. But you're mistaken if you think that nut-case ever graced a cell in here."

The local policía watch six overseas doctors-in-training set out north from town on scooters, with a corpse dog in a sidecar—supposedly to search the bush for herbs. The comandante rubs her hands. "¡Qué previsibles son los perros de la CIA! Let's add them to our list of spies!"

214. - Literary License

A drama has to have an end. It's not enough to say, Oh, He got very ill, then lost His mind. According to one rumor, first He spat up blood and gall, then generously gave a blessing and 15 centavos to a sobbing orderly.

How many want to read that, sunning on the beach? Unless some modern miracle occurs and Communism's Cuba triumphs--gets Christ back up on His own two feet-- it's up to me to give this Gospel followup a satisfying dénouement.

Last time, the Scripture story ended on a letter from St. Jude, who promised Yea, the Lord who rescued the people out from Egypt likewise damned those who lost faith and those angels who kept not their first holy estate but left their blessèd habitation for insurrection vain.

And Milton took the story forward with authority.

Jude guarantees the judgment of the great Last Day, when Our Lord Jesus arriveth with ten thousand saints. Christ's gospel hasn't ended yet but he is confident that soon it will. The Second Coming's going to have some pop to it!

And John's Apocalypse agrees: describes fell beasts with horns, the Wormwood Star, and bloody this and that.

The prevailing dads and Doctors of the Church ruled everything those olden writers wrote is true, but--spade a spade? They missed by a mile, it's two thirds drivel. I'm sure it sounded good back then, but times change, Christians' needs evolve, and observance is slumping.

Christ could have resurrected Jude or John to pick up where they left off--oversee this Gospel of the Second Coming-- but He instead selected me to dream up its Finis once He leaves center stage again, to melt away into the wings.

I'm humbled...yadda, yadda...Enough about me. My role is just to keep my head down, scribble, and let the shiny apple of modern scripture plumpen, fall as far from the tree as it may, then rot in peace.

215. - Early Afterword

This simple treatise, Reader, is homemade of what my Jesus was and did and said until the day on which they came for Him.

I pray they keep some bit of DNA preserved so that a finer science than was ever known might one day piece together what is true and separate it from the circulating chaff.

Till then, if ye lack faith that it was Him, take pen, and write your Christ more real, as Quakers say that Revelation breathes each time another honest person yearns.

And if ye doubt there ever came a sound as like a rushing mighty wind, or tongues like fire to sit on each of them, on Parthians and Medes and Elamites, on Babylonians, Judaeans, Cappadocians, Jews, Romans, Jerseyites, Egyptians, dervishes, not drunk, as some suppose, it being yet too early in the day--then doubt, doubt all ye will.

Can I lay any claim at all on your Faith? No. No herald angels trumpet in my ears.

It's just me winging it. Just that is clear.

216. - Goddess Scorned

Satan finally controls the Universe: the job he'd always dreamed of, risked all for, millennia ago, apparently had lost, till tortoise-like persistence in the end paid off.

He knows it's ill-advised, though, to redecorate the house to his own taste, and so he sets forth first, again, alone this time, to find and wed and smuggle down to Earth his ever-blinking, high-strung queen. He finds her with Christ's giantess in tears, still shivering in the ice-cold waste where they'd been strained by sine and cosine having come unlaced as he and Jesus with their two brides tried to breach the cosmic membrane.

His own Electranilla springs into his arms and spatters him with nimble particles excited by his sight; and he'd have whisked her straight away except that poor Brunhilda's plight weighs heavily: he pities her, as out of character as that might be. The wasps of tact, compassion flitter through his brain, till finally he blurts out, "Bad news, Jesus turned into a boozer, He's now dying in a hospital in Cuba! But the sight of you might be just what the poor God needs."

"That's why you came?" Electranilla sparks. "To try and save your pal? You guys from Earth are all the fucking same! You can forget about third base, I'm not some fly-by piece of ass. Just go--straight back to hell!"

Poor Satan's at a loss, he's unaccustomed both to truth and love. "The God she loves is on His deathbed," he implores.

"Then you and Fats had better hurry back in time to give Him two immortal hummers."

217. - Rebound?

The furious Electranilla fulminates, then sizzles off: stray shards of lightning zig and zag into the icy nil like viri from a neon cough or musket-fired tonguelets from the anti-matter Battle of galactic Bunker Hill.

Brunhilda rolls her basketball-sized eyes to Satan's face and says, "I'm sorry. You were only trying to be nice." He braves a closer look. Is that a squiggly beauty mark, akin to Marilyn Monroe's--or just a little trail of gook? He thinks, "I'm not sure what it was Christ saw in her, but maybe I could learn."

218. - The Giantess's Gift

To Satan's glee she had a nifty little trick-- could feed a measure of her breadth to him till she was just the right size for his dick.

219. - Twice Blest

A pang, an alien compunction: Satan's former buddy on-the-make is all but wheezing His last wheeze, while he's out squiring His squeeze behind His back.

With power comes...responsibility? Why can't it just corrupt? He doesn't mind a little change, but this?-- it's too abrupt! He'd never guessed that caring was so grim-- suspected Christ of gulling him.

Such an overwhelming ardor for confessing! "Sweet Brunhilda," he announced. "We have to go beg Jesus for His blessing."

220. - The Italian Job

"What's the matter?" Satan says.

"Those ancient gods who said our blood was bad sequestered us from access to the other universes, and we've festered ever since Creation. Now, if we can slip your elephantine tuchus through, the Earth will breath its first fresh air since Yu. If you can hypo-compact your hypotenuse and re-misfold your waning arcus to acute, I don't see why we couldn't intersect the travsverse of irrational denominators of the locus vertical and slide you down to Cuba in a twinkle and a shake."

"So sexy when you talk in math!" she cries. "I love a god who's smart. The ones I shared my old world with had less to say than John Wayne's fart. A modern woman doesn't get all hot if all her suitor mouths is macho rot."

"Real males like substance too. We like a feeling of abundance! Skin and bones of thought or flesh is but a stingy smorgasbord of straw and nails. No he-man favors minnows over whales."

"I hide the scale of my enormity, employ hypnosis to assure you my tatu has room for no more than your cock, while 50 wiki filters tune my range of thought to yours. What does it profit me to be first fiddle if your piccolo is in the hands of puny whores?"

"That's what I love about a girl like you! You orient yourself to pleasing me in spite of thinking I'm beneath your class. I'm not. I'm lucky to have any girl I get. I try my best to please you too, but you're high maintenance, prime ass. My dream is just to be your dream come true. Now, can you origami? Rotate 22.649°? Ole Jonah in the whale and Noah in the ark, sufflate the positive, extenuate the negative, then slip the cootchie in-between and slip you, baby, right on through the fucking Promised Land!"

221. - The Nightmares' Keep

Compression is the key, compacting every known and unknown torture, torturer and torturee into one dungeon smaller than a smallpox seed within the bowel of a flea, so that each single molecule divided 90 trillion times holds dread enough to feed the nighttime panics even of the soundest-sleeping breed.

That's where I pride myself on running things efficiently: since God divided dry from damp and day from night, compressing each from each, there hasn't been a single wink of slumber safe from terror: not one soul beyond my reach.

I may be just a functionary, vacuous of higher raison d'etre, unnamed, motiveless, a fluke left lying one-eyed in the muck when the Creator finished teasing this from that-- but lack's the very gist of why I'm so impregnable, not animal nor mineral nor vegetable, no moving parts to snap or jam or stall, no lusts for Mata Hari to exploit or Freud to sublimate, nor heel undipped in Styx nor eye to blind nor bearing wall nor any roof as fallible as sky.

I tend the nightmares' keep: why children scream and kick when told It's time to sleep.

222. - Satan-El's Battle Plan

God always claimed He doesn't dream at all: what horrors percolated from His mind and fell like epiphytes to plant their roots in earth or hell while He was sleeping were just natural outgrowths of the sufferer's own faults! Now Lydia and I will fix that arrogant, amniscient oversight!

Pandora's nightmare box is hardly bottomless. It's broad, and deep, and terror's seeds are small, but everything that's something has a mass and anything that keeps one substance segregated from another has to have a bottom, top, or walls. In theory, then, it's possible to empty it, and possible to fill it up with something else, like princesses or candy canes or wild horses dancing by the sea!

First, we tally up the angels under Michael's flag, then add the saints Crescentia commands-- and count the martyrs twice-- and all the native demons under Metatron and Bundy's newly damned--times three-- they have the most capacity for fear and pain. That comes...let's see...if this damn calculator's right... to 89,999,999,999,996.

Next, we make a lot of fatty late-night snacks and spice them with cymbalta and celexa to enhance our bruxism, gnash our teeth. Then we'll all watch Carrie. I'll get Helen Bonny to conduct us through some guided imagery of stress. If all that hasn't turned us into parasomniacs, I know an exercise to bring on restless leg. At last, we'll synchronize our body clocks and sally forth en masse to tonic/phasic sleep.

We only have to find someone to fill the emptied box with pleasant fluff, then somebody to seal the lid, thus stranding every nightmare in our vast collective mind, which we'll release when we at last wake up, to let them scamper off into the underbrush to die like wood ants from a sawn-down limb.

This is a battle no one else has ever dared, a war nobody's had the courage to declare.

223. - Lydia's Finishing Touches

“It's smart and bold: a winner, Satan-El! As far as finding us a Gum-Drop Queen to fill the nightmare box with cheerful froth, I have the perfect candidate in mind-- not angel, demon, saint, nor damned, but trusty, theo-independent fairy widely known for kindness and integrity-- Locasta, Good Witch of the North.”

“Lowho za, good witch of the where?”

“A lot's been written since you held a book that didn't burst aflame and turn to ash. You'll have to leave the literary stuff to me. Locasta is the very soul of incorruptibility!”

“Then pull her index card, search Amazon, whatever modern readers do to get their fix. But who will seal the box when it is filled with fluff, and bar the nightmares' own return?"

"Who else but moi? Who else has long experience with gums, adhesives, mucilages, pastes, cements and glues from eons spent as Chief Mechanical Technologist in Heaven's sprawling, peerless dollhouse works?"

"I'll go tell St. Crescentia and Gen. Metatron to get deep fryers heating for those snacks!"

"Tonight one final terror visits all who sleep. Tomorrow it's the nightmares' turn to weep.”

224. - Locasta's Tale

I've had a fair amount of drama in my life, and done some good. I freed the Gillikins from Mombi's wicked rule, and with a kiss protected Dorothy of Kansas from the westland's wicked witch. I'm best known for a parlor trick: transforming ten stones into birds, the birds to lambs, the lambs to little girls who do a pretty dance, and then to stones again.

God's daughter Lydia and her beau Saten-El contrived a plan to banish nightmares from the far-flung universe: to empty out Pandora's box, and then (and this is where my trick comes in) refill the box with pleasant trifles to its brim. If I begin with just a pocketful of eyelash hums, then turn them into jinglebells, then whistling storks, then singing whales...?

They carried out their plan: their army writhed and kicked, their lips contorted, flecked with spit, all vying in their sleep with monsterlings. I did as I was asked. As dawn picked up its lid a billion tiny spiders sprinkled on El Malecón, a smog of parasites evicted by their hosts. Los habaneros shouted “¡Viva la tranquilidad!" and leapt to stomp on them.

225. - Remission

On the 21st floor of Hospital Hermanos Ameijeiras, el cristo padded from His antiseptic plastic tent to join the orderlies at the window watching as a rain of mass-evicted nightmares gently fell and turned a bright noon into dusk, whatever fiends the workers on siesta didn't stomp on, washing off in streams into the rocks and unresponsive surf or catching under weeds where roaches watched them quiet, lighten, then evaporate. “Un peso se ha levantado de mi corazón," He said. A weight's been lifted from my heart. The nurse who only a moment ago had filled His feeding-tube let out a yip. Code yellow, my career is on the line! If any of the doctors found Him in the open air, she'd bear the blame. "¡Vuelve adentro, rápido!” she shrieked.

“Una remisión completa,” declared His doctor, “pero ¿de qué?” As a scientist, he had to cover all the the bases--and so mentally he crossed himself. Deep in his heart, some part of him believed it was remisión de los pecados—sins forgiven. Even Castro, it was whispered, secretly consulted—prayed with?--el obispo and lit candles to orishas. Ordinary science couldn't clarify the smog of nightmares. Widespread rumors: dreams so sweet that no one wanted to get out of bed. Now, miraculous healing. No, the Minister of Propaganda wouldn't leave work for a week!

Jesus gained strength daily, and was scheduled to be released. The hospital administration emailed me: Your Savior didn't die. Can you wire funds for Him to fly to Cancún, then back home? I hurried to the bank like I had lost my mind, then sat and cried. The font, the horse's mouth, a whole new lease on literary life.

226. - Cultivating the 4th Estate

Not everyone was pleased. When Satan heard, he roared. God's spoiled little debbie and the cocky upstart Satan-El were interfering with his introduction of new governance on Earth. The story of their self-promoting bullshit anti-nightmare war was page-one news across the globe.

He'd turn it to his purposes: call up the Times reporter once again and con her into thinking sweeter sleep was his own goodwill gift to humankind.

But then as they begin to tape who strolls into the bar?-- a man who looks a lot like Christ. Armani presses Pause, and gapes. And Satan in the body of a Mr. Universe contestant clambers up and goes to ask Him who He thinks He is to interrupt his interview like this?

