"Now you can find some blacker hole to fuck."
She heaved the head up in her lily hand,
Though it was heavy, horrible and gory,
And did a tour of triumph through the land.
I find two morals in this sacred story:
(a) Prove your faith by killing people and
(b) Be a bloody whore for heaven's glory.
Susannah
The chaste Susannah – what was she chased for?
Her beauty, yes, but was there something more?
The sort of reputation that she bore?
You said the word, not I: the word is w--e.
Those old men said it too (Ach, nothing's lower
Than watching at a lady's bathroom door).
But Daniel caught them out. His lion-roar
Condemned their heads, not hers, to hit the floor.
Chaste, was she? Hm. Perhaps she couldn't bring
Herself to fancy two limp bits of string.
A woman's nature's nature-in-the-spring.
To get to know it, cease your pondering,
Slap on your chest two puddings in a sling
And let your haunches launch into a swing.
Belshazzar, drunk, observed a kind of smoke
Resolve itself to something vaguely manual
Writing upon the wall. He called on Daniel.
"Many tickle your arse - What's this – a joke?"
The ambiguous bilge that Daniel then spoke
Made less sense than the yapping of a spaniel.
"Weighed in the balance to the utmost granule,
Found wanting." Why not just "You're going to croak"?
All right, that's not a literal translation.
But what came next was no big fat surprise:
Belshazzar didn't live to eat his breakfast.
A prophet, scared of sticking out his neck, fast-
Idious about his reputation,
Ought to be told that riddles are damned lies.
Dec. 8
Serious talk now; let's not arse about.
December eight – what do we celebrate?
Come on, you know. Good – the Immaculate
Conception. When that apple-loving lout
Adam first took it in his head to flout
The Lord's law, angels said: "Evacuate,"
And firmly locked the paradisal gate,
Keeping his maculate descendants out.
Poor Mother Nature, ever since than ban,
Cannot breed even half a child that's blameless.
There boils within the rising prick of man
The seed of something terrible though nameless.
So praise to Joachim who, with Saint Ann,
Achieved a fuck that was uniquely shameless.
You know the day, the month, even the year.
While Mary ate her noonday plate of soup,
The Angel Gabriel, like a heaven-hurled hoop,
Was bowling towards her through the atmosphere.
She watched him aash the window without fear
And enter through the hole in one swift swoop.
A lily in his fist, his wings adroop,
"Ave," he said, and after that, "Maria.
Rejoice, because the Lord's eternal love
Has made you pregnant – not by orthodox
Methods, of course. The Pentecostal Dove
Came when you slept and nested in your box."
"A hen?" she blushed, "for I know nothing of -"
The Angel nodded, knowing she meant cocks.
Enter Joseph
Only a few weeks after did our Virgin see
The need to make a matrimonial match,
To build a nest wherein the egg could hatch
(Her little belly had begun to burgeon, see.)
It was, therefore, a matter of some urgency.
She didn't seek the freshest of the batch;
The one she gave her hand to was no catch,
But any port will do in an emergency.
The foolish gossips gossiped at the feast:
"She might have got a younger one at least,
Not an old dribbler frosty in the blood."
But that old dribbler dribbling by the side
Of such a beautiful and youthful bride
Found his dry stalk was bursting into bud.
Mary received, while burning Joseph's toast,
A letter. "Who the hell -?" (under her breath),
Aloud: "It's cousin Saint Elizabeth."
Elizabeth, it seemed, could also boast
A pregnancy, though not from the Holy Ghost.
Still, her next birthday was her sixtieth.
Though travel then was slow expensive death,
"We're coining," Mary wrote, then caught the post.
They went. After a short magnificat,
The women were soon chattering away
Of swellings, morning sickness, and all that.
Joseph decided that he'd like to stay
A month or so, and so hung up his hat
Better than sawing wood all bloody day.
The Magi
From a far country – how far? Very far:
It grows, for instance, cinnamon and cocoa -
Three kings, their robes rococo or barocco,
Followed their leader – viz., that big bright star.
Each Magus had, like any czar or tsar,
Guards, steeds, a page, a clown with painted boko,
Coaches, a camel, and in leisured loco-
Motion they swayed towards where the Hebrews are.
They reached the stable with their caravan
One morning, evening, noon or afternoon,
With gifts – incense for God, and myrrh for man.
For Christ as king they had a gold doubloon -
Proper, they thought, for the top Christian.
They were, it seems, some centuries too soon.
Our Lady had a painful Christmas Day
And heaven the monopoly of mirth.
Between an ox and ass she brought to birth
A stableboy that stank of rags and hay.
His substitutive dad had to obey
The Jewish law, so look the Lord of Earth
Templewards, to have half a farthingsworth
Of hypostatic foreskin cut away.
Thirty years later saw the blessed Lord on
A journey to the rolling river Jordan
To be baptised by Mary's cousin's son.
A Christian man thus sprang from a prepuceless
Jew. I call most turncoats fucking useless
But make a rare exception for this one.
The Living Prepuce
That sacred relic, by the way, was hid
And either kept in camphor or else iced.
It grew so precious it could not be priced.
And then one day His Holiness undid
A holy box and raised a holy lid -
Behold – the foreskin of our saviour Christ,
Shrimplike in shape, most elegantly sliced,
At last to profane eyes exhibited.
In eighty other Christian lands they show
This self-same prize for reverent eyes to hail.
You look incredulous, my friend. But know
That faith, though buffeted, must never fail.
The explanation's this: God let it grow
After the clipping, like a fingernail.
Joseph was doing bull-roars on his back,
A dream corrida crowd was yelling "Toro!"
He slept cut off from coming care and sorrow,
Making the stable shake with roar and rack.
But then an angel dealt him a rough smack
And said: "You know what day it is tomorrow?
The twenty-eighth. I managed, see, to borrow
A copy of the current almanac."
Herod announced the Feast of Childermass.
Joseph rushed out and had to pay a pretty
Price (how he cursed) for an old spavined ass:
A carpenter would rather gyp than be gypped.
And so they moved off mouselike towards Egypt,
Missing a lively day in David's city.