And Jesus sayeth unto the flock / supper’s ready at three o’clock / I scored some bread and a coupla fishes / more than enough for you hungry ass bitches / while upstairs God just thunders and twitches / bustin’ His voluminous, numinous britches / watching His sin plan’s galling glitches / His one overriding concern, which is / humans can’t see they’re blessed with riches / and He’ll need a big gesture to cross those bridges
Hark the business angels sing / business skills and marketing / receipts on earth and surveys mild / cloud-based data’s really wild
I’m social media influenza / in need of a Soul n’Soap dispenza
I’m a robot shivering with a dose of the shits / a box of screws and a bucket of bits
I’m a monster from The United Strays of America / a tweeting, TV ready chimaera / one part Trump, one Bagheera / slowly & steadily creeping nearer / roaring, tweeting, speaking, hidin’ / on the trail of Old King Biden
I’m a Netflix doc about psycho preachers / on the run for eating their teachers / slick in beanies, suits & boots / Al Pacino and Imogen Poots
I’m Elon Musk with a gaping beak / blue for you and ready to tweet / this freedom shit’s so cool and neat / especially if our great minds meet / but if they don’t delete delete
Hey! Hieronymous! How’re ya doin? / is your garden ready for viewin’? / what the hell, man – this stuff’s deranged / we always thought you were kinda strange / but we hoped you’d be a little more simpatico / all we wanted was a bougie patio
I’m an alien megabrain sucking its teeth / watching its craft as they depart underneath / we’ve been studying your planet and friends – to be brief / your lack of insight gives us grief / so accept this mission as an aperitif / to the crap that’ll happen if you don’t improve, chief
I’m Eastwood, Siegel, Heston, Bronson / a bullet clip and a packet of gum / bumper stickers: I love my mum / The Second Amendment thy will be done / my pickup truck thy diesel come / trespass forgiven now go ahead, run / Texas Rangers rule of thumb: / if it bleeds, man – I’m gettin’ me some
I’m Putin, Trump and Bolsonaro / caped on horses with bows and arrows / hard hearts closed and cold eyes narrowed / veins of poison threading their marrow / ready to shoot the teensiest sparrow / for daring to hope for a better tomorrow
it’s just like my dear ol’ grandma reckoned / there’s many a slip twixt cup and armageddon
it must be tough being God I can’t think of a less attractive job it couldn’t be worse having to be everywhere in the universe from a learner driver reversing and cursing to a nervous nurse rehearsing what she plans to say when she comes up before the board that day from a butcher slicing his fingers with the salami to a village getting flattened by a tsunami the demands are endless all the people pretty much defenceless so much of it senseless
or is it?
I don’t know – He doesn’t do many personal visits
but the thing that makes it all so exquisite when you pray, God doesn’t go Oh Jesus Christ NOW what is It? because the guy’s complicit He KNEW those planes were headed for Manhattan He KNEW when the towers went up they were gonna get flattened but he’s contractually obliged to let the planes fly and not guide them to a better place even though his superpowers are supposedly ace and he could’ve easily done it and not lost face
so in case you’re wondering why He keeps blundering klutzing around the place, flooding and thundering leaving people in the lurch to the point you wonder why they go to church it’s because (apparently) He gave them Free Will which is fine until you find this God of Love is more than happy to shove any who die and come to dwell with Him and his high-end clientele heads down heels up straight to Hell okay great thanks you just got pranked Free Will definitely shooting blanks
But God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform from carcinomas to slugs on the lawn maybe that’s why He’s permanently distracted and so damned hard to be personally contacted maybe he needs more angels on the desk because I have to say His PR’s grotesque it’s hard to be desperate, patient AND virtuous when all you get is ‘please hold – your prayer is important to us’
In the Beginning was The Bird but Her feathers were thinning and The Bird felt cursed It couldn’t be worse She was the only Bird in the Universe
So She swallowed a star and laid an egg and hatched The Jaguar and grabbed His leg and tossed Him out the nest (She expected a chick and wasn’t impressed)
The Jaguar roared and vomited humans which I’m reliably assured was the REAL evolution and goes some way to explain the confusion but I’ll let you reach your own conclusion
well – good! so there IS a god which being an atheist I find quite odd but happily She covers my faux pas tactfully fundamentally matter-of-factly in many ways actually for a deity She’s pretty understanding doesn’t go in for growling and grandstanding all that severely bearded fierceness all that begat this and that weirdness all that mad muscular masculine business no – She’s better than that She’s great with horses, ferns, cats plate tectonics, stuff like that knows a river delta from a bedding plane the ins and outs of a semi-permeable membrane a cos lettuce from a romaine a cell phone from cellophane I mean pretty much generally you’d have to say academically She’s highly advanced happy to give things a second chance although humans I’m assuming are pushing it there’s only so much She can do to cushion it before She sighs, shrugs, flushes the tubes pulls another Chicxulub (the crater’s there though you’d hardly know it still – it capped things off in the Cenozoic)
Death is a Big Bargain Bucket O’Nuffin an Interplanetary Egg Mcmuffin without the Egg just an infinity of empty bun instead
When you look at a pigeon do you ever wonder what religion it has, or hasn’t? or if religion is entirely absent in fowl? and how’ll you cope if you get to the pearly gates and ask if they have any birds in there and they say nope?
