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.