My First Day As Messiah

Yes, Virginia, Jesus drank some of the wine he provided for those weddings. And you haven't lived until you try his tuna salad. In the mean time, a poem about the self I seem to be these days.

MY FIRST DAY AS MESSIAH

1

My feet can't seem to touch the ground.

Even in Gucci loafers

I feel barefoot and bidden to love. However,

I could use a pedicure.

2

The store-bought cucumber shines like a mint Double eagle.

I'm living in a Vemeer painting.

As my mother once said, and only once,

"Today even I feel beautiful."

3

I am given a choice of forebodings

and guaranteed a clairvoyant's absolute certainty

with either of them. I can predict

the worst down day in Wall Street history

or that my girl friend's urgent surgery

will be completely successful.

4

Once I have chosen

I notice there is no news

of a wedding massacre in Pakistan

or any roadside bombings in Afghanistan.

I keep waiting for a mood-mangling headline,

then my girlfriend says,

"I feel no pain today.

Let's fill the void with pleasure."

5

The whole world feels like pleasure.

There is no before and after.

There's no beginning or end.

We are waving to one another

in perpetual deja vu.

I know everybody from some place

and they know me. I feel like a photograph

kept on everybody's person--

you know the one:

that bemused guru's picture pasted on the fare meter

of every Hindu taxi in Mumbai,

or folded 100 times into a Muslim's billfold

to present a simulacrum of the formless.

In any case, the bent savior's semblance now serves

to simulate an insect's honeycombed view

of the incarnation.

6

God is speaking. Something in bird language

only cats can discern. Something the wind scratches

on the dried summer parchment of a thousand leaves.

All this talk about grails gets on his nerves

I imagine my wise old aunt Sophie saying.

A grail is a water glass

her husband says sounding like Jean Cocteau.

I take it from there by thinking

If you live long enough

you can leave your dentures in it overnight

then chew on your dreams the next morning.

When you put them back in your mouth

they leave no sign they spent the night shining in water

and lighting the world. Hell,

it's what any self-respecting object would do

given half a chance

to live up to its name.

7

Time to disembark heaven.

Time to quit hell.

Time to be moored to earth

which is the main land in between.

Driving on the isthmus bridge

with bright bay waters on both sides

as blinding as a sherif's badge,

I am summoned by blaze and brilliance

to ubiquitous second chances

in the first, filial world.

Squint gives way to scan.

I am deputized in the name of

sight, sound and smell.

Some dashboard voice tells me

to pay back blue to the heavens

where God is said to be hiding

(if you think him silly enough

to stand separate from the scenes he imagines).

Some radio announcer

commands me to pay back green to the earth

where I will be buried

(when the soul has drained this cup).

8

Somewhere in the same world I am enjoying

a bulldozer is prowling an orchard grove

looking for walls that are no match for brute force.

After the demolition its engine purrs

uprooted trees an offering of sorts

mice to be ridden for the men of these parts.

It just wouldn't be an opportune day on earth

without an eviction of a family

whose scripture must be proven wrong

so that others reciting from a competing compendium

of myth, madcap and hearsay

may be entitled to thank god for the hillside view.

The haves and the have-nots long

for a seventh-day world

where their children can meander safely

no way on earth that leads to loss.

But for now midnight comes two hours early

called curfew as long as any olives picked

are the spoils of war.

9

Each cardiogram, each x-ray

is a small craft warning

in no need of heeding.

Not today anyway.

Today is your lucky day.

Same as yesterday.

Only now you know

what every Father's son is supposed to know

each consecutive day since inception

of life in a land promised to men

that has no taint of forfeit from other men.

The dish shards you sweep up this morning

come from the plate you threw last night

at the invisible wall

between the I and thou

whose most familiar pairing is husband and wife.

The names you screamed this morning

are twinned to the ones you whispered last night

to a comely, obliging goddess.

All this loving and hating

keep you busy

in an endless mercy of

on-the-job training.

--David Federman, Ardmore, August 7-10, 2010