the fact is death as an act is entirely passive but the overall impact is massive because really it’s everything and nothing all at once and comes at a person on multiple fronts from the holiest saints to the most unutterable non-saintly characters
if anyone ever frowns, looks me in the eye and asks what I think happens when you die I sigh and try to look confident say I’m not hindu or muslim or protestant but just a plain ol’ human kinda animal admittedly particularly cute and adaptable outward looking, international but for all this, just a humble ol’ organism suffering from a dose of cellular determinism trying to make sense of being alive and doing okay before I die
But you haven’t answered my question! you shout in my general direction your face red with congestion (try breathing exercises is my suggestion)
so to recap before I get knee-capped
I think death is more than just a clinical absence of breath no – that’s just the physical it might help to imagine the umbilical cord stretching toward you from the infinite womb of Gaia, I presume (which is to say That Infinite Thing that brought you here today)
In other words, the Great Fertile Nothing you got popped outta that day with a whole lotta huffing THAT’S where you’ll be heading the opposite of begetting which shouldn’t be upsetting because it’s the norm a return to the YOU before YOU were born i.e. Nowhere which is only fair because if everyone went and lived forever we’d be jammed up with clouds and harps and whatever
Religion? – I get it but in my case forget it I’ll live my life and do my best then dive in the void for a nice long rest
I was queuing with the vicar in the pharmacy I had pills to collect and so had he we stood there waiting patiently father, son and holy remedy
he said faith is a waste, god an addiction I said what d’you mean he said pay attention I’m retired now so the hell with convention get ready to receive my benediction
fifty years I stood in the pulpit dressed from head to toe in the full kit read my lines from the latest booklet questioned my faith but overlooked it
ever since I lost the collar I’m short of puff and my heart irregular two new hips, a dodgy patella lately I find I’m much more secular
then he turned and smiled quite sadly at me said he’d enjoyed this little chat with me Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani? as the pharmacist called next customer please
and death didst come to me as in a dream and I didst sit bolt upright in bed and scream and my pajamas verily most heavily didst cream
Jiiiiiimmmmmmmyyyyyy he said floating sulphurously over the bed
am I dead I said no don’t worry he said at least not yet
so what the hell is it some kinda sick social visit
so…I don’t know… it was just getting boring he said, yawning then carefully resetting his jaw in the sling he had to wear round his skull instead of hair to keep his jaw there
what d’ya mean – eternity? I mean – you’ve got my sympathy mate, but as far as I can see that’s nothing to do with me you’re having a laugh I’ve got to get up in an hour and a half
somebody’s grumpy he said maybe you should try going to bed a weensy bit earlier at night then maybe you wouldn’t be so clippy, alright?
yeah? well I heard death could be agonising but I’d rather have that than patronising
don’t be mean, he said sadly descending to the foot of the bed where he smouldered with a strange intensity that lacked discernible heat or density which I have to admit was all pretty new to me
sorry, I said – you caught me off guard I try to be understanding but it’s hard especially when you’re so freakin’ charred does that mean hell is hot or not is there a God? Jesus Christ I hope not
actually no there isn’t he sighed carefully putting his scythe aside crooking one bony knee over the other idly picking fluff from my cover
you see – Jimmy – God is just a story you tell about angels, prophets, heaven and hell a touching way of making sense of the fundamental questions of existence to which the answer is oxygen and carbon and if I’ve rocked your world I beg your pardon
okay – so – I don’t get it Death comes to visit and you want me to forget it?
I’m an allegory, dear a gorgeous but hokey souvenir a byproduct of consciousness he said, clapping his phalanges you mortals really are such a tease you ask about God – well…take a look around there are millions of deities to be found in any place you care to look from Weston-super-Mare to Çatalhöyük I could talk you through the creation myths but there’s nothing duller than shopping lists
he gaped at me gappily seemingly quite happily with what I took to be affection and I have to admit the conversation was heading in a wholly unexpected direction
so.. how am I supposed to feel now that I know that God’s not real?
Who knows? said Death as the clock struck twelve you’ll just have to figure it out for yourself and with a hopelessly boney stamp and an inexplicable but theatrical dimming of the lamp he flashed me a look that was scary but appealing then shot straight up through the bedroom ceiling
I sat there wondering what I’d just seen I mean for someone supposedly fictional he was pretty vocal and visual
but just as I lay back on the pillow there was another booming billow of fire and smoke and the very same cloaky bloke came floating back
Whaaaat? I said sitting up in bed Was that all a joke? Were you toying with me? Don’t be silly he said tip-toeing round the bed trying to act all cool & blythe I just came back to fetch my scythe
cut to a priest
sitting in a truth booth
wiggling in a wet patch
scritchin’ and a-scratchin’
at a blessed box of matches
ready to inflame
the same damned candle
the fat and waxy handle
on his spiritual fruit machine
four Hail Marys and a pay out
eternal bliss and a way out
a kiss on the hand
may be quite continental
but the pope’s not sentimental
not like that
surprisingly hard despite the hat
his cardinal sin?
finding the time to fit it all in
but what’s with the god awful shout?
abruptly heeling & wheeling about
clean heels on hard stones
rich robes running
the congregation concentrating
being, becoming
drumming
humming along with the mains
jim clayton 