Sleeping Jesus

Poem for August 6, 2024

Sleeping Jesus

The kid’s voice comes at me like an amplifier
compression waves, san limiter
we’re swinging at bedtime, he screeches
he is gleeful and defiant, all teeth
he is mercury-vapor white light
infinitesimal light, waxing twenty-some years
it has long since shattered the firmament
he is neither created nor destroyed
but his own recursive proof of innocence
reaching far past heaven’s luckless grasp

The kid plays guitar these days
gigs in unglamorous Texas liquor stores 
amplified arpeggios, tremolo solos
feedback waves rebounding
at eighty-three megahertz frequencies
he is the secret language of angels sounding
effortless Enochian notes ascending

I’ll be damned if he’s not still swinging 
after bedtime while Jesus sleeps and dreams
a thing that reverberates light years behind
he shouts an echo hurtling after dark
a call for all at death’s disowning
it oscillates, six-strings sevenfold
that the kid has always known
sin isn’t real and never was

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I have a nephew named Seamus. He’s named after poet Seamus Heaney, so this is all the more fitting. Poetry is mysterious sometimes, and I’m not sure how I came around to writing this one loosely about him. But he really was a kid swinging after bedtime once upon a time, and now he’s guitarist in a fabulous band called Sleeping Jesus. Check them out!