“I didn't know,” the interloper says. “I had a friend who used to bartend here. I only wanted to say hi. Go, sit back down and do what you doing. She's not here.”

“Your name's not--well, You look a little bit like—Christ?” the Times reporter says. “More gray hair, a thinner face, and yet--”

“He left a forwarding address,” the new young bar-maid says. “She gave me a description of the guy she left it for, and You are—maybe--sort of--”

“I'm awfully confused Myself,” He said. “I was extremely ill, My blood entirely transfused three times, and for two days I was, for all intents and purposes, stone dead. It's quite a miracle I'm here at all, and Dr. Santa Ana said the less I do remember of My prior life, the better off I am.”

“You want a drink?” the bar-maid says. “It's Happy Hour still-- three bucks for draft or well. The spicy habanera chicken wings and mini pretzel sticks are free.”

“My wristband says No Alcohol.” He stretches out His hand for her to see. “I have a dodgy history with booze, beginning in My adolescence when I snuck a little wine once at the wedding of My mother's friend. More recently, I tried to push Myself on someone else's wife. Roy Rogers? Diet Coke? I've got $1.93. Is that enough?”

“Excuse me? May I have a word?" huffs Satan. "Anyone remember I'm the one who's being interviewed? This guy seems very nice, by all means let Him have a Coke, but can we please sit down and get the show back on the road?”

“You look familiar,” Jesus says. “So strong, like Russian bull! I think I saw you on TV. You're not...Hulk Hogan...are you?"

“I'm a bodybuilder. Those fake wrestlers are clowns! You may have seen me on The World's Top Muscle-Man.”

“And that's not all he does,” Armani says. “That's on the side. His day job, he was telling me— extermination of bad dreams.”

“Well, best of luck,” Christ says-- and to the bar-maid, “Thanks for this delcious spicy chicken wing, and for My friend's address.”

“As I was saying--” Satan pointedly resumes. Armani watches Jesus leave, and re-hits Play.

“Unlike the previous proprietor, who didn't care if dreams were frightening or sweet, I've demonstrated my benevolence by scattering night's terrors on Havana's Malecón, exposing them for what they are, just little piss-ants you can squash flat with your little finger-tip! I'm planning other blessings too. My subjects all can rest assured...”

227. - The Hobo's Holiness

“The Dude is back,” the Wolf Boy says. “He's even more fucked up this time around. I saw Him down by Dairy Queen where He was getting yelled at by that Indian for ordering a soft-serve when He only had a couple nickels in His pocket. God, you'd think He'd stolen someone's kid! But still He kept this smile on His face. The cone was melting down His hand and finally Apu cried out in disgust At least now eat the goddam thing!-- then yelled Go get a job! and slammed the walk-up window shut.”

The green-haired girl has heard enough. “Let's see if we can find Him, Broze. Let's go and see if we can help Him out.”

They find a crowd around Him at the park and hear the bad detective barking “Sleeping on this bench is not allowed!” A German accent counters “Blessed are the poor!” The pope, ex-priest and two gay men have formed a human barrier between the cop and bum. “I don't know who you think He is,” the bad cop rails, “but no one is above the law! If I let one tramp stay, I guarantee you the whole park is gonna be infested! For the last time, move aside or the whole lot of you will be arrested!” The men link arms and firmly set their jaws. “When this gate shuts,” the pope prays, “may another glory door appear!”

A mangy-looking dog comes trotting up, sits down and licks Christ's bobbing eyes, then pants and offers Him his paw.

The Wolf Boy and the green-haired girl approach. "Oh God," the bad cop groans, "the whole damn freak show now! I'd give my left arm for one frag grenade."

228. - Devil Dog

He sniffs. He listens to inflection. He's aware the bad lieutenant has the makings of a cruelty erection.

Christ was right. The way things work is complicated. Why go half-baked? Take some time, learn how the parts are all related.

Now he has to piss. His instinct is to lift his leg; he's male. Another instinct is to aim at something stiff and tall.

He stands and trots up, smiling, tail wagging, to the cop.

229. - The Park Bench Mass

The enraged lieutenant shoots the disrespectful mongrel in the head-- sprays everyone with blood. They all see his erection now.

Christ lifts a woozy eyelid as the gape-brained shepherd springs at the lieutenant's throat and knocks him down.

What does a Person have to do to get a little sleep? The green-haired girl steps up to wipe His face off with her sleeve.

The men unlink their arms and separate the gory shepherd from the blood-bathed cop. The dog lies quivering, then dead.

The Wolf Boy hears a siren coming. Everything is such a mess. It makes him feel a little better about being so fucked-up himself.

The pope is at a loss. No prayer springs to his lips, but he has faith in God's first-hand experience with violence like this.

230. - This Grandeur

Satan tries to lick his wound. It's too far back behind the ears. His tongue's in tatters.

Time to recreate himself inside a protist, moss, or fish.

How natural it always seems-- the table set for only him with porridge not too hot nor cold, each chair and bed his size, meticulously designed to host him properly.

The thread dissolves. His hindbrain starts to burn; his eye lights on a lady fern.

231. - The Newborn Sect

. EX-P0PE, EX-PRIEST & GAYS SHARE CELL WITH BUM! the 84-point banner headline in the local weekly Home Post-Clarion Suburban Eagle-Messenger.

Thus Benedikt first learned he'd been supplanted by a cloak-and-dagger conclave in the Vatican. No nuncio or legate ever came to post his bond; beneath the striped umbrella of the Camerlengo's seal a bigliettino .offering il sacramento della Penitenza.

The accommodations, though, were pleasant. He especially adored dessert: a flan so good he tried to swap his subcinctorium for seconds.

* On the morning of the third day, prosecutors ruled the shooting of the shepherd self-defense; arraigned the four detained men as accessories in its assault on the detective's trouser-leg; and moved the bum to County Hospital for observation.

“Why don't we name our movement after Him?” suggested Benedikt. “Did anybody catch His name?”

They got it from the court-appointed lawyer who arrived to talk with the defendants about pleas. The ex-priest's cousin advocated "Christianity," but in the end they went with "Jesoastrianism."

232. - Discharge

He checked out physically-- perhaps was prematurely aged, but that was hard to say, the birth date on his wristband having been mis-typed as 1 A.D. But psychologically and mentally He was an out-and-out calamity: convinced His name was Christ, and had the cell phone number of a barmaid in His pocket who He begged the nurse to contact but insisted was not next of kin. Beyond that, all He seemed to know were basic facts like 3 + 3. Was He a danger to Himself? The screener saw no sign of that. To anybody else? Again, no evidence. Despite the prosecutor's howls, they had no choice but to release Him on His own recognizance.

And what was standing waiting in the butt-filled terra cotta pot surrounded by a knot of interns smoking in their skimpy scrubs just past the ER's sliding doors? A seven-foot black dragon tree whose needles all had scorched.

A buried memory came bubbling up and Jesus stopped and gaped. One of the interns made a joke. The others laughed uneasily. Then something went askance inside His brown, unblinking eyes, He looked at the young doctors, grinned, and turned to go.

233. - Pip/Estella

“You little prick!” Brunhilda cries. The lucky devil's bride-to-be, trimmed down to 8'3”, 580 lbs., showed off her dugong's face and faux hyena wedding gown. “First You and then Your pal have made me twice a widow in the interval of several weeks!”

She flicks her chewed robusto in the March of Dimes display, grabs Jesus roughly by the arm, and pulls him toward her black tint-windowed Hummer H3 with the vanity plate Ψ♥ME.

“I can't find him,” she scolds, “but if I keep an eye on You, it won't be long till he arrives! I should have understood back when we met in outer space that cunt or no cunt, there was absolutely no way I could ever take Your place.”

She was so busy being cross, she never noticed Jesus peering at her, at a total loss. At last He got a word in edgewise: “Love Bird, you have really got eight preternaturally pretty eyes.”

234. - The Horns of Brunhilda's Dilemma

Out of the blue, You suddenly appear and turn my head, then leave me stranded on the brink. Next thing I hear, You're in the hospital, as good as dead-- when Satan comes back, takes my part, and on the rebound, I suppose, I promise him my heart. We come to ask Your blessing; off he runs away to metamorphose into different species--dog, fern, tree. Now You insist You don't remember me, but find me fetching. What's a simple girl supposed to think?

My mother always said, The sea of love is full of fish, worms, tunicates, and krill. Don't choose your mate by scale or gill-- but by how sweet he makes you feel. It's sound advice, but only goes so far. Both You and Satan make me purr.

I never wanted two; I dreamt of one. I never thought to be a bigamist or center ring of a ménage à trois. But you two flip and blink like Dr. Jekyll and a Hyde who's just as sweet: You go, then he appears; he vanishes, and here You are. Since one of you is always gone, I'm going to take love where it comes.

235. - Flagrante Delicto

In Satan charged, his eyes like sparks! His breath was brimstone, his attempts to speak like a hyena's barks.

Brunhilda had been right that she and Jesus both were apples of his eye-- the scent of them in rut turned him berserk.

So much for his judicious period of study before pulling on the levers of control.

This cried for vicious now, for casting all compunction to the wind and lashing out with everything at his disposal at the fickle friend and lover who had packed his snout with their con-fucking-tempt for everything he coveted!

How many English novels would he have to read before he got it that aristocrats viewed common souls, like his, as chickenfeed?

236. Pretzeled

Satan finds them humping on the super king that set him back four grand: for all His stupor, Christ is doing pretty well.

But Old Nick has his knack for turning hot sex into hell-- lures one to come too soon; the other skips their groove, at which point they expect some zesty tongue; but if it's ever-so halfhearted, both participants regret the whole thing ever started.

After doubt sows bubbles in the plumbing it's unlikely there will be a second coming.

237. - Love's Final Knells

Diablo's second special skill:

There's something prickling your skin.

Lice, scabies, mange from flapping loins with an unvetted alien?

And then the coup de grâce:

La Dínamo de Pasión makes sloshing noises when she chews.

El Viril's zesty kissing and too-fragrant anus are a bit too much.

238. - Satanas Anticupidus

Satan's would-be wife in tears, and fallen in her cups-- and He who put the horns on him so deeply in the dumps He can't imagine climbing back to where life simply sucked-- his fury only partway slaked, the Demon fiercely casts about for other love-glazed grails to paw and break.

If he had found warm welcome in the furniture of Earth's zoology, such relish greets his efforts to turn Cana's constant waters to fiascos of Las Vegas wine!

At first, each couple's two. Love's math strikes; now they're halves of one. Then add the sleight of some third party's hand-- Sim-sala-bim! They're none.

239. - His Cup

"At last!" Christ cries. "I see why I returned, My ultimate objective bubbling up: it wasn't the pursuit of love or lust, but all the struggles of the human heart-- and just one man I've come to judge, tomorrow, right here in this skating park, twelve jurors and two alternates, twelve witnesses to testify, the prosecutor, Satan, and defense, Ms. Lia Applegate. Why have I beat around the bush so long? Why taken two millennia to find My nerve? A boy was shot and justice must be served. I call on sacred poetry to right this wrong."

240. - First Witness

"This skate park's closed!" cries Jesus. "Jurors, please be seated on the steps. The prosecution calls its as first witness Kevin, who the bad lieutenant shot."

"Objection!" cries Ms. Applegate. "This kid is dead and, ipso, may have deconstructed memories."

"That's overruled. The jury will weigh credibility. Please raise your right hand, dead boy. Do you swear to tell the trufe, the whole trufe, nothing but the trufe, so help you God?"

"I do, Your Honor."

"Tell the jury how you died," says Satan.

"Mothafucka shoot me dead for moufin' off!"

"Objection! Speculation on defendant's motive."

"I sustain. Amend the record to just Muthafucka shoot me dead."

"No further questions," Satan says.

"That's all I gets to tell?" pleads Kevin. "You ain't gon' aks me nuffin' more than that?"

"You're just the victim, son. Nobody gives a shit about you otherwise. If you were still alive you wouldn't get to say one word."

241. - The Expert Witness

The dead boy walks back to the halfpipe, muttering. The jury makes a couple little noises of surprise. The Wolf Boy smooths his facial hair and grunts. The Kingdom Come--first alternate--emits a whirr. Jack "Gunther" Evan whistles softly, pats the pocket of his jeans to feel the reassuring hardness of his gun.

"The prosecution calls an expert witness," Christ says. "God-the-Father, would you raise your right hand, Sir, and swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, so help Yourself?"

"I do."

"I do is what you said to me!” Brunhilda, Juror 7, cries.

"There will be order in this court!" scolds Christ.

"There will be outbursts," sobs the giantess.

Jolene, her hair half pink, half green, puts one hand her haunch-like forearm, pats it, smiles sympathetically.

"Would you please tell the jury, G-the-F," says Satan, "what is meant by your Commandment #, let's see--6? Thou shalt not kill."

"Of course, although I can't say much attention's paid to it. It's misinterpreted Thou shalt not kill unless you feel an urge. But no, that vile cop should not have shot the teenage boy.”

“Objection!” shrieks Ms. Applegate.

“Sustained!” Christ thunders.

“G-the-F,” says Satan. “It's your testimony that the use of lethal force is always reprehensible?"

“Objection!” pipes Ms. Applegate. “He's leading Him!”

“He's G-the-fucking-F! Nobody leads Him anywhere!”

