The first time I found Jesus he was strung up on a fence post, his arms stretched out and stapled to the rails, belly stuffed full of straw, a scare crow god there to scare off death, monsters, outlaws and the unknown, my rubber turkey deity on a cross to comfort me with the promise that I could take that casket doorway to his place with the other zombies, I just have to be a good person, which is simple because right and wrong is simple. Just do what it says in the book besides this part. Don't overthink it. Just watch television. It'll teach you how the world works, there may be some growing pains when you actually experience it. But I have no regrets.
I promise you mother. I'm so sorry I ran away. I just couldn't live without reminders that you love me. I thought about what mothers did on television, the way they loved their kids, I saw my friends with mothers who would talk to them, and suddenly I wish I knew about my grandparents. All I remember about them is that I grew up going to funerals. On my birthday I always wore the same exact Peter Pan outfit and then lay awake at night wondering if it was really true that one day we all grew old and died.
The second time I found Jesus, she was staring back at me through my captive reflection painted on the iridescent gasoline sheen from a glossy silver 30-gram brick of cannabis hash oil bought from a man in a tinfoil hat to wax the bored look off my face. Lubed up to ride forty days and nights on a desert highway performing the gas-jug asphalt American ceremony of anointed gutter-punk garbage messiah kings raging for a different kind of machine. And as I peaked I noticed not one set of blotter prints behind me but two.
I knew I was different. I can't sit still. I must discover, create, explore, make an impact on this world not to find meaning but to hide myself from the lack of it. I keep trying to hide from mortality by making my life as rich and full of love as possible but it all goes to the same place. Behind me. Each breath in and out of my lungs is its own last one but knowing that fact doesn't help me repeat them. I can't even remember my dreams, how am I supposed to remember this life, this place, all of you, when it's over? I try to keep moving forward but I'm still just out-stretched and holding on to the rails. I still wish things were different. I still need to forgive someone. I still need to apologize for failing to save the world, I could have done something, I was different. I still need to apologize to my mother.
I'm so sorry I forgot my temper. Nerves dripped discomfort, my skin went goosebumps and burnt hot by embers, mouth scowling warning growls. I can't sit still. I bit and snapped until control came back but by then I was bitten and leaking puddles of regret and wondering how could I say that to my mother? I didn't mean to. But the fact is every interaction orbits the weather, or what somebody said the other day. I talk about my dreams and you talk about acting classes. And I realize then that we are from far-away planets. I never feel connected. It's like you're never present, and there's always this tension. I can't go without reminders that I'm held and loved, so I'll settle for forgiveness. I'll set to prove you love me one way or another. I'll force you to choose from the worst side of me and nothing.
The third time I found Jesus, he was strung-out on a cross-fade of drugs, arms stretched out to embrace his dog as he delivered his sermon to the condemned office building giving him shelter while the rain poured buckets. Wrapped in a coincidence blanket, magic crystals hanging from his neck, gnostic symbols tattooed to his face. In his mouth, a cigarette he had pulled off the ground, and he offered me a drag. He called it sacred tobacco to exorcise my demons.
He said the secret was to smile. People like smiles. He said I had two lions, their names good and evil, problem and opportunity, complaint and compliment. Their names are shame and gratefulness, faith and fearfulness, Scar and Mufasa, stories and memories about me that live on in others after I die, and I chose which. But he wasn't finished. He told me the worst side of you is not that evil-looking scar you hide from the world in shame and fear, it's the coward that hides it. Forget dying, that's how you are annihilated. I'm so sorry, my mother, that I never listened. Please tell me about my grandparents. It doesn't have to be like television.
