the good book

You Are My Bible

You, with no middle name and no father,
the virgin birth with no star hovering above
for infidels, kings or martyrs like me to follow
and so I canvased the night after night skies
for a sign of you, my opposite gender Jesus,
searched in vain for eight and thirty years,
like a bewildered Bedouin left wandering a desert mirage,
like a wounded animal left howling beneath a druid moon,
taste of lonesome death upon lips so long without
the water turned to wine, the body turned to bread
of Love's communion, of Love's consecrating kiss,
an apostle abandoned by hope, orphaned by faith
until at last saved from myself by your grace,
a spiritual leper freed to shed the rest of his skin
and release a chrysalis soul from a cocooned heart,
resurrection like butterflies escaped from a cage of ribs
reincarnated as doves roosting in the peace of your pages
where I read your revelations, sang your psalms, prayed your prayers,
turned epistle into epiphany, divined aphorism from apostasy,
this James The Lesser found no longer bound by King James
and a version of apocalypse sown from the seeds of despair,
an apocryphal, self-fulfilling prophecy swept to the four winds
by you, the word made flesh, my salvation, for you are my bible.