Judas Saves

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Judas Saves

“You shall be cursed for generations, but you will exceed all of them--

for you will sacrifice the man who clothes me.” --Jesus to Judas--

the “Gospel of Judas”. 

I met the guy in a smoky bar in Marrakech last week, while

traveling in Morocco looking for Burroughs’ Tangierian exiles,

you dig--searching for the ultimate high, the black meat, that

mugwump mind-fuck dust that would certainly realign my world;

for I was actively fleeing homosexuals, the John Birchers, dykes

on bikes, Islamic Jihadists, high gas prices, America’s broken

partisan promises, a failed marriage, a daughter I hooked on

heroin who now turned tricks in alleys behind redneck bars, 

a fag for a son who had a sex-change and demands to be

called Dolores--and the mystery dude called himself Jude.

He had a flaming red beard, piercing blue eyes, wore Arabic duds

and sat deep in the shadows at the back sipping absinthe and

smoking hasheech.

“Do you know me, man?” he asked.

“You sound pretty Jewish to me, are you an Israeli comedian

who can’t find his way back to the Catskills?”

“No, man, I am a Hebrew prophet, and I am not obscure, but

then no one really knows me, or ever really did--so they just

made up bullshit stories & myths about me.”

“I’m from Seattle--how about you?”

“Actually I was born in a Judean village called Kerioth. I ran with

a fast bunch called the Zealots, revolutionaries.”

“That’s heavy, man--so what’s your handle?”

“My proud family name is Iscairot, and it has been twisted raw

as a goat’s tit for centuries by self-righteous Christians, leading

to rampant anti-Semitism--Judah meaning the praised one, and

Sicarious meaning assassin--just a walking set of conflicted

contradictions, brother.”

“Wait a minute,” I stammered, my nostrils clogged with hashish smoke,

“Does that mean you knew Jesus?

“Knew him, loved him, and did his bidding.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean he called me brother, the “best of the apostles”, and one

day he informed me that we two had to save the world.”

“Save it from what, man?”

“From itself, obviously--he ordered me to betray him to Caiaphas,

in` order to fulfill prophesy, to trigger humanity’s salvation.”

“Wasn’t it hard to do that?”

“I asked him if the situation had been reversed, could he have betrayed me--

and he told me that he did not have the strength to do it, and that’s why he

had chosen the easier task of being crucified.”

“Wow, man, and yet here you are, talking to me just like any other dude?

So....tell me what you think about Francis, the new pope?”

“Christ, you will soon find out that the new pope is just like the old pope,

that the Vatican conservatives will still be rattling the martyr’s bones, and

parish priests will continue to bugger every choir boy they can corner; 

but don’t get me started on the fucking Catholic Church?”

I raised my fists and stared for a moment at the ceiling fan,

“What about the Mongol hordes & the Islamic terrorists? Do you think

we will have more American boots on the ground soon in the

Korean Peninsula and in Tehran?”

Stark silence was his reply. I looked across the small

leather-covered reed table and the half-glass of absinthe was 

all that remained of our discourse. So I drained the dram

and roughly pushed my way out of the exotic bar.

I stood out in the street in the rain for a long time,

not sure if now I was enlightened,

or damned, or both. 

Glenn Buttkus

March 2013

Posted over on dVerse Poets-Poetics

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