“Sustained,” Christ says.

“My point,” the Witness says, “is that vile cops who murder unarmed kids should always rot in hell.”

“No further questions!” Satan crows.

The bad cop's lawyer rises and approaches G-the-F.

“Did You say Vengeance is My own?”

“Objection!” Satan cries. “Irrelevant!”

“I will allow it,” Jesus says. “Please answer, G-the-F.”

“That actually was something St. Paul wrote.”

“What St. Paul wrote is that You said it. Did he lie? Are you implying Christian scripture is untruthful?”

"You said that, Counselor, not Me.”

“What St. Paul wrote in Romans, chapter 12 is false?”

“It isn't up to mortals to be judge and executioner.”

“But You reserve those functions for Yourself?”

“Where's all this going, Madam?” Satan frets.

“The so-called moral principles that G-the-F is urging are, in fact, no more than appanages he's reserving!”

“Oh! Objection!” Satan screams. “Is it the bad cop or the Witness who's on trial here!”

“No further questions!” huffs Ms. Applegate.

Apu, who owns Dairy Queen, inclines his head at sweet old Lillian and lifts an eyebrow. Stu the swish unfolds his legs and looks away. The lady lawyer's counter-thrust had found some flesh.

242. - Phylogeny Repeats Anatomy

The Times reporter's dying to take notes. This has to be the Trial of the Year! She prays her editor is going to let her write an I was there.

Next up: God's daughter Lydia! Who even knew He'd had a girl? The courtroom experts on the TV news are doing somersaults to guess the reason why She's being called.

Armani's kingdom for a pad and pencil! for one courtroom sketch!-- the Goddess floats in on a cloud and sports a gold and silver damask custom Pnina Tornai dress.

Christ—look at the resemblance!--swears Her in and Satan asks Her if Her area of expertise includes the damned and demons' craniums and thus their thinking processes.

“In Your expert opinion,” he concludes, “does that man there”--he sweeps his arm dramatically at the defendant-- “bear resemblance to the vicious demons whom You've studied so extensively?”

“He does!” cries Lydia triumphantly. “His cheeks are deeply creased with care. His eyes are red-webbed maps of sin. His jaw is far too thick and square. He uses too much oil on too little hair."

“Your Honor!” pleads Ms. Applegate. “The expertise of Prosecution Witness 3 sounds awfully like the long-discredited and racist pseudo-science of Phrenology!”

“Objection!” Satan says. “God's daughter isn't Someone to dismiss so lightly, even though Her views are antiquated. She was single-handedly responsible for that whole sloped-head lot from Hell becoming absolutely rehabilitated.”

The ex-priest and ex-bishop blush. Armani sees the diner owner turn his eyes to take the measure of Diego's skull, the aboriginal brown forehead's glacis curve.

The former barmaid doesn't follow all the fancy brachycephalitic testimony but she does note that the bad cop sports the classic markings of a lush.

243. - Spousal Privilege

"Your Honor, the defendant waives his right to bar his spouse's testimony in this case. I call Marlene, whose last name is withheld to shield their daughters' confidentiality.

"Marlene, do you perceive your husband as a Bad Lieutenant sort of man--a nasty shit, a violent drunk, somebody totally debased?"

"Yes, Sir, I do. Today's the first time he's been straight in years. I know because each time I look at him, he looks away."

"Is he a racist too, Marlene?"

"You bet."

"Could he put six slugs in a black kid's head?"

"A brutal, callous man--a psychopath."

"Thank you, Marlene. Your witness, Counselor."

"Hello, Marlene. Could what took place between your husband and the ghetto boy be just a good-faith shoot in self-defense?"

"It's possible. He makes you violent too. I've come this close to killing him a dozen times. There but the grace of God, I guess."

244. - The Other Cheek

"The People call Pope Benedikt," the Devil says.

"Objection!" bawls Ms. Applegate. "This witness was deposed as pope, replaced by Scotland's Cardinal O'Brien."

"Schismatics, all of them!" cries Benedikt. "In mala fide! In flagrante violatione legis! That fake Scotsman schemed behind my back-- lacks guts to cross swords with a haggis!"

"Let the record show," Christ says, "that you were once the pope, at least. Your full name and your area of expertise?"

"Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, der jünger. but my friends all call me Habe Hunger. I'm an authority on Swabian cuisine and doctrines of the Catholic Church."

"If this defendant shot that boy," the Devil asks, "is he condemned to everlasting pain?"

"We all get chances to repent."

"How many chances does he get?"

"How many did you get yourself?"

"I had an Angel Study Team, then Juvie Boot Camp, Rehab, Halfway House, and Work Release... And if our chances are rejected or misspent?"

"Eternal punishment. Since it's a long way from this bad cop's first offense, my personal predisposition is: death row and straight to hell. But our theology requires us to keep the next boy safe, and otherwise forgive."

"Let's say the only way to keep the children safe is to dispense with Christian nicety and feed the fucker's liver to the fish. Is there doctrinal precedent for that?"

"Asked and answered!" cries Ms. Applegate.

"Denied," rules Christ.

"If God stuck Jonah in a whale," says Benedikt, "I don't see why He couldn't stick this stinking child-killer cop among the general population of a jail."

245. - Prosecutor Satan's Hostile Witness

"Christ's famous sister Lydia the Nightmare-Bane had an assistant in her victory: State's Witness 6. His name is Satanel, my own name plus diminutive, an up and coming power--some say up and came, since I flew off, the cat's away-- down in my prior realm."

"You know that -el means god," growls Satanel. "Alhough I triumphed where you failed, you needn't view me as a rival. I'm a fan."

"The imp who served you your subpoena said you've tagged your little -el onto my name in every Hellish schoolbook, and your portrait clothes the coaling tower at each whistle-stop. Whatev. You are the #1 authority on Deviance. Please give us your assessment of this cop."

"He shot that black boy to inflate his dick. How many species of perversions sexuelles exist? Just take a headcount of the souls in Hell. The most effective sentence is castration. I know just the bitch to do it, too: a 13th-generation demon. Brutal. Haitian."

"That's not cruel, unusual? A tad too permanent? What if he has a change of heart and sees the light?"

"This asshole's ilk are preordained recidivists-- but the Omnipotent hears high-pitched voices from the Hole as easily as from the altar of St. Paul's Cathedral. Does the soul require flesh to welcome love? The possibility of pardon or parole is ever in God's hands unless His heart's too hard, past hope. So no, feel free to snip the bad cop's testicles, attach the cyanide I.V. and take the rest on faith. To right Justicia's scales, do as you must. The long term repercussions, to the mortal eye, will always be ensconced in unclear dust."

246. - The Impermissible Witness

"The Holy part I think the jurors get but tell us what You mean by Ghost. I gather that it doesn't mean You're dead but rather has to do with what the British sci-fi writer Peter Hamilton calls gaiamotes?"

"Exactly right. I'm like God's inner geek. I can't get into all the specs but I'm aware of every single erg of psychic energy and it's aware of Me. Communing with the contents of your heart is My real specialty."

"How many fingers are behind my back?" He slides his middle talon out. The tongue of blue flame fluctuates. The jurors crane their necks.

"The bad cop's dreaming about beating the ex-barmaid with his gun butt. She in turn is wondering if that man--Mexican?--would be a thrilling fuck."

Defendant smiles. Didi and Diego blush. The prosecutor clears his throat. "So, knowing all of our true thoughts," he says--

"Object!" yells Applegate.

"I didn't pose a question yet."

"Your Honor, sidebar?"

Jesus nods and they approach.

"The HG clued me in," she sotto-voces. "Prosecutor is about to ask about the street scene on a blanket crocheted by the Shawl and Blanket Ministry at Holy Spirit Church in Denver, north of Charlotte, down in Carolina."

"Earth to Applegate," Christ whispers back. "Did you forget your meds?"

"The local legend says each scene's inspired by the Holy You-Know-Who. One blanket in the Gaston Pediatric Hospital depicts a black child being shot at by a white man who's the knitted image of my client."

"God! Sustained!" says Christ. "I have profound respect for the ability of these twelve human beings, whale-like aliens and Kingdom Comes; but it's a gross abuse of confidence to ask them to keep level-headed faced with sick kids, southern knitting bees, and ESP."

Then to the Ghost: "This Court extends its thanks, but You're excused."

247. - St. Paul's Testapistle

"Did you hear God the Father testify that all you've written isn't true?" asks Satan.

"Grace be unto all of you, and peace."

"Did you embellish or distort when you reported what God hummed to you, what someone said God hummed to them, or what they'd heard was hummed to someone else?"

"I beg you, jurors: speak ye all the same, join perfectly together in one mind. Is God divided into three, or Christ in twain? He sent me not to preach by means of words, with excellence of speech or ink, for I know nothing: God is but a mystery, as is the hidden order he implanted in the world. For what man even knows the things of man, the things we speak of not in words, comparing all things spiritual with spiritual?"

"St. Paul?" says Christ.

"For who wast blest to know the mind of God--?"

"St. Paul! We get the gist! Your testimony is: particulars are trivial, the one important thing is in the heart? Now please apply your inspiration to this case."

"The cop's a rat's ass, through and through. What matter if he shot a black kid or if not? What matter if he did it in stupidity or pique? Crack him in the jaw, then club his ear and when the impact turns his other cheek smite him again; the audience will cheer! As I keep telling the Corinthians, don't mix me up with Christ on high. It's fine that He forgives. But us down here, among whom killers live?"

248. - Toontown

"Hello, St. Pete," says Christ. "I miss you guys up there! After the hell they put you through I never thought I'd see you back down here. How's Billie? Dinah? Lena Horne? I miss them live. The mp3's don't capture them. I'm sorry, everyone-- this witness is an old friend who I feared I'd never see again. Please, Satan, go ahead. Begin."

"St. Peter, no one's ever called us colleagues, much less pals. We've butted heads throughout the years but certain situations call the worst of foes to grimly sit and pull together oar and oar like Churchill did with Stalin, Guren with Naruto, Davidge with Jeriba. All our ancient legends are replete--"

"Objection--blathering!" sings Applegate.

"In sum: if we're reluctant bedmates, we see eye to eye the cosmos must be cleansed of scum who use their badge 'Protect and Serve' to grant their beasts carte blanche. Can you imagine any circumstance in which you'd ever let bad cops beyond the Pearly Gates?"

"If I so much as let him goggle through the bars, I'd lose my job! I doubt if you and Satanel would even want a shit like him in Hell."

"We have our scruples too: the pangs and tortures we apply to God's condemned yield greater joy to us, the worse their sin. This cop is fucking Disneyland!-- a solid six or seven hour wait of hopped-up pervert devils salivating for their turn to take him for a little spin!"

249. - Archangel Michael's Warrant

I've crossed my flaming sword with savages. My expertise is not in Justice; it's in hurt.

But if the jury finds against this vicious creep, archangels also have experience as guards.

You, Satan, know firsthand the fate he'll meet if the defendant is remanded to my custody.

He'll wish his daddy's condom hadn't been a year past expiration date or quite so cheap.

250. - The Housegirl's Sons

My name's Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz. My hermano here is Fidel Alejandro. How do Cuban Communists dispose of perverts--hateful, anti-social filth? Ask Florida. We sent her 80 boatfuls.

251. - The Bad Cop's Alibi (Direct)

"My final witness--does he look a trifle tipsy, bailiff? smell his breath!--is the defendant ipse. He's surprised us all by testifying for the state, believes it makes him seem more forthright, but I doubt it makes his victim seem less dead. So, killer, tell us your full name and how it is a dead boy is the upshot of a traffic stop?"

"'Bad Lieutenant,' 'Bad Detective,' or 'Bad Cop.' The kid mouthed off to me big-time and so I yanked his stank ass from the car and threw him to the road. What does this scumbag do-- get on his knees and say 'Forgive me, officer?' Dream on! He mouths off twice as bad!"

"Are you aware that mouthing off is hardly legal justification for the use lethal force?"

"What was it you were damned forever for? So don't pretend defiance of authority's okay. Is anything more sacred than the protocols observed between the master and the slave?"

252. - The Bad Cop's Alibi (Cross)

"Now, Bad Cop," says Ms. Applegate. "What was going on inside your head the day you shot this black boy dead?"

"I said politely, 'Turn the car off. Step out. Hands behind your back.' He said 'Fuck you.' I didn't fire then. I dragged him out onto the road. He said 'Fuck you' again. And so..."

"So, what you did seemed logical?"

"Call in that shrink with her cartoons. The first one's me: 'Get out the car!' The second one's the kid: 'Fuck you!' The third, I toss him on the ground. The fourth, he says 'Fuck you!' again. Now, she can ask a thousand people what the fifth cartoon is going to be, and half say 'Kick him in the head!' and half say 'Shoot his fucking ass!' That's just the way the real world is, Ms. Lia Hippie Pollyanna Applegate."

253. - The Bad Cop's Alibi (Redirect)

"So it's your contention, Bad Lieutenant, that regardless of the law, regardless of the policies of the police department, when you shot that unarmed black boy it was normal, part of being human?"

"Satan, Satan. Want to know what's really sad? It seems like everybody has a price these days."

