Jesus in America
By H.C. Palmer
Only he don’t come down
from His Tree
Him just hang there
—Lawrence Ferlinghetti
The pharisaical hearts
and pig-headed minds
of perfervid bringers
of theological bull shit
are beating us down
white assed bigots
thump love redacted bibles
on imperious pulpits
inside walled in god boxes
while a nation hangs captive
with a sorrowing old Jesus
nailed to a bad assed place
and a bad assed time.
H.C. Palmer is a retired Internist. He served as a Battalion Surgeon with the First Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1965-66. His poems have appeared in New Letters, Narrative Magazine, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, War Literature and the Arts, Gray’s Sporting Journal, Portside and other journals and anthologies. His first book of poems, Feet of the Messenger, from BkMkPress, the University of Missouri, Kansas City (2017) was a finalist for the 2017 Balcones Poetry Prize. He was the 2017 Anthony Hecht Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. He has directed the KC Veterans’ Writing Team for 9 years, in partnership with the Kansas City Public Libraries and the Moral Injury Association of America.
