Wasn’t Jesus an illegal immigrant?

He just arrived in Israel without papers or history

or sex, so wouldn’t He be deported today

if He were mowing lawns in America? I bet Jesus

would mow a mean lawn, and be really good at edging,

and pet your dog if it got loose in the yard

and wondered who this stranger was.

And isn’t shooting a priest in the head

with a pepperball during a peaceful protest

the equivalent, by proxy, of shooting Jesus

in the head with a pepperball, which, by extension,

is the same as shooting God in the head

with a pepperball, which, for those of us

who don’t believe in God, is like shooting the sun,

or the moon, or the air in the head

with a pepperball, which is easy to do,

including for me, even though I only fired a gun once,

at a steel chicken, who was at a disadvantage

and should have been given a head start.

The priest was telling the man who shot him,

a federal agent on top of a building

wearing a mask, the man, not the building,

that it wasn’t too late to save his soul,

a very shootable offense if there ever was none.

The man, the building, the gun, the pepperball,

are all part of the process of “mass deportation”,

the effort to rid America of those

who don’t blend in very well

with snow, or paper, or snow. “Mass deportation”

sounds as if you’re deporting mass, including

the communion wafers, or the snack

bearing the body of Christ into the world,

and the only thing I liked about church.

Jesus said two things I often quote verbatim:

love thy neighbor, and ouch. When I try to imagine

nailing someone to a cross, I get as far

as holding a spike against his palm

but can’t strike the spike with a hammer,

even in my head, where nothing is real,

it’s just pictures and words, like a bald TV.

And maybe Jesus actually said, Deport thy neighbor, or,

Arrest thy neighbor without a warrant, or,

Wear as much military gear as possible

to make it seem we’re at war with ourselves,

I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but I am here

and think we can all agree

that priests are meant to be lied to

during confession, not shot in the head

with pepperballs or speedballs or spitballs or any

kind of ball or bullet or spite. And aren’t we all

illegal immigrants, given we can’t

actually prove where life, or language,

or square dancing, or our boundless desire

to know where we came from, came from?

So if you set me free, I’ll set you free, and if you

hold on to me, I’ll hold on to you,

and if you step into the mystery and sing,

I’ll ask what you’re singing and try to sing along.

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