254. The Last Judge's Jury Charge

Archbishop, you're the jury foreman. Gay guy Stu, and Kingdom Come-- you alternates will have to twiddle thumbs and wait to see if anyone gets sick. The jurors are instructed to weigh all, and nothing but, the evidence-- no prejudice against, or for, bad cops per se, no sentiment, philosophy, or faith. Free will? predestination? Insignificant. Weigh only what defendant had for grain and judge the loaf he baked with it considering the tandoor oven of his brain. Your standard of proof in a case like this? Reasonable Doubt if true justice exists.

255. - The Archbishop's Opening

1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 Nf6 3.d3 c6 4.Nf3 d5 5.Bb3 a5 6.Nc3 Bb4 7.a3 Bxc3+ 8.bxc3 Nbd7 9.exd5 Nxd5.... Kasparov v. Bareev, Linares, 1996

You heard a complicated web of claims and counterclaims-- a nearly infinite array of ways to wend to one of 3 decisions using 12 entirely different kits of lived experience as guides. I hope nobody on this panel nurses fantasies of unanimity. A juror gets to play his hunch: stir supposition into prejudice, arrange the facts to give it all a sheen of sense; don't budge. If you believe the cop is guilty, mark your poll card with an X; not guilty, Y; if principally intent on getting home, an X and Y. Let's avoid Twelve Angry Men and do things mathematically. Pass the cards in upside down. A Y; an X; XY. Who wins a tie? We'll add. Then multiply by n. Re-run regressional analyses until a finding with significance is wrestled from the data sets.

256. - The Appalled Alternate

“It's bad enough I'm shut in here with all you aliens!” the Kingdom Come erupts. "I have to speak my mind when I hear all this claptrap sputter from you Humans' rubber lips! 'That bad cop's guilty, you could tell from looking at the judge's face.'-- 'He looks just like my lowlife ex.'-- 'If he was worth a damn, his family would have shown up in the gallery.' Am I the only one--an immigrant from such a distant universe, my timeworn wallet black and whites are yellow-shifted into caput mortuum and bone-- who understands the way this jury trial is supposed to work? What makes me absolutely cringe is that my higher-ups consider Earth an option for our future home-away-from-home."

257. - Brunhilda's Defense

It's not that bad, dear Kingdom Come-- and this is from a woman who's been had not once but twice by males high up in this meshugge universe's ranks. It's true the natives have no guts. Their minds are slimier than kelp. They fail to think things through: the first degree of consequence is fine, the second's tough, though they can do it, but the third is out of reach. I'm optimistic nonetheless. They're only using 1/11 of their brain, and racial mixing's bound to help.

Some Humans that I've spoken to have said— now, this does worry me-- the higher someone's echelon on Earth, the likelier they are to be a jerk. The graver their responsibilities, the more they act like selfish clowns. It beggars understanding. Next time, I'll be sure to marry down.

258. - The DQ Franchisee's Gambit

Yes, this cosmos may seem baffling to you, two immigrants from universes far away. I come from just across the globe, and guess what?--I don't have a clue.

My wife spends most her time in Mumbai and my daughter doesn't talk to me. My best friends nicknamed me Apu, a silly TV character, a fool. I work 12, 15 hours a day to make ends meet at Dairy Queen, and when I have an hour or two at home, I don't know what to do.

Nobody wants to be gigantic like a whale. Nobody wants to look like little flocks of birds or strung-together raccoon hats. But there is one thing worse: being a small, dark, high-voiced man from India who's both a foreigner and a familiar joke.

You both said there were reasons why you left the countries of your birth-- some opportunities you sought on Earth. I was a misfit back home too who dreamt of starting over somewhere new. It is ironic, isn't it--the three of us now asked to help decide the fate of a bad cop who feels as comfortable in this milieu as dalits do in their degraded caste?

I know, Archbishop!-- Kingdom Come is not deciding anything unless one of the twelve of us falls ill. Yes, yes. It's not supposed to speak at all. We have to start our work now. Fine. But might we to introduce ourselves, at least? We're not automatons. We reach decisions socially, so knowing who each other are is just as critical as understanding Legalese.

I see our group deliberation as a chance for us to hash this question out together and to bond. The bad cop and the boy he shot have lent their lives to us as reference points. Let's make some profit from their sacrifice. This is Zen and the Art. Is it not? In friendly comradeship, let's show each other what's within our heart.

259. - Jack of All Spades

The way I introduce myself? A magic trick. Who wants to pick a card? The less you know about me otherwise, the better-- but I'm trained to use a firearm and wouldn't hesitate if one of you mouthed off at me like that kid did the cop. He wouldn't be a victim, though, if he'd been armed himself-- the shoe'd be on the other foot. As far as I see, both of them are poster children for the NRA.

Yippie-yi-yo-ki-yay. A different bar, a different lady every night. That's how I roll--no rent, no dues, just knowing how to pick the lock when she heads back to work. I'm no big fan of foul-mouth punks and no big fan of cops. If either one gets shot, my feeling is: It ain't my business. Live and let live. Song is sung. I'll tell you right now-- my vote goes whichever way ensures the jury's hung.

260. - The Gigolo's Comeuppance

“How dare you, young man!” castigates Miss Lillian. “Why did you let them put you in the jury box? Do you imagine any of the rest of us are great fans of a Fuck-you-happy boy or trigger-happy cop?

"You've got to follow through on projects you begin: trade in paper and plastic, for china and crystal. I don't want to be abusive but the way things stand, you’re little but a cock, a card trick, and a pistol.”

261. - The Pompous Alternate

Don't muzzle me. I'm vocal and I'm gay. Don't like it? There's the jurors' bathroom, and you know what you can do. Just thought I'd get that off my chest.

I object to this self-antithetical discovery announced by scientists last week that there's some arch-brain in our gut that issues marching orders to the mind: thus, prejudice will always rule the day. That's the kiss of death for men like me.

Like Kingdom Come, I think a snap poll based on gut reactions is a bad idea. Straight from the horse's mouth is not a recipe for sweet perfumes. Your mission is to be the better angels to the Prosecution and Defense-- ignore the instinct of the fearful herd, be twelve cool brooks of thought that pool into a temperate symposium. Defendant is entitled to a jury of his peers but no one heard the Judge suggest that first you also suck down six or seven beers.

Mr. Foreman, each of you should pinpoint what you think the crucial issue is, and once you all agree on two or three, apply the evidence you've heard to them. The breath of half-digested hay is foul. The knee-jerk school of jurisprudence only reproduces the original enormity.

262. - The Punky Jew's Opinion

I'm young, I dress a little 'scene,' I have a lot of body piercings and I dye my hair unnatural shades. This makes a lot of people view me as an idiot. I've shocked a couple teachers, though. They're like, "Did you write this? Jolene, you really ought to show yourself a little more respect."

I don't care what our jury process is, but I insist on hearing what the whole group thinks before I vote on guilt or innocence. Good kishke counts on matzo, seasonings and shmaltz. I'm self-obsessed, but I've unfortunately been around the block and know my basic instinct usually is dreck.

263. - The Wolf-Boy's Misgivings

I'm Ambrose. Behind my back, it's "Wolf-Boy." I've been rousted by a lot of cops. My natural sympathies are with the kid this rogue detective killed. But I've been close to murder too-- I have a violent streak myself. So I'm in no big hurry either to condemn this psychopath to hell.

It's the bigger issue that concerns me-- inhumanity, humanity, free will. I've come within an inch of suicide more times than I can count, so life itself--its loss--is not my absolute. I am a big believer in revenge, and if that black kid told me "Stick it up your ass!", I might have lost control.

I do agree he seems a vile man, but people see me on the street and reach a similar conclusion. If they see me with their daughter-- or their son--they're really seeing red! A lot of us are hateful people, truth be told. For the survival of the species, we should limit executions on that score.

How would I vote right now? Although I guess I'd say "That cop deserves the worst fate Jesus can design for him," I fear that underneath his snarl and swagger, Bad Lieutenant's nothing more than one more version of the boy next door.

264. - Law of the Jungle

It's my second month of law school-- how ironic that I'm sitting here instead! But everybody told me, "Don't pass up the trial of the century!"

"All courts are moot," my torts prof said, "including God's on Judgment Day. One person claims, or someone grants, the gavel's sway. If anyone contests it, it comes down to force of arms, and might quite literally makes right. The one thing indisputable is how all judges hide behind the drama to pretend their ruling is dispensed with the serene dispassion of the Dalai Lama. Every court's a colosseum for a king-- the spectacle of two knights jousting."

I took her bait. "I think the courts protect the weak from exploitation by the strong."

"You're being sentimental, Didi dear. Only the strong hold justice near, and if on some occasions someone powerless is given victory, it's to preserve a principle the other peons will be punished with. If the weak were strong enough to put their own teeth in the courts, what idiot would call them weak? You won't find food for sloppy thinking here at St. John's Law. But go, assume your seat among the twelve. Find out if your ideals fare better there."

265. - Dishwasher/Licenciado

Don' let my acento fool you, I hear every English you say. Sí, you are thinking: Why is on a jury this ugly guy who can't understand nothing?

No coja chivo por su balido-- never to choose a baby goat from the way that he cries. No, I am joking to you, we do not buy goats, we are the same as gringos. We only want to buy a car and a beautiful clothes to wear so we might even get laid. Do jyou see?

I hear the bad police when he say the doctor will make a little cómic and we will kick el joven negro. Pero I am thinking, how does this police know la Chandler Cartoon Secuencia? It is a test for little childs. Does he have some problem when he is a little boy? Es una circunstancia atenuante?

266. - The Religion Reporter's Tale

We're all for ridding life of evil. The devil's in the details.

"Wait! My company relies on fighting that." "Not her, she's all my sister has." "Look at the basic human need it satisfies." "What other door to lay my troubles at?" "Wait, don't we tax that one?" "He had a mother too." "It keeps that whole unsavory element in check." "Hands off, that's part of me."

Our arms shoot out and fingers point. "Now there's real evil! Hurry, it went that-a-way!"

267. - The Diner Owner's Recipe

I say we dump it all back in the pot

Fish, angels, humans demons, saints, gods mountain goats and crotch rot

Toss the lot of us back in

Re-light the jet

And stir it gently for another five, six days.

268. - The Lapsed Priest's Sentence

I was the village idiot: sinners came to me and pledged to mend the error of their ways; they paid me to pretend that I believed them. I should have said: "Go live like Jesus does. Shed all you own and wander to and fro, attempting miracles and sprouting little homilies." But if I don't forgive and send them back to work, how does the parish pay for iPods, AC, satellite TV? Christ forgave a taxman, an adulterer, and the soldiers who performed His execution-- sent them home. When the bad lieutenant came to me, confessing that he'd killed a boy, I knew that five Hail Mary's couldn't clear the air. I told the vicious cop, "You are forgiven too, go sin no more." And then I hung my purple stole back on its hook for good, knelt down and prayed, "No more."

Raise that child from the dead, and ask "Do you forgive?" Ask mom, "Do you?" How dare I offer absolution for such absolute corruption?

My vote? Throw the butcher to the wolves. Give me an arm or leg to chew.

269. Deliberations

"We must find the bad cop guilty," says the Foreman, "1. if filled with racist hatred when he shot the boy; if 2., he lacks remorse, regardless of his motive; or if 3., he's just a mis-created piece of human junk.

"I favor 3. He's inconvenient trash. As Wolf-Boy said, it might be any one of us, but 12 crooks damning a 13th won't cost me sleep."

"Hear, hear," the other cynics say.

"I go with 2," says Wolf-Boy. "When a beast bursts out of us, we ought at least to bleed some self-disgust."

"Hear, hear," the moralists assent.

"The 1st, for me," the law-school student says. "The bad cop is on trial for a single act. It's clear that he committed it. Case closed."

"Hear, hear," agree the gazers not of forests, but of trees.

"And you?" the Foreman asks the gigolo. "His fellow criminal? Just say Not guilty and the verdict of the Final Judgment's hung."

"And that helps who? The Judge will order turkey sandwiches and lock us back in here to talk some more. It's almost Happy Hour. Let the dogs of hell divide the fucker's liver."

270. - How the Wetback Was 86'd

"Arzobispo, jyou are forgetting el veredicto 4: thees cop, he ees needing terapia for hees childhood trauma. Él no es culpable por razón de la inestabilidad emocional."

"Look, Diego," growls the Foreman. "You can't even say the fucking thing in English..."

"He eez not guilty because of heez emotional inestabili--"

"I say we use an alternate," suggests the gigolo. "No way we can deliberate in goddam foreign languages. The Kingdom Come speaks English, plus he's not a fag. Let's let him vote."

"You have a point," the Foreman says.

"I theeenk zeees Mexican--" the alien triple box-kite jeers, "--he eeet too many beans! No creeeminal would ever be conveeected if we let heeem off for heees emotional inestabilty."

"¡Usted feo de mierda alienígena!"

"I'm sorry, but abusive language does disqualify you as a juror in this country."

271. - The Verdict

(Whereupon at 4:40 p.m. the People v. Bad Lieutenant jurors returned and the following proceedings were had in their presence and hearing:)

COURT: The Court has received a note from the Foreman, to wit: 'The Jury has arrived at its verdict.' Will the Clerk read the verdict?

CLERK: 'The Jury finds the Defendant guilty of first degree murder.'

COURT: Does Defense ask that the Jury be polled?

MS. APPLEGATE: Yes, Lord.

COURT: Clerk will poll the Jury.

CLERK: Your Excellency, is this your verdict as I have read it? JUROR 1: Aye, it is.

