Damn near 28 years
Joe had given to the company
along with his knees, back, and shoulders.
Since they eliminated his helper,
he did the work of 2 men.
He roasted in the summer
and froze in the winter.
The owner would not spend money
on air conditioners or heaters.
But he was now investing heavily in the mill
thanks to write offs and tax abatements.
The whole plant was to be automated
starting with Joes’s job on the assembly line.
Engineers came with blue prints and slide rules
then came millwrights with parts and tools.
More money was spent eliminating Joe’s job
than he would of been paid in 200 years.
He was given his walking papers
and told he was no longer needed.
He came to the plant office on payday
to pick up his final check.
In the office sat the soulless owner
and a bible thumping, backstabbing supervisor
who started out on the shop floor
and slithered his way to the top.
Joe gave them an icy stare
as he put a 357 magnum to his temple
ending five decades of memories
and any future pain.
His fellow employees all agreed,
it was a stupid waste of life.
As the men lost their jobs one by one
they came to know Joe’s agony,
Together they shared the same dark thought,
though no one said it aloud.
They all secretly wished
that when Joe was in that office,
he wouldn’t have been so frugal
with the other bullets in his gun.

 
 
I. 
as God says let us
            speak light from nothing

      each day, cycling
                  cattle and creeping things…
                                                                every winged bird
                                                                and every beast


this is love, this is labor; hands have been spoken
let the waters bring swarms
  let them bring forth their swarms…



God is not a manager made in the image of bosses or judges or kings
-no      these do not work
         and God is creator, he got his Word dirty speaking out grain

and wine and oil and salt and fire
he got his Word fleshed into strenuous species


he gave us his Word that we’d be his image
                     his likeness;              we’d work and cycle once more

            in toiless effort          we’d glory in virtues

          quietly wombed and armed




II.

  but noises broke in from the worm in the apple              a chain reaction
from Cain to Paroah
 to Ceasar to Constantine;

‘the voice of your brother’s blood

              is crying

        to me from the land’ says the Lord



the piled on rivets of sin upon sin

            bend our bodies
 under men with their clipboards

men with their switches in rooms that are locked



III.

an overdue call, a kin to the gospel:

     to manifest

         the handiwork of the children of God



six days of good work
  build up the Sabbath
his yoke
 his burden is light
      his Advent



IV.

when we, under whips, built the network of crosses
    not one of us dared to jam that machinery

          even though we knew the crosses were for us
            our wrenches, our glances could not stop the line
of the Empire’s pantheon guarded by pain




he threw his body into the gears



his hands, used to nailing good Nazareth wood
were nailed to the cross by the Carpenters General



were hard enough
to halt the incessant centurion rhythms

as the boulders rolled away from his tomb we knew
the strike had finally started




V.

death would no longer dictate our hours;
a new liturgy of freedom was born



VI.

Postscript         apocalypse           the Kingdom of God:
glimpses of how to restart the making


a throbbing body                      each part
leading           left with millennia
we’d learn
to create in his image