The Second Coming

or alternatively, Jesus at the gay club.

I. 

Jesus comes back one Sunday morning, unannounced, wearing a long skirt & his hair in a braid. Laughs, twirls, gathers wild flowers from the edge of the sideway, says he comes with good news. Says there’s so much love in this world. So much love, he says, you could drown in it. They beat him halfway to death in a church’s parking lot. 

There are many different ways to achieve divinity, this is just one of them. 

His brown skin broken, his wine-red blood on the floor where they find him. A boy with black lips takes him by the hand & brings him home, says we ain’t got much but we can scrape by. Says nothing that hasn’t happened to plenty of us before. Noodles with lots of butter & orange soda. Not a meal apt for the King of Kings, I guess, but Jesus smiles with still bloody teeth & swears he’s had worse. 

When you’re all well I’ll take you dancing, show you what a real church looks like.

There’s so much love in this world.  So much love you could drown in it.

II. 

Flesh against flesh, flesh against leather. & the hymns, 

O, the hymns. 

They could make a blind man see. 

Around them the pulse of a hundred different bodies, heavenly made in His image. Jesus laughs as he spins, feels his heartbeat on his feet. The Drag Queen up on the stage sings Hallelujah with her hands raised, calls him darling, baby, lover. She fancies herself something biblical, named herself Delilah for a reason. The man with the carabiner signals to the bathroom with a grin. What’s the son of God doing in a place like this? Jesus grabs him by the waist & prays. Amen. 

III. 

Blessed be the faggot

the dyke & the transsexual. 

Blessed be the strap-on 

the latex & the leather. 

Here is the Church & 

here are its people,

sharing uppers in dimly-lit bathrooms &

getting on their knees for strangers.

There’s so much love in this world. 

So much love you could drown in it.