CLERK: Sweet Ole Lady Miss Lillian, is this your verdict? JUROR 2: Yes, Sir, it is.

CLERK: Skeevy Jolene? JUROR 3: Yes, Sir, it is.

CLERK: Ambrose, aka Wolf-Boy? JUROR 4: Yes, it is.

CLERK: Diner Owner Troy? JUROR 5: Yes, Sir, it is.

CLERK: Fancy Pants Religion Reporter? JUROR 6: Yes, Sir, it is.

CLERK: Gigolo Asshole? JUROR 7: Oh, yes it is!

CLERK: Easy Barmaid? JUROR 8: Yes, it is.

CLERK: Silly Indian Man? JUROR 9: Yes, Your Lordship, it is.

CLERK: Disgraced Priest? JUROR 10: Yes, it is.

CLERK: Gigantic Space Cow? JUROR 11: Yes, I do.

CLERK: Your Alien Lordship? JUROR 12 (formerly Alternate): It is.

CLERK: Your Honor, Prince of Peace, the verdict is unanimous.

COURT: Defendant is herewith sentenced to eternity in Hell. Jury is dismissed. Is there anything more at this time, Satan?

MR. SATAN: The People have nothing.

COURT: Ms. Applegate?

MS. APPLEGATE: No, Your Honor.

COURT: Adjourned.

(Whereupon at 4:45 p.m. the Judge returned to His chambers, hung up His robes and floated toward the ceiling in His johnny.)

272. - In Depth Reporting

"After Monday's guilty verdict in the End Times Trial, a Mexican native thrown off the jury reportedly due to his inability to speak English claims he was disempaneled because he wouldn't go along with the other eleven voting to convict. Diego Lantanas, welcome. Please tell our home listeners exactly what happened, as much as you could understand it."

"Gracias, Señora Goldstein."

"English only please, Diego."

"I say I theenk thees bad cop, maybe he have something wrong en la cabeza. Jyou know? Ex-ten-u-at-ing cir-cun-stance? But they say 'No, you are estupid,' and instead they choose alien who look like unos tocados deshilachados."

"You're saying his conviction was unjust?

"Sí, sí, exactamente."

"The others claim your English wasn't good enough."

"You were there, Señora. My Eenglish, ees good, no?"

"Forgive me for saying so, Diego, but it's not good."

"If I am Wolf-Boy or un extraterrestre or un mariposo or una judía like you, then do anybody say I cannot be on jury?"

"Your bias against people different from yourself just might make you unqualified. Earlier, we had the blimp Brunhilda on the show, who said you called her 'ugly' in the jury room. Unfortunately, that is all the time we have. Was Bad Lieutenant--all of us, by kinship-- damned to hell impartially, or not? This is N.Y. Times religion reporter Armani Goldstein signing off from WNYC's All Things Considered."

273. - Star Magazine Exclusive! FIRST LADY PREGGERS--BY ALIEN!

The White House is working 24/7 to black out the story, but sources close to the First Lady say that she is pregnant--but not by Barack, nor by any human. Michelle was reportedly selected for cross-breeding by an alien deity. "I would choose her. You'd be crazy not to!" said one aide in the East Wing. "The big question? What will the President do when it is born? The last thing he needs is to be linked to another un-American non-Christian god."

274. - Obama's New Race Speech

We have to talk some turkey, folks. How great are we all truly doing with our human gene pool being pure-- a word alarmist nativists are using way too much?

I hate to say it, people, but by every measurement, the human race, alone, is in decline. As my Malia said, "Why not put one more box of DNA up in the cupboard with the Cap'n Crunch? I think KC is kind of cute."

Our brand new little boy, to some, is just a tempest in a petri dish, but as a race we must decide if we want more of this. Michelle and I both understand that KC, Jr.'s privacy is going to be-- must be--compromised, so everybody gets a chance to see exactly what he's like. Our "Name the Halfcaste" contest is a first step, where the top 10 winners get to come on New Year's Day to play a game of Duck Duck Goose with KC on the White House lawn.

On a personal note, Michelle and I thank those millions of Americans who sent the girls and us congratulations on his birth. KC's not just a first for Earth, but he's a first for the Obama family too! We're very grateful he has come, and I look forward very much to raising him as if my own.

Ever since the ancient Bible times of father Abraham and Joseph with his coat of many colors, fate and future sometimes jump out from most unexpected packages. The wise men always say "God's will." And so, may God bless KC Jr., each of you, and these United States.

275. - Flier

TO THE HUMAN SPECIES:

Is it time to call a spade a spade? The water's rising all around. Crabs and crows are flocking while you claw each other's throats. Your ruling class is totally absorbed in playing Call of Duty and your Bad Cop Trial damned the lot of you to everlasting hell. The sun is painting you with cancer.

Shakespeare (half ours) said it: Legg'd like a man! and his fins like arms! Warm, o' my troth! I do now let loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffer'd by a thunder-bolt. Alas, the storm is come again! My best way is to creep under his gaberdine; there is no other shelter hereabout: misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Are you prepared? You've always known that I'd come knocking.

No fine print. The world is flat. Take all your jewelry off. Lie down, spread out. No. On your back. Don't look away.

276. - Trinity's Parting Powwow

"I'm asking Both of You what I should do. Condemning all those fellow souls to Hell feels very Mary-Queen-of-Scots to me.”

"Hell's not as drastic as it used to be, My Son. Your Sister and the new head devil Satanel--"

"That's not the point! The bigger issue is those fucking Kingdom Comes encroaching on what all the gods in council way-back-when decreed was Our pied-à-terre in perpetuity!”

"But do We even want it anymore?"

"I don't! I sort of like this Empty Nest, just Ghost and Me in Partly Cloudiness."

"If You remember, I opposed creating matter! You? You thought it was Your masterstroke!”

"Agreed? Commute the sentence of damnation? Let the KC's have the whole damned operation?"

"I do want to write a Proclamation. Put a guarantee of human rights in place."

"They tried that in Hong Kong. It doesn't work."

"It takes Us off the hook and saves Our face."

“Your face? That was Your big mistake! And You, dear Christ—that schmatte makes You look like Mama Cass's dentist.”

“Alright, I'm leaving now to go back down. Don't know when I'll be back again. For old times' sake, once more Our battle cry?

“One for All, and All for One!” “One for All, and All for One!” “One for All, and All for One!”

277. - La Pasión de Raúl

¡Nunca ceder la humanidad al Venga-Reino! ¡Mientras Fidel llama la respiración, hay esperanza! ¡Dios nos abandonó cuando éramos niños! ¡Al diablo con el Padrasto que nos tiraniza!

Never yield humanity to the Kingdom Come! While Fidel draws breath, hope shall flourish! God abandoned us when we were young! To hell with this Stepfather, oppressing us!

278. - Putin's Rebuke

Revel in your rousing rhetoric, Raúl -- your mother's still a dirty whore, and Kingdom Comes will take their pick of all the desperate cubanas your immense stupidity keeps poor.

I know which side the bread is buttered on: not Atheism any more than Christianity. Humanity's been asked to dinner, but you're opting to be raped instead.

Don't sputter all those Marxist platitudes, I learned them all verbatim. Communism makes me sick. What concept is more obsolete than "class"?

Do you think Mother Russia vanquished Hitler without taking one or two right up the ass? Realpolitik necesitates judicious attitudes. Accept the KC's ultimatum.

279. - Disciple

They call Michelle the new Me: puts her body on the line to save humanity.

What a relief that is. Why shouldn't someone else lay their neck on the chopping block?

If she's going to don the mantle I've worn all these centuries, and pioneer the next frontier of merging god with flesh, I ought to warn her, Sacrifice can turn out hollower than you expect.

But what the heck. She's got the smarts and steel to take care of herself, such deep charisma that I only want to wash her feet, to follow her.

280. - Devotee

Will I stand with Castro?-- ugly, old, and long past thinking about anyone except himself?

Though I'm a lot of things, race traitor isn't one of them. The god/man mix is worth another whirl.

OK, that's pure rationalization.

Michelle is a fucking sensation.

281. - Supplicant

Hail, Michelle Help of the Sick, Empress of the World, Seat of Wisdom, Black Madonna, full of grace! Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, KC Jr.!

Pure Temple, Treasury of Mercy, My life, My sweetness and My hope! Most Obedient Michelle, I kneel before you. From the stench of powerlessness, give Me release.

Honor of the Sky, Temple of Divinity, Brightness of the Sun, Light of Washington D.C., Ladder of Heaven, you enclosed under your heart the infinite Lord whom no space can contain.

When the Lord wished to come to them with your free cooperation, He willed to have need of you. Who can repay you for rescuing mankind by your generous consent?

You walk across the shards and rubble, shedding tears for those who die, one by one, Cain's endless slaughter of his brother! Dress Me too in a clean robe, amen!

O Virgin of the Word Made Flesh in your womb, teach Me to be open to Him. Help Me to dedicate Myself with unceasing charity to evangelizing the Cubans, amen!

Sweet Hope! May the Lord exercise His sovereign empire over My soul; may He annihilate all that is of Myself and not of Him, one fold and one shepherd, KC, amen!

O Star on the Wave! Hope of the Guilty! Black Lily, by whose milk the New Jerusalem is nourished! Through the Mixed Blood of your Son, let people call Me happy!

282. - Second Traffic Stop

Now this is cool, mein Herr bad cop: a little black boy here to kick the stuffing out of you. My father, KC Sr., ransomed the whole human race, picked it up for a song, thanks to your beastliness, and made me Dean of Discipline.

Get the fuck out of that car. Free will? There's nothing free in Kingdom Come. You'll do exactly as you're told. We don't ask nicely more than once. The Age of Christianity, which let lice thrive, is done.

How does the asphalt taste, you cruel cocksucker? I don't have to use a gun, my little nigger-child fist's enough to make you feel a dead boy's rage and pain. Now turn that other goddam cheek, and let me pop those last four teeth.

283. - Anita on the Oval Office Intercom

Mr. President, the bad cop's in the basement in the Situation Room: Commander Yando had a look and says he's missing half a lip and all his teeth.

Assad is holding on Line One and Putin's on Line Two: I think their wives both want to ask Michelle a couple up-close questions about, you know, Kingdom Come.

284. - The Good Stepfather

Look, Son. Sorry--Look, KC. Your Real Dad said he wants to rule through me, which doesn't work unless I have a little harmony. They'll kick my butt out back onto the street, and then you'll have to deal with fucking Mormons-- take my word for it, no Kingdom Come wants that.

So please cough up the bad lieutenant's teeth? No, they will not look pretty in our Christmas wreath! No, not good punctuation for your Scrabble set! The dental surgeon wants to try replanting them into the asshole's jaw. No! If he succeeds, you're not allowed to knock them out again!

Use your imagination. There are lots of much worse things that you can do to take revenge on all the racist swine like him. You could, for instance, knock the unemployment rate down 3 or 4%. That'll put the lot of them in such despair, they'll gnaw their own lips off.

285. - Putin on Line Two

"Barack, Raúl is going to the mat-- is just too old, he says, to jettison his Workers' Revolution line. He swears he'd rather lose his teeth than have to memorize a whole new set of speeches."

"And Fidel--?"

"El Líder can go straight to hell-- can't even feed or wipe himself."

"So we've no choice?"

"I have one thought. You'd have to clear it with KC. Suppose we boatlifted the Kingdom Come resisters-- Christian diehards, Islamists-- all down to Cuba, let them rip each other up along El Malecón? Might well be great PR for It."

"It's worth a fucking try, Crab. Let me run it past Its kid. Would sure beat blowing up another Maine and sending the Marines back in."

"And how's that doll of yours?"

"She's fine. The KC seems to want another go with her. But not the sort of thing that you can push."

"I hear you. My Lyudmila's green. She looks like a bushel of greyed potatoes, but she still believes she has a shot."

"What else is left to dream about? Well, listen. Gotta go. I've got Bashar on Two."

"Tell him to fuck himself for me."

286. - Assad, Line One

Bashar, this is Barack. I just got off the phone with Crab. He says go screw yourself.

I'll tell him, sure!

I bet Raúl would take your calls,

So listen, man. I made the best deal that I could for you.

You step down peacefully-- this fucking week-- and KC Sr. promises to take a good look at your Asma.

Yeah, It knows she's something of a Brit. "But not genetically," I told him. "She is really cute."

Michelle? Yeah, maybe. Heck, you think I have a say? I'm nothing but a bobblehead-- Yes, Mr. Come. No, Mr. Come.

My girls? Oh Lord, too young. That fucker likes someone who's been around the block. From what I've heard, your Asma fits that bill as well.

I'm sorry. Fucking CIA, you know? If they were half as interested in atom bombs as blowjobs--

No, no, I'm talking metaphorically.

Look, you should worry more about the shit they have on you.

Relax, Bashar. So will you take the deal or not?

Of course you can refuse.

Look, both our butts belong to It.

287. - The Obamas, Episode 11

"The Park Police arrested Christ outside the fence again today. He says if you'll just talk to Him, Michelle-- He says He's, like, your greatest fan."

"Why does He always have to be unique? First it's the only god-man in the universe. Now it's my one-man cult. He's been complaining--how long now?-- that all He wants is ordinariness, then always finds a way to be a spectacle."

"This swiss chard from the garden's really good."

"Don't try to butter my ass up!"

"He's Christ. Give Him a fucking break."

