Apocrypha

It is said that Jesus couldn’t admit to himself that he was a simile.
That he hung out with tax collectors and whores.
That he was profound allegory and data compression.
He said he’d “explain later” but rarely did.
He fostered over a billion abandoned children.
Whenever he saw someone
remodeling a home
he would volunteer his skills, sanding the drywall
until the seam was virtually seamless.
They say he was jealous of Osiris.
That the last thing he sucked on
was vinegar from a sponge lifted from a hyssop plant.

And who can explain it to the Literalists?
He said no man could spiritually mature 
without being also a woman,
no woman without becoming a man
“Peter hates all of my sex,” Mary Magdalene wept to him one day.
Whenever Jesus saw a horse standing in a field in the rain
totally still, with its eyes closed,
he fell into a depression
because he knew he would never lead humanity through such an education.
They say his favorite thing to do on Passover
was dunk the egg in saltwater
and feed it to Mary.
They say that a man named Simon
also went around calling himself Christ, suffered in Judaea,
and paired with a “redeemed harlot.”
It was common knowledge that Jesus was everyone.
Loved Mary Magdalene best out of all the disciples.
That all the women surrounding him were named Mary.
Confusing on purpose. That the myth
was created to make a tangible basis for comparison.
That because of him
Rilke thought life was a series of coded
messages, and in conversation Rilke spoke
as if in spells, as naturally as adverbs.

And anyway, we are all various manifestations of THAT.
Like a fungus. We are the fruit
of a mycorrhizal network
linking plants through minute cords of mycelium.

They say that God
is the oldest tree in the universe.
That Jesus was simply a Douglas fir.
That in the beginning a stone was flung into the air
and it snapped into a bird that made the song
of a phone ringing. That the bird shat
on the head of a primeval woman
who was giving birth to fraternal twins in a field of thistles.
That each twin went out into the world
dazed, ignorant, lost. That that was all
part of the great big Plan.
They say that relative to our desires
our goodness is overwhelming. That living is tragicomedy.
That we seek what is good for a limited idea of Good.
And we should go bigger.
That we were unsavable. But already saved.
That we partied so well.
That we never had—through the wall—to confess.
That we were forgiven from birth.
And it was just a matter of remembering.