POETRY on {Pride}: Thief

I am standing next to a Jesus,

and

He is softly telling me in His high

Jesus-voice how doomed I am,

He who came

here to un-doom me.

I am an expert

sinner no lieutenant deity could

purify.

I am a handful for the

old gods,

those cloudy watchers who rage at

my questions from within a sack of grain,

a thawing river,

any unholy

impermanence one could curry favor

over.

I was born before logic,

am

introducing it in artificial

waves over this bled and hanging beggar,

this myth who sees Himself as more than me.