"Was Christ. He gave that up and put us under KC Sr.'s thumb. I like that thumb, don't get me wrong, but Jesus isn't anybody any fucking more. His fawning prayers and adoration creep me out. The Secret Service ought to lock His weird ass up."

"You're right, Michelle. The swiss chard sucks. I'm going outside for a smoke. You've changed since Kingdom Come's been shtupping you--you've gotten hard."

"Somebody's got to make sure we survive."

288. - The Free World

"No! Anyplace but Cuba!" Jesus pled.

They threw Him in the bottom of the boat, hands bound with rope, and feet in chains.

"The rest of you deniers--there He is," the CIA guy said. The sun beat down. The men wore beards, the women far too many clothes. "Who wants to give this Jim Beam to Raúl? Tell him he's going to fucking need it with the lot of you all up his sorry ass."

"My name is Christ and I'm an alcoholic," Jesus chanted as the engine roared to life.

The bug-eyed children were too scared to meet His desperate glance.

289. - Hombres Comunes

An old man in a dinghy fished. It was a marlin or a pearl. He waved as they sped by.

Christ shitted himself the moment La Boca came into view across La Bahía de Mariel.

290. - Among the Elect

I was one of the shabby men in the leaky boat with Him. I had left my wife and children-- it was for the Greater Good, I'd told myself. The truth? I couldn't let go of of His hem.

About a thousand launches reached La Isla Infinita. There were banners strung between the double westwork towers of her long-neglected churches: ¡La última batalla por la libertad! ¿Quién es el verdadero enemigo? ¡Venga, Diablo, alégrame el día!

But the ordinary people yawned. A succession of Great Satans had threatened the Revolution, only to become disoriented in the heat and general torpor. Let the Kingdom Come invade. They gave It--one, two weeks?-- before It rued the day It came.

A Colonel snatched the bourbon with a grin that was obscene. An palsied blacksmith chiseled Christ free from His fetters. In the basement of a school, a dormitory had been set up. Bits of bread were passed around but no one had enough cajones to proclaim Esto es mi cuerpo or Subhana rabbiyal adheem.

It all felt like a terrible dream.

291. - KC Jr.'s First Full Sentences

I hate the White Man more than anyone alive. I must have gotten it from both sides. I can't stand to even see the pale sumbitches' faces without fury rising up demanding retribution. But for what?

From my mama's side, sure. From Its, it's not a mystery but an observer's sequitur-- It says it was the Whites who analyzed Its interstices, where Its sort of duck-corpse meets Its tattered raccoon hat, and in the process leaked out too much of their own shit.

One party always gets hurt. The Whites are ten percent, an appropriate tithe.

292. - Lydia & Satanel's Council

"They're not so happy with us right now down on Earth: the nightmares we ejected turned to daymares pretty quick. Havana is infested by a scourge of ragtag paleo-religionists, resisters who deny that Kingdom Come exists and holds the reins these days. But It is real, alright! So you and I had better fortify our realms above and underneath, or we'll be swelling with Its little bastards next. I hear It's never happy long with any single species's sex. No! We just finished pulling one yoke from our necks! Shall we attack? Retreat? The analysts agree this Motherfucker won't be easy to defeat."

"Retreat, dear Lydia? I've never even heard the word! But challenge? Yes. And bloody fight? My middle name. And we'll have allies, too. The Cubans are a little pissed, but what's a pesky inconvenience among friends when Kingdom Come is threatening their revolution and their chastity? Let's make a pact with them: comrades-in-arms, and if victorious, we'll promise them Cats A and B to help them vacuum up the shit we dumped on them as though from airplane heads. We not exactly kosher to that crowd, but we're a great deal closer to their God than the Alternative!"

293. - Satan Masterful

This Earth is mine.

Its keys are in my claws.

Christ can double-cross me and The Trinity can vote to hand it over to some Rag Doll from the sky; the Cuban Commies and old-time religionists can raise their fists and palms; God's daughter and my upstart protégé can plan another war; and the American First Lady can give birth to all the freaks she wants. But it's still mine.

I won it from the humbled Christ as fairly as the dying Isaac's youngest won the firstborn's perks. I guess I'll have to show them all how mastery works: Oh dear, does KC Jr. have a nasty case of sickle-cell?

The White House doctor, usually so warm and frank, turns circumspect and formal. "Test results all indicate his hemoglobin is abnormal." And Michelle, a tubal cyst? ¡Qué lástima! A risk for any further out-of-species sex.

The Kingdom Come's beside Itself. It group-Skypes Washington, Beijing and Moscow and demands an explanation.

Sheepishly, Barack confesses "Black folks are a little tricky."

Putin pipes up, "My Lyudmila--"

"--is a frump," snaps Kingdom Come.

"And my Yǒngqīng," says Hu--

"--too short! You humans aren't all you were cracked up to be. So easy, getting in your women's pants, but getting something topnotch out?-- fat chance!"

"The optimal environment," continues Dr. Mariano, "for the long-term management of sickle cell is one that is devoid of Parvovirus B-19. A bout of Fifth Disease could kill the boy. Free ethyl carbamate and hydroxylamine, resulting in a breathing atmosphere containing some hydroxyurea, is ideal."

"Oh fuck," the KC groans. "That sounds an awful lot like Mars, from which I had to beat an ignominious retreat not long ago. The wife there--her word-- heard that Homo sapiens were touting something called monogamy. I told her, Science fiction, Baby, but she got all crazy, went Medea on the little girl we'd had, and screeched, If You're so fucking sure, why don't You fly in there and put Your weird-ass pecker where Your mouth is! More or less, that's why I'm here."

"I don't guess KC Jr. would be too big of a hit with her," says Putin dryly.

"Give her Belgian chocolates, Big Guy. Works for me," Obama says.

Hu coughs into his sleeve.

"So, what?" the Kingdom Come demands.

"Appeasement never work," he says. "Don't go down on your knee and cry. You got to show her You divine: go there with KC Jr. plus one concubine."

This one lips me. That one baits me. When the smoke clears, I come out on top of everyone who underestimates me.

294. - Obama on the White House Lawn

"The little Boy who kicked the bad cop's tush down in the basement of the White House-- I regret to say He's gone. A medical condition well known in the Black community called SCA or Sickle-Cell Anemia required His relocation to a place that minimized the symptomology. For sake of privacy I cannot tell you where-- indeed, can't tell you why all sufferers of SCA should not relocate to this slightly safer land-- but what I can share with Americans tonight is reassurance that the Health Care legislation we have passed is going to guarantee all kids the very best that we can find it in our hearts to give to them--Black, White, Latino, anyone. The sick kid's dad, the Kingdom Come, is also gone, so I would like now to ask God to bless each one of us, and the United States, again."

295. - Jesus in the Basement of La Academia de la Victoria Popular in Mariel

So now I'm back at Square One. Up above among the pagans, the unchanging Satan still enjoys free rein, while I'm in manacles again, crammed in this catacomb with odd-lot, noisy, oily sardines-- a bunch of bearded elders, muttering. To Me, the saddest places in the whole wide world are those where two or more of them are gathered in My name.

What breaks My heart the most? Poor Tom has come along, left two kids and a loving wife, gave up a lovely house, for this. He has to fumble in the dark and elbow seven other guys to even take a piss. I told him, "No! Stay home! Who gives a shit about your poem?" But he was, like, "The way my luck has always run, the day I leave will be the day you come out with an absolutely thunderous remark."

"Who do you think I am?" I asked.

"If I could answer that," he said. "I'd have this puppy put to bed."

296. - Lydia Maternal

He took the semi-human Child to Mars? Well, no malaria at least. I hope He brought the Kid some gloves and something Southern Fried to eat.

I've been the poster-Girl of feminists who say maternalism's not innate. I'm not the warm and cuddly type. I don't view little kids as more than bait. But yeah, I feel a twinge of something-- little KC yanked away from such a comfy gig to someplace where He'll face hostility, especially since Dad was being played-- though Satanel and I won't let the coward get away with folding up His tent and fleeing just when we're en route to Earth to kick His mallard butt!

Yet...should the Boy survive our strike, I'm thinking maybe I should bring Him back and let Him grow up underneath My wing. We're not exactly the Obamas but compared to Kingdom Come's cadaver we're the cat's all-silk pajamas.

297. - Satanel Antipaternal

Cute, the Child KC? That Thing is dangerous! No way I'd let It live, much less invite It back to Hell with us.

I'd slice and dice Its soul with a machete!

Broadcast every shred upon the solar wind like DNA confetti!

Grate It: yak cheese on top of the chandali spaghetti of a very, very hungry Himalayan yeti!

Feed the little Fucker's right ear to Mike Tyson, jam the left one right back up the bunghole of that species-traitor the perfidious Michelle, and sew the middle one between the fingers of the monstrous girl depicted at the lattice by the suicide-inducing Dante Gabriel Rossetti!

What, I'm being petty? Lydia, I hate to rain on Your parade of oxytocin but that Kid will only be a drain on your more vital bellicose emotions.

I'm not ready to become a father figure, male role model, any of that twattle. I'm just ill-equipped by temperament to coddle.

Devils don't have Maslow's stages of development but plummet right ahead, ears back and eyeballs sweaty, tongues out, drooling jowls, performing doggy deeds, fulfilling infantile needs.

298. - Next Genesis

On the left is Phobos, Deimos on the right, and in between, three NASA satellites-- Reconnaissance, Express and Odyssey. We'll steer clear of the Curiosity, so fond of laser-vaporizing anything of any interest, and We'll give a wide berth to Olympus Mons, where My infanticidal ex lives inside a volcano reaching 14 miles up into the air, its base the area of Poland.

I hear the soil isn't bad a little further north, and I brought seeds that should do well if We can build a hothouse warm enough: chrysanthemum for tea and greens, black walnut, mulberry, wild olive, fig, pignolis, day-lily, white chenopodium, loquats and honey locust great for beer. The soil ice will water them from underneath.

Down on the surface-- can You see it crawling?-- the explorer rover Opportunity. We'll use it to send tweets to Sasha and Malia, and for fun We'll go out and collect the pockmarked hulks of MER-A Spirit, the Global Surveyor, the Phoenix lander, and assorted other probes from far more distant worlds. We'll have adventures, just the Two of Us, and then, once We get settled, We'll invite some other kids with sickle-cell so You'll have company your age.

I also promise You a pet as good as the Obamas' Bo. Right now, You think your world is ending, but it isn't. This will be Your world one day, You'll see.

.eventually طݪݪۿڸ I'll have to deal with This planet isn't big enough for both of us. She'll fume and stew a while once she's gotten wind I'm here again--with You-- and then I guarantee she'll boil over and explode. That's when she's vulnerable, and when I'll strike. You thought Your mama had an ample ass! طݪݪۿڸ But I'll get every bit of leveled nonetheless.

Someday when You too find a way to reproduce, this Mars will be the first Black world in this or any other universe: the dream of Marcus Garvey finally come true. You'll resurrect those pioneers like Henry Highland Garnet, Edward Wilmot Blyden-- all the way to Malcolm X. Some part of what they wrote, some part of this, will find its way into that Genesis.

299. - Fight for Mars: Trash Talk

An unaccustomed--umbra? nimbus?-- slightly dimmed the plain. The Kingdom Come glanced up and saw what looked like a tremendous cloud of colorless, transparent locusts floating in from the direction of the sun-- and then the Mother Mons volcano, without a warning, blew, and like defensive grapeshot, soot and magma droplets flew to intercept and scatter the incoming myriad arrived from Hell and Heaven's gates!

The KC quickly stashed Its Son inside the patched-up shell of Phoenix, then flutters gaily up Itself to join the fray. That fucking Satanel and Lydia! What had It ever done to them? The Black nationalistic rhetoric? had she blown up--?طݪݪۿڸ And partly to protect It and the Boy?-- or was it pique that anybody flew this close to her before she had her blush or her mascara on? No matter. They had been strange as any fellows in the bed of love, and now they were again, in the turbulent billet of war!

"Surrender!" Lydia thundered from above as It approached. "That ash and smoke are playing right into our hands! We have uncounted trillions here who on My signal fill their motes with bloody ink, to dark the sky, and even such a cow of a volcano will grow slowly cold and die! Give up, and leave our Cosmos and cosmology, KC's! Go home!"

"Go right ahead and spill your ink!" the Kingdom Come replied defiantly. "It's but a coward's stratagem, the sort real grown-up gods expect from trim like You and Your demonic little gigolo! Your Cosmos, Lydia, was never known for courage, honor, or ingeniousness. Feel free--perform Your parlor tricks and find out what Your elders, betters, do with uppity, unfriendly little hicks!"

"You asked for it!" roared Satanel. "You're just like us-- not met Your match before and thus, not able to imagine ever taking one on the chin-- a cocky rube to be re-educated when the angels, devils, damned and saints come marching in!"

"Do you know what you're up against?" the vast volcano hissed back. What de Warenne taught you Tactics? And wherever have you been? Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor Hell a fury like a woman scorned!"

300. - Fight for Mars: Blood Sport

On Lydia's command their bubble vesicles fill up with blood. The Martian plains turn black and temperatures begin to drop at such a rate the hothouse crops will freeze in half an hour. Then the Boy-- those goddam human genes!-- begins to turn into an icicle.

