"measure the tyrant"

“measure the tyrant” written with strings for nerves by jake kilroy. jesus is buried somewhere, everyone seems to forget; he’s as ripe and gruesome as anyone dead can be — an offering to grave robbers, a box where animals can piss, a plot in heaven’s basement, a dim skylight in hell’s attic. he wasn’t cremated; he wasn’t displayed. even lenin, a communist, got an art installation. even snow white, also a communist, got windows. meanwhile, the only wingless heaven-sent crashed to earth and spent less time alive than me out of the rubble. i honor him in swears because i never got along with his dad; the preacher’s preacher’s son and his criminal father — responsible for all, accountable for none. a jeopardy answer to “who will save us” somehow not rhetorical but with too much rhetoric; good enough for a last name but not good enough for a lifetime - every star of the night sky spinning for papa’s headache. what a world it must be to be born a mafia prince without want of the empire, the poor artist without the tycoon’s love, sharon’s rosebud to denizen kane, industry over art, time and again, an old master a new tricks. so in the end, memory proved best, the present too real and the future too big; god unable to remember the hymns written about his son and not him. tired of the bottle episode, god slung up his his garden in a bindle, leaving his son’s bones to the vultures, each batshit bird worse than the next a circle jerk as violent as they come a pen in one talon, sword in other, and thus god wandered off into the blurry heat of the horizon, never to be seen again. but still we wait. still we hunger. be still my heart for death is what he always wanted. measure the tyrant and never take the weight. be free, my son. escape the totality of what you were meant to be. do not die. do not ever.