By Jim Perkinson, on Matthew 24:36-44, performed on 12.01.19 at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Detroit, MI

b & e lifted up as priority
an outlaw god on a mission of
correction, convection, currents
of floods, burned by fire-storms
of trees, california today,
new york city tomorrow, but don’t
worry, just party, drink up your
hot toddy, be snotty, like a donald
trump wanna be, your head in the
potty, doing karate on the future,
the scripture is naughty, sirening
night as the right time, for the
break-in to let the bodies out,
immigrants like abraham finding
oak branches prophesying like
a reckoning for sodom, collapsing
synapses with salt, waters rising
like noah in a boat, saving goats
and frogs, doves and zygotes of
elephants, hippos yawning
as the lightning strikes, buffalo
snorting clouds into rivers of
mist warm steam as the rains fall
and the rains fall, and the rains
come again like a curtain call,
and the son of man hymns his
warning, like a baal of the mountains
re-incarnate as a battler of seas,
offered a throne in the daniel vision
like a decision against the powers,
ancient collision of mediterranean
precipitation with hermon cedar
garden, heights gifting desert with
flash-flooding blessing, but if
the giftees go awol from gratitude
and sabbath duty recall, then the
calamity promises frenzy, descends
in rock canyon levity, burying bad
memory under mother ocean gravity
whence-we-came becoming
where-we-all-go, joining jonah
in the belly, groaning like abel
on the ground, blood swallowed
whole in the rebound of pride
on the downfall of letting it all
slide, a god of gliding wet,
re-birthing a billion billion tribes of
unforeseen hides and wings and
fire flies the size of rhinos, but
i’m not sure the prison release and
re-incubation of post-apocalyptic
eco-respecting relations
will actually
include
us.

so yes, the thief comes
soft as a midnight moon
announcing winter rains
and monsoons with just enough
seeds and food for all fellow
property-law-breaking rogues
but i doubt there will be left
any owners.

like a thief in the night!
like rain on the heights!
like dawn after dusk!
the advent will come
but don’t imagine
you can imagine it
it will not come
like some tardy employee
to punch your timeclock.