Jesus' Beard is Still Bigger Than Mine

Jesus’ Beard is Still Bigger Than Mine.
In the winter of Colorado
the snow fell perfect shapes of geometry
And I found myself outside playing Tetris with the sky
The cold of the air replaced the oxygen in our lungs
like the future cigarettes we’d smoke.
We’d hack coughs like hatchets
our nose hairs froze,
our ears as the red as our plastic sleds
—fingers numb like our parents’ marriages
This is what growing up looked like
It looked like snowforts and ugly Christmas sweaters
My father saying, “Jesus’ beard is still bigger than mine—but I’m catching up

In the third grade I was whipped with a towel in the
Pool lockeroom, it snapped like a firecracker
And stung like a wooden mixing spoon
on your behind
I was wearing Barney underwear
--You don’t wear Barney underwear in the third grade
I learned that day.

In the seventh grade I made out with a girl so hard that we had to break up
lest the school bus driver would tell her parents.
But I never forgot about her velvet lips, that squirming
tongue I wasn’t sure what to do with,
the bumps on her chest like some hypnotic spinning wheel, entrancing me.
This is what growing up felt like:
Sore asses
And spells of dizziness as she wafted through the doors of our yellow make out bus

In the eighth grade I had another girlfriend
She cheated on me by licking some other guy’s eyeball
like some sort of weird Martian space sex act I had never heard of
I would have licked your eyeball too if you would have asked I thought.
But, then I thought, would I?
Growing up now felt heavy, like cannonballs on my insides

Because we all slowly learned that growing up was not what we imagined
It was not all cowboys and Indians and snowball fights and dares to see who could jump off the most stairs

We grew up
I became as cynical as a New York brief
case filled with papers of suicide notes and receipts from liquor stores
Our faces began to look like all the adults who we never wanted to be
Like dying stars flickering out across our windshields cars
I learned then that it’s a lot easier to say to your parents, “Fuck You!” than
I forgive you

But this is only Act II and Romeo and Juliet are still in love
Because I want to live life like acrobats and diving wombats
I want to live life like the dying purple tulips in my backyard, dead for now
But alive again soon.
I want to live life like James Bond orders Martini’s—
shaken—but not stirred.
And I’m not even sure if that is how James Bond orders martinis but that’s okay because
I don’t want to live life in the box of a television set.
I want to live in the forest where the sun rests

I am trying to grow up
and all the world is crazy, except when Jesus
stops by for breakfast
After breakfast we pull the rolling papers from our pockets
and I roll my
cigarette with my fingertips
lick the seal, praying
that I might inhale life today and not death.

And Jesus’ beard is still bigger than mine, but I’m catching up.