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In the Hands of the Living God |
Jesus went digital in 1972 with the watches—corner of
Bourbon & Iberville Jesus’ agent stares into a sea of
sin, pile of tracts sodden & limp at his feet, glowing
red in the word of god as it flashes in red dots the
length of the crossbeam of the cross Jesus’ agent
holds up with one uncertain hand, a paper trail to
Calvary. Follow the tracts, look in the gutters where
they lay scuttled & coated with a viscous film of
spittle, beer, vomit, the grey slush of shoe
trackings smeared in clumsy lines across the words,
"Love not the world, neither the things that are in
the world. If any man love the world, the love of the
father is not in him. For all that is in the world,
the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and
the pride of life, is not of the father, but is of the
world. And the world passeth away, and the lust
thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth
forever."
Jesus went digital, the word of our lord
flashing by blurring by in luminous red dots & too
verbose for the crowd on Bourbon Street, an endless
animal stream each drop bent in deadly intensity on
the lust of the flesh and the pride of life…& Oh! It
is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the
living god, make that double when one happens to be
stone drunk at the moment of arrival—Jesus went
digital when? Today, around 7:30 when the agent of
Christ drug the cross (supplied, unlike the original,
with a small, detachable rubber wheel) out the front
door of the Happy Christian Home for Wayward Souls to
the corner of Bourbon & Iberville, though popular
suspicion has it the transition took place much
earlier, nearer the arrival of the first LCD watches,
& before that was neon and the first neon cross, "I am
the way and the light…"
Tonight it’s a red light,
Bourbon Street ambiance catching at the frayed edges
of the robe of the living god & the meek looking
creature who would take up his word, swallowing hard at
the pressing crowd armed with beer cans & leers & in
no mood at all to haggle. This sea, this street,
Bourbon Street, is no place for a local, & that
includes this man, a rather frightened looking young
man holding up a cross & trying to hand out small
booklets to passers-by, to be read once more sober,
the man & the cross awash in demonic red, as if
standing at the gates of hell itself. The man twists
his sweating head pavement-wards as two young black
kids no more than twelve—it well past midnight on
Bourbon Street—nudge the agent of Christ’s elbow with
not the barest pretence of avoiding him, jarring the
out-crooked elbow of the agent of Christ & thereby
spill a good three dozen tracts, spraying from this
timid fellow’s fumbling hands out onto piss-slick
street aflutter with red red red & fast receeding
laughs of street punks. Reaching for the papers, the
digital cross sways perilously in the supporting hand,
so that for a moment it looks like the surest bet on
Bourbon Street that tonight Jesus’ red light will be
extinguished, until the man from the Happy Christian
Home for Wayward Souls remembers, at the last possible
instant, the cross, catches it & shifts his gaze
uncertainly from the seemingly endless stream of
humans swarming, to the gutters, to the fluorescent
haze of shops, back to the tracts at his feet.
From
all directions the unmistakeable and all permeating
smell of alcohol: this is my blood, this is this riot,
this is the sloppy grin of the too well-off, too fat,
too ridiculous in middle age woman dripping over a
second story balcony dangling a string of beads over
the wrought iron like bait, mouth a twisted, inelegant
cavity of blood red above her faux satin dress, "Show
your cock!" In another minute the beads drop to dim
grasping hands below, faux satin woman leaning over
the wrought iron deliriously, spilling her drink, too
far gone to remember any of this, breasts threatening
to tumble from the low scoop of her dress. The sheen
of her dress is brown, shimmers in neon everywhere
the brown shimmer the pink & garish red, the yellow of
neons blaring off her dress an obscenity of
haircurlers and lapdogs, the too dread this woman is
flashing in the color of her dress, "Show your cock!"
Somewhere she’s found more beads, more bait, more
beer. In Iowa next week she’ll be telling her friends
about St. Louis cathedral over coffee, but tonight,
tonight she belongs to anyone who will have her.
Somewhere two stories below, lost in the moil of
Bourbon Street, the man who brought her here, the man
who watches television in her home & answers to the
name of husband, is by no means to be found bathed
in the red pool of light cast by the word of our
living god, "Show your cock!" Fury welling up, there,
her face alight in it, with the question of why it is
she wants tonight to scream this, why she needs to
drink so much to scream this, fury choked down hard
with a vicious upturn of the glass in her hand & whirl
back into the room for more beer, more beads, more.
This is my blood the luminous blood of red dots…in the
stone doorway, in the space where brick meets
crumbling wood the sounds of the street coalesce,
shivers through lingerers, jazz standards, bass of
blues, gospel leaks out onto Bourbon Street. In the
gaps of walls huddled in a ludicrous attempt to corral
this roil, bricks straining lunacy leaking through the
cracks. In dim cubbyholes black kids stamp their
sneakers down hard on upturned bottlecaps, the teeth
biting into the rubber of their shoes forming
make-shift taps for dancing, dancing next to shallow
cardboard boxes, following no rhythm more complex than
hunger. Tourists toss them quarters out of no
sentiment more noble than guilt, women cooing at their
dates "Isn’t he cute?" & the roll of a
twelve-year-old’s eyes on Bourbon Street past midnight
surrounded by too too familiar sounds.
This is my
body, this is the spill of Bourbon Street, this is the
smear of humanity through 2 A.M. when the last
stragglers wobble deliriously home certain this week’s
tourists want nothing more at this delicate hour than
to hear the song, the phrase, the rant that glows red
in the wash of thousands like them turned loose into
the things of the world. Salvation of neon. Promised
land of titty bars. The happy drinking grounds at
last, oh, take me drunk! To the hands of the living
god whose blood is wine & flesh bread to sop the
morning’s acid up with. Here the lights never go out,
blinding the white of cheap t-shirts, palms, tarot
read here, & "On the inside!", just past the door with
no key, just past the man with the truncheon, just
past everything you can’t quite get past lies the land
where all of this flows eternally & without pain,
where every drink is on the house & everything you’ve
ever desired shall be delivered, "On the inside!"—the
price of salvation, the afterthought of doormen, the
patter and wiggle of wet fingertips pointing the way
through this doorway, through these gates, through to
the living god.
copyright 2005
Gene Justice |
