This Perfect Jesus

Rob Woodard

As this perfect Jesus (America) attacks
yet another land in vain sorrow
to hide from its own
shattered self

I can't decide whether it's good or not
that I'm over forty and have little chance
of being asked to participate on the front lines
of the slaughter

Because I wonder if it makes my
FUCK YOU
  less potent in being less
  direct

Either way my eyes are clear,
the earth under my feet
is firm, and I understand
my role:

To live as fully as possible within the cracks
of this suicide as a small reminder that
there's a certain
        basic beauty
that cannot be destroyed
and that the people with the guns
are never really in charge which is of course
why they feel the need for the guns
in the first place



© Rob Woodard 2007

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Rob Woodard was born in Anaheim, California and lives in nearby Long Beach. He is the author of the novels Heaping Stones -- named one of the best fiction books of 2006 by Ottawa Xpress -- and What Love Is, to be published in 2007. Burning Shore Press will be bringing out his first volume of poetry, King Of Long Beach, in 2008. He is currently at work on a third novel, tentatively titled Backwaters of Beauty.