KC's parental instinct roars. It swats and bats the blood-filled mega-swarm of gnats but as effectively as a mosquito shooing a typhoon. redoubles her activity and belches طݪݪۿڸ even more particulate into the thermosphere which only further screens the sun. Exultant Lydia and Satanel both churn their fists above their heads in triumph. That's when KC Jr.--chilled-- tilts back his head and sneezes a tuberculosis filled with sickle cells.

So sudden, overwhelming, is the agony it wreaks, the whole ionosphere is a cacophony of shrieks, as every saint and all their works, and every angel undefiled, and every demon ever cursed, and every sinner ever damned twists painfully, falls silent, rinses off on quiet solar breezes.

Dispirited, it's Lydia who freezes. Ichor-veined, She isn't prey to blood diseases.

301. - Regrets

s not the name my parents gave me'طݪݪۿڸ but a vicious nickname I picked up at school, which stuck. In 3127these it means the broad too big to fuck.

I ate the same amount, I exercised as much-- but grew at twice the rate of anybody else. Tumidity, the doctors said at first. And then, Pituitarism, unrestrained, and finally, Volcanism, unexplained.

The girls made jokes about my ass. The boys--one made a phony pass !طݪݪۿڸ ,and then lamented to his friends

Then--pile on, why not?--the acne hit. My average zit was bigger than a grape; then, bigger than a pomegranate. Even Mother couldn't help but gape. When I was 12, my Father said-- I thought it was a joke-- he thought I needed my own planet.

When Kingdom Come came fluttering, Its was the first kind voice I'd heard in 711,711 years. It was so funny-looking, I teased It! And It insisted that It liked me: Sturdy fundament! Nice set of rims!

Things warmed, then heated up. We had to laugh: Its dick a stringbean overcooked, my cunt a lobster pot, but still the chowder that we made was hot, and more than that, nutritious. When the time came and my lava broke, we had a darling, normally accoutered little girl.

.طݪݪۿڸ I wasn't I was Mom. And then, from jealousy, I threw it all away. I guess I never did outgrow my underlying insecurity.

302. - Fight for Mars: Reconciliation

".thank you for your help ,طݪݪۿڸ"

"I want to meet this Boy."

"Could be He's just a little scared of you. Some things I might have told Him--"

"--that were true, alas. Since all of that, You know, I take my meds religiously."

"I'm glad."

"And I'm relieved to see that You're a dad again. A good one, too."

"I give the credit to His mom. Michelle. She's married to a president on Earth."

"I'm sure she's nice. What happened there, if I may ask?"

"Long story, you know how it is. She has two older daughters by the human. KC Jr. had to come here for His health."

"I see. Those fucking killers in His veins?"

"He got that also, sadly, from Michelle."

"There's something I could do."

"No thanks!"

"I'm serious. I think I know a way to help. I could transfuse Him, don't You think?-- those little killers out--my sturdy magma in. He'd be as indestructible as His old man."

"That's nice of you."

"And I'd atone, a bit, for what I've done. And just a little bit, I'd be a mom again."

303. - Fight for Mars: Mercy

Come here, poor Lydia. Things are, in general, as dreadful as they seem, but give it time and either are or seem will change-- no matter which. One gaze into Your eyes and I can see the underlying trouble: not the fact that every soldier in your army's just been lost, or he with whom you launched invasions perished too, but farther back, in childhood, a lack of mothering.

No father, brother, nor your spooky uncle ever brushed Your hair, or ribboned it: They let You raise Yourself as if a stalk of goldenrod. They hoped You'd turn out just the way You did, a warrior, independent, action oriented. But You lack that mama loves you when cruel circumstance deprives You of the sun.

Come here. I must seem awfully ungainly to a trim gamine who doesn't need to wear a bra, but these humongous breasts have purposes. So, come.

304. - Christ's Adiós

My sister is on Mars, I'm told, Her grand ambitions telescoped to hoping that an overweight infanticidal item of geology has ample sponginess to sop up all Her tears-- and I'm in such bad shape Myself, I have a twinge of jealousy.

I don't know how to break it to you, Tom, but I'm a bust. Put down your pen. You must. It only makes things worse to have you here evangelizing every mortifying detail of My Second Coming's curse.

Tonight I'm slipping out of here alone, and getting lost. I want to find a bar somewhere with Spanish CNN on the TV-- keep following Michelle from what feels more and more afar, and make a final, sober choice to consecrate Myself to rum. That seems to be the only tomb where closure has a prayer.

And you'll end where you will. There may be interest in a book about the making of an unrepentant end-stage drunk. I tend to doubt it, though.

305. - "I'm home!"

Well, La-di-da and Glory be. Hey, kids--downstairs! It's the prodigal artist formerly known as Dear Old Dad!

Tell Boswell here how Jolene tried to turn you on to marijuana while he chased tale, drank mojitos day and night in gay Havana-- as the woman once known as his wife was forced to pawn her final freckle, seeing as the Nobel Prize Committee hasn't come up with a single shekel.

Ask your father who's writing the story of his own fucking life?

306. - Daddy's Girl

At least you lost a little weight. Mom's pissed but she'll get over it assuming, as I am, you're back to stay.

She's shown me little bits. If I say weird, don't get the wrong idea. Weird could be either good or bad. It's sort of like The Old Man and the Sea except your marlin slipped back in the deep dark water of la mer to die and here you are no head or tail or bones to show how valiantly you tried.

But you pursued it and believed that you could land that fish if there was any fish to land. And that's a good example for us girls.

Beyond that I could give a shit. You do what makes you happy, right? If Mom's got beef with staying home she should go chasing her white whale.

Those things Mom said about Jolene? They aren't true. Back when she used to babysit for us she did a lot of crazy shit. Was massively deranged. But now she's really a good influence. She showed us how to keep the guys at bay with heavy petting where no crabs or fluids were exchanged.

The truth, Dad? Doesn't matter if you're home or gone. We kids just go on being kids. Promiscuous, tattooed and pierced, hell-bent on downing jello shots from little plastic portion cups. Who's in a fucking hurry growing up?

The thing with you I missed?

That night each month we both took off from doing all our normal crap to go down to the Arthur Kill for eels which Mom and Suzy both refused to let us even bring inside the house.

I miss our backyard sun-up breakfast grills.

307. - Mama's Girl

I hope you get a real job, Dad. You know, up early in the morning, go to work? Come home at dinnertime, and all of us sit down to eat? You can't leave Mom on double overtime while you sit on the screened porch writing poetry no one will ever read.

I think it's fine you have a literary bent. It's kind of cool, in fact. But there's a limit to all self-indulgence.

I'm not just saying this for her. It's quite embarrassing for Liz and me. "Oh, what does your dad do?" "He spent the last year writing poems about a hobo guy who says he's Christ." That conversation's over fast.

I know you never promised Mom or anyone you'd put a suit and tie on and go grind it out from 9 to 5. I sympathize with that, a lot. The thing I don't get is your absolute commitment to a flop.

308. - The Poet's Wife

She would like to find herself in his poems. She tries to do this: sweating, and unnaturally assumed positions. Naturally, like a dark mummy on the horizon the only onlooker, surrounded by a vast audience.

The act is all ankles and elbows, slits and staffs, grunting, what kind of job it is. It takes him out of the house each day, behind a birch in a lakeside sonnet; just beneath the waves; under the eager spread of her knees, and a tiny, beautiful blemish forever unwrapping its bandages and he is no longer there. When she opens her eyes I'm embarrassed because I can see the famous poet's wife scanning the clouds and imagines herself walking slowly and purposefully into squirming in her chair as he caresses the heft of her breast, hearts and four lungs, a main stomach and a sub-stomach.

She closes her eyes in the poem he reads tonight. He uses the four-letter word. Giving a little laugh. Thinking a little thought. He imagines himself, and lingers on a lonely moment when her rush of pleasure was so sick of holding open refrigerator doors.

Backs turned to the view, they gaze at him with rapt sighs as the last line kisses the poet's lips. Some of us clap, children taking correspondence courses. She tries to feel his upper lip. He straightens his back.

At the podium, the famous poet is having sex with his wife up on a stage, it was quite hard work actually, clean fingers. She turns to look back at the shore none of us will ever see. Handy with his tongue, he speaks romantic passages about clouds and he is looking at her, angrily.

[Cento: "The Famous Poet's Wife" by Eric Paul Shaffer http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the- famous-poet-s-wife/ "The Nature Poet’s Wife" by Gabrielle Orcutt http://magmapoetry.com/archive/magma-32- measuring-the-sea/poems/the-nature-poet%E2%80%99s-wife/ "The Poet's Wife" by Bill Manhire http://nzetc.victoria.ac.nz/tm/scholarly/tei-Ba04Spo- _N72812.html]

309. - In Her Own Words

Tom, I'm glad you're home. I am. I'm glad you saw your project to its end. I'm sad about what happened to your Christ.

That's all I have to say that's nice.

I met somebody new when you were gone. It happened totally by accident. I'd ordered burgers from the Greek's as I came back from work one night and I was racing out to get them home still hot and slipped and fell and fucked my knee up pretty bad. When I was in the hospital the diner owner suddenly showed up and gave me half a pint of this amazing flan. One spoonful and I thought Now this is one sweet man.

Nor, then, was I immune to his main course. I want to separate. I want to file for divorce.

310. - Down and Out in Suburban New Jersey

'Welcome home--and you're kicked out.' She emptied our account and changed the locks. My girls eat blue plate specials at the diner, free. I've been replaced by a Greek adept at both the art of cooking and adultery.

I have to get a job, and fast. I ask the DQ guy about the window Jesus worked. He asks if I have shtick to entertain the kids.

"I've got 300 poems about a prophet--"

"Not suitable for Dairy Queen, I'm afraid!"

"--a passable impersonation of the singer Joan Baez. A PhD in English--"

"Did no one say to you, sir, 'Surely a degree in English letters is a dead-end street?' You must go back to school! You must learn a trade! I have a cousin Gul. She is a nurse's aide! She has rejected every man my uncle brings to meet her! We are beginning to believe she prefers to be an old maid! He will send her to Mumbai! I am sending my Priya too!"

"Do you have any relatives in publishing?"

"Of course! Oh yes! My niece in Illinois is very big indeed at India Abroad!"

"No book-length Christian-tinted poetry, I guess."

"You are very funny, Mr. Tom! Indeed! My cousin Vidur is a very big comedian! He is gay! My Pooja says, 'Please, Sanjay, turn him off! He will make your daughter be a lesbian!' I almost wish to say, 'Dear wife, that boat is sailing in the ocean! She is taking birth control pills for several years already! It is too late for her to be a lesbian!' But it is easier to turn the TV off. Maybe you will be a comedian too?"

"Thanks, Sanjay, for that tip. In the meantime, could you stake me to a Pepsi and some chicken strips? Christ said you had a heart of gold."

"Oh, I am laughing that He told you that! He is the most disappointing hypocrite! He is accusing me of discrimination! That is why my business will be ruined if you don't pay $6.41 including tax! Do you want to know what is free, sir? Only a little cake the bloodbank gives out and the bakwa in a bag of Crackerjacks."

311. - Ben Lieb at Writ Lit, Ltd.

The Gospels?--biggest book in history, pre-Harry Potter!

But no demand for Gospels 2 as long as 1 's still selling strong. Why give its rival imprimatur?

Go backdoor and repackage it as fantasy, re-set it on Atlantis, cram it full of genre period details, the devils dressed as dragons.

Then come back and tell me there's a vampire in it! Justin Cronin's book is selling very well, and it's as true a testament at heart as yours.

Your ending, too, needs work. I never heard of a successful scripture where the hero winds up on a bender. That's the writer's gig!

No, no, don't leave the manuscript. They only gather dust. Why read until the talk makes sense?

The sales hook is our focus here. That gets a book first on, then off the wholesaler and bookstore shelves, and into pews and zealots' hands.

What happens after that, nobody in this office really cares.

312. - One Day of Redemption at a Time

My natural instinct is to hit the bottle and the road. That's what I used to do when things went wrong. The only problem? Goddam Jesus is already there. I hear His voice, "I've got this gutter covered, man. Go chase salvation somewhere else."

But where? You turned this fucking cosmos upside down, and You found squat.

"That thief who died beside Me, way back when?"

The one You told 'You'll be with Me this day in paradise'?

"Not him. He's space dust now. The solar wind is blowing him to Jupiter. He got what he deserved, the prick. I mean the one who said, 'Why can't you save Yourself and us?' As Matthew phrased it--'cast it in My teeth.' I found him in a drunk-tank here, a cripple, legs unhealed. He took one look at Me and sneered, 'Oh, You again. Not much has changed.' I realized that I never even answered him, back then. Who needs somebody holier-than-thou who in the throes of suffering rewards a man who plants a big kiss on His ass but treats a man who simply speaks the truth like shit? No wonder all the Jews cried 'Crucify Him! Let Bukowski free, instead!' I should have said, 'You guys both go ahead. I'll stay, hold down the fort."

Look, Christ, it's nice You've volunteered to take my drunk, but I still have to go back to an empty life.

"I can't help that. I tried. I even tried to reason with your wife. There's always suicide if all else fails, though it's no bed of roses in the afterworld-- believe Me, take your time. But look, if I release you from one living hell, the worst that happens, Tom, is that you go and find another, right? And on the way, there's always got to be an outside chance some gap-toothed little child smiles at you, or honeysuckle on the fence there kisses you with its perfume, or some too careless, braless miracle comes tra-la-la-ing up and absolutely fucks your ever-lovin' brains out."

