Headcase.

Bundled all I owned
into my head.
Just threw it all in, nothing too neat –
‘Everything will come out creased,’ she said.
‘That won’t matter in the least –
Where I’m bound
who’ll have thought to care?
I’m going to be a stranger there.’

I asked old Nimrod for a start,
told him yes, my heart would be in
carrying mud bricks up a ladder.
One ziggurat’s just like any other,
but God didn’t see it like that –
He soon had everyone talking bollocks,
And Babel just crumbled and tumbled in time.

Standing among Golgotha’s crowds,
I helped a stumbling man
regain his lump of wood.
Got stuck by a splinter for my deed
which I kept and tried to sell
to pious Popes in later times.
‘What need have I of your black splinter?’
someone called Sylvester mocked,
‘When I have a hundred different models
of the one and true authentic cross!’

Got drunk with Noah on the Ark,
(sneaked on sometime after dark)

Sold seeds to Caine
but he fled without paying,
Melted gold for Aaron’s gilded cow,
and how I danced
for six full days round Jericho,
sleeping as the walls fell, stone on stone.

When I finally got back home
she told me to unpack my head –
‘I’ll wash and iron it all’
she said.