“The Triumph of the Church over Fury, Discord, and Hatred.”
(By Peter Paul Rubens. c.1625)

There are 783,137 words in the King James Bible
(And 783,138 spaces)
One day Barabbas bumped into Lazarus in Jerusalem
They drank wine and spoke of old times
Neither mentioned the elephant in the room
Bartholomew died soon after
Sadly of ‘natural causes’
James son of Zebedee finally came out of the closet
Of course the Rabboni knew even before JZ did
Mary Magdalena lives alone in a cave
Ministering to sick pilgrims who come looking
No one sees Thaddeus much anymore
He travels Italia mongering miracles from knock-off Mandylions
Judas took off with the stash but he keeps on
Financing doomed revolutions with profits from his brothels
Pontus Pilate retired to Corinth to remodel his compound
I think theres a cable show about it
Peter keeps insisting on circumcising eunuchs
And embracing socialism
One fundamentalist who got healed took up his bed to follow
But he won’t put it down again until Jesus comes back
At some point people started calling “Jews,” “THE” Jews
Saint Paul never burned his Roman passport
Simon (called “The Zealot”) decided after all to just
’Change the system from the inside’
The ‘Gadarene Swine’ became a chain of Paleo-cafes
Saint Junia was an apostle of indeterminate gender
(we don’t know where (s)he peed)
Two Popes disappeared without a trace
Christian Crucifixes are all made by tiny Chinese communists now
Simon Magus wasn’t first to capitalize on the zeitgeist
Zwingli starved the Roman Catholic Swiss cantons in retaliation
Hussites defenestrated Prague’s schismatics
From the Cathedral of the Virgin Mary of the Snows
I received holy communion there in 1992 but
The Carmelite nuns had already fled in terror
When toads in Hamburg began exploding in the summer of 1486
Fearful church elders blamed ‘The Jews,’ and burned them publicly
As is common practice in europe during any calamity*
A chariot imported from Egypt cost 600 silver shekels ($77,000)
One shekel was a weeks’s wages (1 Kings 10:29)
‘Pele-joez-el-gibbor-abi-ad-sar-shalom,’ is the longest name in the bible
It holds place for the passing shadow of the nameless un-god
The devil tested Jesus with absolute everything, but
After fasting 40 days in the desert Jesus returned with open hands
For a short time whores, lepers, poor people, strangers, queer folk
Were all loved
But that part of the story was lost and forgotten
Predictably, the ‘Seven Demons’ have returned with friends

obliged, daniel imburgia