And that's how Jesus saved me from one drunk.

313. - Redemption Day Two

No heart-stop smile or intoxicating breath or miracle that pounced and stomped and jigged on the remains of Death today, at least not yet. But Jesus was as good as His word-- eyes shot with red and 2/3 shut, pores sour, and having wet Himself.

The Wolf Boy said he'd heard about my plight and that the diner guy had always been a jerk. He offered to light up a joint but then that cop drove by and glowered at us with the trademark menace in his eye.

The new girl at the bar said sure she'd ask the boss if there was any work. I glanced back, quick, in case I'd missed a hint of flirt but she'd returned to watching the Olympics.

Then my Liz appeared sitting outside the ShopRite with a lavish Greek salad that she offered to share and to my eternal shame I had five or six bites and found that it was good though I knew where she had gotten it.

Christ's eyes glistened and lolled. "Here I am stinking in the sewer and there you are sitting in the sun with your favorite daughter."

The bastard. I wanted to kick Him. He still knew absolutely nothing.

I finally landed something part-time at the bookstore. They warned that I could 'recommend' but I was not allowed to 'trash.'

The window display was Freshman Class: 7 Habits of Highly Successful Roommates.

I had to laugh. I thought, "OK, You satisfied, You fucking drunk?"

314. - Evening in the Beautiful Dutch Colonial

They'd only drunk a single Hofbräu each when Bad Lieutenant started to confess.

"Yeah, I've done two or three things really wrong. I've caused a lot of real unhappiness, and have a healthy dose myself. But on the plus side of the ledger, I have never really beat my wife or given any of my girls more than a slap. When I look closely in the mirror after violent episodes--the face I see, it really isn't mine. It's His. It's Christ's. I swear, it's like He's saying, 'Jake, I had you covered there.' He beat the living daylights out of them."

The former pope nods sympathetically. The former priest stares at his hands. His cousin Dwight sits up and cries, "I know exactly what you mean!"

His partner Stu looks over angrily. "You promised, D. You promised me."

"I only mean, I've seen Him too. I'm only saying, generally, He comes at times and lifts some ugly thought from me and says, 'I've got that now.'"

"He has to own the sin," says Benedikt, "if He's to claim the culpability that He atones."

"He's scary, though!" the bad cop moans. "He's got this horrid glimmer in His eyes. There's absolutely nothing He won't do."

"He's proven that throughout the centuries. That neighbor boy who tumbled off the roof and broke his neck? What Thomas didn't write is that the Child Christ was only shielding Sinoo's mother from the far more horrifying truth."

The bad cop picked his bottle up and tilted it. The other four guys, nodding, followed suit.

315. - Gainful Employment

In walks that Greek diner prick. He doesn't know who I am and says he wants a book of love poems for a lady friend. I bring him over to Bukowski-- who Ann thinks is offensive. Flan your way out of this. Jerk.

316. - The Beclouded Bookstore Clerk

Didi anxiously asks after Christ. I tell her. Thanking me, she walks back out without whatever book she'd come in for.

Did she blame herself-- had she stuck the straw that broke the camel's back into the final sloe gin fizz she'd given Him?

I run after her outside. "He's finally saving people from their sins just like He always wanted to. He found out He's the finger in the dike--"

"It's not okay! Alright? There's got to be a better way."

"That tale your father told of Deirdre, brow marked at birth for tragedy, who dashed her own brains to escape? That's us, if Jesus doesn't intervene to take our place and hurl His own skull every day against the rock, since God fit us with agitated spirits full of all the agony intrinsic to His Trinity. The theological--"

"Whatever," Didi snaps. "He was an asshole, but a decent guy. There must be something we can do to help Him get back on His feet."

"--existence God extruded leaves no wiggle room for Him or us. He's just as tangled in the fish as we are in the net. Our best hope is to give in to the drift and shut our gills when neighbors thrash and high seas make the tight mesh twist--"

"Holy shit, Tom! I'd have left you too! Snap out of it. You're gonna lose this job if you keep spouting insane gobbledygook. Let's start again: 'Excuse me, sir. Do you have Goosebumps: Hall of Horrors? R. L. Stine? I have a little nephew Todd and it's his birthday in a couple weeks.' And you say: 'Yes, of course we do-- a perfect book for little nephew Todd! Right over here, madame, just $14.95. Are you a member of our Bookworm Club? And can I recommend a book for you?'"

"--there is no ship, relief. Our spawn swim free and hover in a nearby mist and feed and watch the crabs and worms at work until they've learned enough to also make the ghostly net their permanent residence--"

"Tom, thank you. Great idea! I do need something mindless for my study breaks at school. The Hunger Games--why not? My other nephew, Topher, swears by it. The Game of Thrones? I'll take that, too. Oh, Miss? This new guy, he's just great."

317. - Daddy's Girl Sonnet

Dad--truth? You've had your fun. Remember when I watched Seasons 1 and 2 of The Walking Dead straight through, how mesmerized I was? You snapped your fingers in my face and kidded "Earth to Liz, come in!" Well, now it's "Earth to you."

Rejoin the human race! Hit Save and come back home. I know it's bitter. You've been wounded in your pride by Mom. But if you stay buried inside this Jesus Christ thing, how is anything supposed to heal? It's you who needs to apologize. I saw Dangling in the Tournefortia open on Mom's night table and asked her where she'd gotten it. She said, "Your father, at the bookstore, suggested it to Troy." That stupid Greek!

Dad, I'll never say "Stop writing." Just don't give up the real-world fight. Mom will drop him like a hot potato if you'd just sit down and talk. She truly loves the way you are, the way you think. Sue and I do too.

But it hurts when you seem so far away. Mom thinks she stopped existing. Troy is a blade she slipped into your heart. His sole utility to her is twisting.

318. - Murdered Boy

When I boosted that Infiniti, took it for a spin and told the cop who stopped me he could stick it up his ass, I didn't mean to screw up anybody else's life. I thought it was just me and him. But now I see the silenced witnesses who never would be called, the cops and other perjurers who carried out the coverup, rewards, awards received-- those farther ripplings of wrong the winds of good are impotent to halt.

I was the devil's tool, and so were you. His artisty is cartonnage, papier-mâché, all scavenged increments applied to yesterday and built up gradually enough that all except the paranoid can think he's kept in check. Then comes the day when the piñata bursts and everyone is, Where the heck did that come from?

He's here. He's deft. He's unencumbered by fixed qualities or scriptures, promises or debts of any kind. He picks up every sliver he can find: omnivorous. Omniferous: if something beautiful occurs, it's all the same to him. He'll have a use for it. Omnigenous: he never needs disguise.

My name is Kevin. Since I died, I went back for my GED. I'm halfway now toward getting my degree. I understand how words and math connive, how moon and seas work hand in glove to pilot bodies through the murk, how sunshine keeps the Arctic ions magnetized, and romance stuffs its wool in people's eyes.

I understand a lot but one thing that I still don't get is why a man like you with everything I never had can take one wound to inessential flesh and pack it with such noxious cloth that it debrides the vital and results in Death.

319. - Murdered Boy, Continued

Rest, all of you.

That young Lord bleeding on the street isn't me. "Rock bottom!" He sighs, with a grin. It was nice of Him to take my place like maggots do in death, like a rectangle of new asphalt replaced the bloody patch they dug up from in front of the firehouse.

This ring of heaven set aside for black sons slain on city streets is a lively place where we are all friends. We shoot hoops with Obama on Fridays, and Michelle is our mother. We're lost-and-found boys. All of those dream-about straight-A B-girls that don't ever die send cards with little graduation photos tucked inside.

So rest assured. In peace.

Every other one of us was marked at birth. At heart, we all knew which we were. But what a sloppy secret it has been-- though gratifying how much grace there is once someone shows you where to search.

320. - Dead Boy, Newly Risen

Every time you murder me it's one of you they find in a gutter face down.

The blind man Jesus blessed was once a curvy waitress whose delight was seeing herself eyed by customers.

The bad lieutenant you've forgiven used to be the 2nd chef at Chez Panisse.

Even Satan wasn't always Satan but used to be the pony-tailed man at the Blarney Stone with a good word for the sort of women who don't hear a lot of them.

Re-shuffle your deck of ID's, cards sticky from spilled beer and oily salted peanuts.

As you wipe your fingers on the pocket of your jeans remember Jesus made His name by wandering the streets and stuck it to the man until they gunned Him down.

His name arises ever since wherever people hunger and thirst for righteousness.

A 40-ounce, a big fat spliff or pipe of crack, a junkie ho so dirty you explode before her lips or legs can part-- why hang a sheet between the bloody steak and our saliva?

When you see me on the street you think That animal and hug your shadow closer to your breast.

I grab my dick and leer.

I am the Lord thy God!

If you have any jones for Jesus stretch your hands and arms out.

Pull me near.

321. - Not Him Again!

"She is far too young! He is not Indian! And much too thin! Sanjay, another piece of nan! I asked where He'd been to get so dark a tan! He said Caribbean! I asked which island! With a big grin He said Viva la revolucion! He smelled of gin! He is on Unemployment! He is a Palestinian born in Bethlehem! But at least not Pakistani! And Priya loves Him! He is a proper boyfriend! They go the restaurant for tea and flan! Then they hold hands and go walking in town! She likes an older man outside her clan just like her mom! He's not the khasam we always had in mind but He is so well-spoken! I have become a fan! We must understand our Priya is American! They have a plan to drive her friend Joanne to her job in Southampton next weekend and stay in an inn overlooking the ocean! Maatajee, she said, I am already a woman! I have a diaphragm! You traditional parents are completely ignorant about having fun! Please give permission for our union!

"Pooja, what is His name?"

"Sanjay, He is a prince! The prince of Heaven!"

"It is not that same damn bum who is trying to ruin my business? Discrimination? That one is like Satan!"

"Sanj, what is done is done. Priay cannot be a nun! And would you not win your lawsuit, Husband, if we take Him as our son?"

"Pooja, I am only human! I know I must be tolerant but I don't know if I can..."

322. - Last Judgment

I overhear a guy explaining to my boss that if Michelle Obama said just two words to Him He could die a happy man.

I move a few feet closer and pretend to straighten up our huge display of Justin Cronin's Twelve.

"I've lived where everyone agrees," He says, "their women's beauty is backseat to none. But not one lights a candle to Michelle!"

"Do You have American Grown?" she asks.

"Whoever took that picture should be shot! And Mom in Chief is just as bad! So is A Life! I like the picture on the cover of the book of photographs! No, I have two of them at home already! My new fiancee says I'm obsessed but she has her own lifesize blowup of George Clooney!"

I peek discreetly but I can't tell if it is really Him: clean-shaven, ordinary business haircut, faint scent of Grey Vetiver.

"I couldn't help but overhear," I say. "We do have Song of Solomon, Michelle Obama's favorite book."

He turns and spreads me with a smile that erases any doubt. It's fucking Him! He made it back!

"I'm Christ," he says. ""I think we may have met."

"I'm Tom. You seem familiar too."

"I'm looking for a present for My future mom-in-law. Her name is Pooja. Do you know her? Wife of Sanjay-jee who owns the Dairy Queen?"

"Oh, yes. Then You are Priya's soon-to-be?"

"Indeed! We've set the date for February!"

"Then congratulations to you both."

"Would Pooja-jee like Song of Solomon?"

"In my experience--she's come in here before-- she's more the breathless romance type."

"Excuse me," says my boss. "I'll leave you two."

"Where did You get that tan?" I ask.

"Havana, actually! I got back several weeks ago! I am maintaining it with 20 minutes every morning! I am competing with George Clooney!"

"And how did You like Cuba?"

"I was a medical tourist! That part was no fun at all! But look, I am here! I also took a grand tour of the cruder bars. That was successful too, I guess."

"Can You remember where we might have met?"

"The doctor down in Cuba said I've got la omnesia-- far more memories than anyone should ever have! He said that's why I'm given to self-medicate!"

"Do you remember me?"

"Of course! But I remember everyone! I have a hyperactive dream imagination! Apparently reciprocal! And telepathic! That means you think that you know Me too!

"I do. I'm writing a whole book of poems about You."

"See? Reciprocal, and telepathic! And chronicital! I'm telling you, it happens all the time! 'I know You!' lots of people say! 'When I was lying in the gutter, You were there!' 'You touched my eyes when I was blind!' 'You carried me along the beach!' One of the detox nurses swore I even keep watch by her bed at night!"

"My book's completely true."

I'd love to see it someday--Tom, you said? I learn so much about Myself from reading the Evangelists!"

"It's all online. Michelle is there. Your Priya's there."

"Oh, no! It was so hard for Me to find a girl devoid of preconceptions about Who I Am! When I revealed My name was Jesus Christ, she said, 'That's very nice.' She lets me be Myself and not a silly God!"

"Do You have internet? The url is--"

"Tom, this may come as something of a shock to you but thousands if not millions put Me in their poems and other works of art! I can't keep up! And most of it--don't take offense--is utter crap!"

"No pressure, man. I've made my peace that not a single soul will read it through. I'd thought my wife, at least--but she's abandoned it, and me, in favor of some fancy-cooking Greek."

"For what it's worth, Tom--call it quits! Right now! Unfinished! Failed! Start something new--more Formalist, inscrutably enjambed, confessional! Why not a quasi-elegy on your divorce? But short! This fucking thing would choke a horse!"

-The End-