Back Door Theology in a Whiskey Glass

**Disclaimer: Contains R-Rated and otherwise controversial content**

Back Door Theology in a Whiskey Glass
JCD Kerwin

I caught snowflakes on my tongue
once upon a time in July,
when the air cut like razorblades
and eggs fried on my brain.

I saw Jesus in a snowflake
when I was seventeen
and Jerry Garcia in a peanut
at twenty.
They both said the universe
isn’t all that large
and Andromeda is not that far
away.

At twenty-five I’m still thinking
about Jesus crackers
and pot leaves
fighting over the world.

I think God is a heroin addict
and It’s laughing at Man
running around with palm leaves,
and back-seat-driving Pope-mobiles.

(I think the Pope and the Queen
go fucking on the weekends
because the Devil makes them
do it. After all,
It’s got candy that’s enticing
to all us lollipop kids.)

I can’t seem to drink enough
to become an alcoholic,
but I’m still too inebriated
for AA to accept me.
I’m chasing horses out of bottles
lining shelves of “just another pub”
in some weird corner of my world,
and I’m not sure if this time
God will take a moment
to join me.

Lord fucking knows
I could use an omnipotent psychiatrist
like God
to sort through the mental shit
I’ve shoved in dingy closets
upstairs.

I don’t believe in angels
but if I did, I’d tell you
one has Irish eyes that glow blue
when they’re laughing, and
they saved my fucked up soul
from monsters in my head.

(Those monsters would make me
their marionette if I let them, but
when my Indigo turns Blue
they stay away and I don’t have to pray
to Jesus Garcia.)

And maybe if there’s Heaven,
it’s right here on Earth,
trapped between the Nowhereland
and Almost There that we’ve created.
They’re our excuses for Paradise,
but maybe Eden’s not man-made;
maybe you can’t find it in peanuts
or grape juice at the altar.

(I don’t care to know ‘cause I know
it’d just frighten me and
I’ve got enough things to be afraid of
looking in a mirror.)

I’m content to walk beside
the same jackass human beings,
because maybe someday
it will all make sense to me…

And I think Jerry might be smilin’,
snortin’ coke with Jesus,
while I’m down here laughin’,
‘cause I found an angel and Paradise
before them.

(April, 2011)

Happy as a Chondestes grammacus

Hey, I did it. I finished The Novel that Will Get Me Published. It was kind of surprising, actually. Finished is around midnight, Monday morning this week. When I realized I was done, I just kind of stared at my computer screen for a while. I think the shock has worn of now…I think. Hey, come on, the thing took me eight years to write–but I did most of it in the past year. And now it’s done.  The first book I wrote in a year; the second in five years. (Those ones suck. I don’t want to talk about those.) But this one is weird. It’s different. It’s…special. Aww. No, seriously, it is.

Now I can’t look at it for a couple days. But then I’ll go back and read it. Then I’ll start editing. I already know who I’d like to send it to for critiquing. Then after that: some more editing! Then it’ll be time to put together publishing packages [which I remember so fondly]. (Oh, look how excited I am! I’m already thinking of everything I get to do next! I’m happy as a lark. A darling lark!… ‘the hell kinda bird is a lark anyway?)

In honor, I suppose this poem is appropriate:

Scriveners
JCD Kerwin

My pen writes
in a different way
each time I hold it,
as if to say,
“They’re not done yet.”

(December, 2011)

And my break’s over. Stay off drugs, kids.

Writing Carbs

You know that Novel That Will Get Me Published?

Well I must be buttah, because I’m on a roll!

And not one of those shitty rolls they reuse at those quick, turnover chain  joints you direct mid-western tourists to go when they demand you tell them a “real Italian place.” Nah. The kind of roll Sal has his guys make fresh at that small, family-owned, family-run place you went on your first date like six years ago; the one off the beaten path, far down a couple blocks that only you and a handful of people know about that sells chicken Parmesan like your mom used to make when she still cooked like she gave a damn.

Yeah, I’m on that kind of a roll.

Hell yeah.

Did You Ever Wonder About an Astronaut’s Feet?

Today is 12/12/12. (Yay?) No one made much of a fuss about 11/11/11, 10/10/10 or any of the others…but hey, I figure I, too, may as well mark today as a momentous occasion.  And I shall do so with a joke of the holiday persuasion… *ehem

If athletes get athletes foot, what do astronauts get?
. . .
MISTLETOE! Get it?!

You can borrow that one. Go ahead, tell you friends. I’m sure they’ll be impressed.

Rock It

Get out and vote today! Do your civic duty!

I’m gonna rock the vote so hard today, you’d think MTV was still relevant. Word.