Second Coming

[cornflake]

Jesus lives in the loony bin.
His parents checked him in
back when he was eighteen and had visions
of God and archangels
saying, “You are the Messiah!
You are come again to judge the living
and the dead.”

All he judges now
are the newspapers –
and the other patients,
weeping and groaning at night.
One vomited all over the white-stained walls and shrieked,
“Jesus! He is coming to judge you people,
sick in the head!”

Early autumn,
he sits in the hospital gardens,
watching planes part the sky
and drinking the breeze like water.
And a young woman,
tired of believing,
drops her crucifix chain in a drain
and says, “He is not coming,
he is long dead.”


Hattie Samuel