variation on a theme by Nick Cave
Jesus lived with Diana and a rabbit
on the moon. It was like all the deserts
rolled up into a ball so he was fine with that:
‘If I can do forty days and forty nights
then I can do four billion years’, he would say
to the Goddess stroke Princess.
Theirs was a chaste relationship: sometimes he
would chase the rabbit, skin and roast it;
sometimes it would chase him, screaming,
‘This is your flesh! This is your blood!’
Then Diana would hunt them down with a bow
and a moon-buggy, which neither thought fair.
On the Dark Side they would curl up together
and suckle from her sixty-four nipples;
his beard would retreat into his long soft ears,
and the rabbit would dream in parables.
Theirs was a relationship as complete
as the panels in a long-running cartoon:
each panel felt like a carriage on the Trans-
Lunar Express, in which they would cantillate
to the seaside that best suited their mood:
Silence, Tranquillity, Concupiscence.
Once they found a hairless rock star, crying
in a crater, and Jesus repaired his bicycle.
Each month the rock star would wait
by the track, and, as their train went by
(the carriages painted with the company logo:
a carrot on a crucifix over crossed arrows,
all inside a demi-lune), he would pedal as
fast as he could alongside, and wave.
Jesus lived with Diana and a rabbit
on the moon. It was like all the deserts
rolled up into a ball so he was fine with that:
‘If I can do forty days and forty nights
then I can do four billion years’, he would say
to the Goddess stroke Princess.
Theirs was a chaste relationship: sometimes he
would chase the rabbit, skin and roast it;
sometimes it would chase him, screaming,
‘This is your flesh! This is your blood!’
Then Diana would hunt them down with a bow
and a moon-buggy, which neither thought fair.
On the Dark Side they would curl up together
and suckle from her sixty-four nipples;
his beard would retreat into his long soft ears,
and the rabbit would dream in parables.
Theirs was a relationship as complete
as the panels in a long-running cartoon:
each panel felt like a carriage on the Trans-
Lunar Express, in which they would cantillate
to the seaside that best suited their mood:
Silence, Tranquillity, Concupiscence.
Once they found a hairless rock star, crying
in a crater, and Jesus repaired his bicycle.
Each month the rock star would wait
by the track, and, as their train went by
(the carriages painted with the company logo:
a carrot on a crucifix over crossed arrows,
all inside a demi-lune), he would pedal as
fast as he could alongside, and wave.
