The Conversion

The Conversion

        "Who seeks the other color...."    
        James Dickey's "Slave Quarters"

"Welcome to Vacation Bable School!" she said.
Our son fell in with the other little fellers,
and soon was taught the "Jeezus luvs me" song
along with others.

I knew what it meant. I had been this way before
like Bobby Frost, stopping in the winter wood to
see the snow fall. It was the inevitability of
the thing, growin' up in the Bable Belt,
to learn these songs.

What did it mean in the larger scheme of things
if little Tony came home, a sayin'
"Let's paint a picture for Jeezus" or
"Let's read a Bable story for Jeezus" or
"Let's find out what Billy, nex' door, is doin'
    for Jeeeezus".....

Sometimes "Let's wash yer ears for Jeezus" worked
pretty well, I think. But soon I felt guilty
as Hell for usin' Jeezus to twist things my way.
I knew I was a minority of one,
    but I was caught, like everyman in Georgia,
    by the easy way it slips across your tongue:
"Let's do the dishes for Jeezus"
"Let's lose weight for Jeezus"
    and even:
"Let's make a baby for Jeezus."

It got worse.
    Soon my wife was sayin':
"Let's clean out the fridge for Jeezus"
"Let's take out the garbage for Jeezus"
"Let's change the oil in the car for Jeezus"
It seems like Jeezus has an awful lot of stuff He wants done--
    at least Moses thought so--like votin' agin' Gun Control,
    and Homos, and rubbers in the schools.

My wife & son & I got tired of doin' stuff for Jeezus.



And then, one day, the Church Elders came by the house.
They saw the scragglee yard filled with crabgrass,
They saw the debris of unburned bushes, they saw the
    unknownly evil trees, the decaying leaves,
left behind here to pile up (I think) since before The Fall
    And they judged me and found me wanting!

But all those things grew for Jeezus! I said to them.

I was called a heretic, a cynic, a humanist!

    "TO THINK THAT THE GRASS GROWS FOR JEEZUS
    OR THAT THE BUSHES BLOOM, OR THE LEAVES FALL--
    ALL THIS HAPPENS FOR JEEZUS? NOT IN GEORGIA, IT DON'T!"

And then they left.

But who the Hell then makes all this stuff grow so fast
    like this? I said to myself, and then, to my wife:
"Call the church and tell Jeezus to come over here
    and rake up all these damn leaves of His
    that He's let drop all over my yard!"

The wife sent me on a walk, to cool off she said and think about
    committing my life a little less fully to Jeezus.

I walked downtown in the cold wintery day, past the old
railroad tracks, to a tired part of town that Jeezus
had let go downhill a bit. I got cold, and soon I was
standin' in front of an old theater marquee that said:

HEAT

So I paid my six dollars and went inside to get warm.
As I slipped into the worn velvet seat (the popcorn machine
was broke, they said) I let my eyes wander over the too
dark room, and saw the dozen or so fellow travelers
waiting in their seats--not tense so much as tensed
like springs that had been bent so much they broke.

Soon the projector light appeared and with it the muscular bodies
of young Italian men--a gangsta film I think it was
with mobsters and big-breasted molls--a Revenge Tragedy--it was,
some long lost descendent of Hamlet leached onto 35mm film.

The hero was a handsome Hispanic goodly fellow
who fell to his work like Jeezus Himself was
prodding him to action; or else Shakespeare who said:
"Screw your courage to the sticking place!"
and so screw he did, and all for Jeezus....

Soon I found myself saying, quietly, then louder:
    "Squeeze it for Jeezus"
    "Lick that fig for Jeezus"
    "Ride 'em like a cowboy, Jeezus"

And then the theater owner, looking like Sargent Garcia,
Came to my seat and said,
"He is not Heysoos, his name is Stephen Saint Croix."

Apologizing, I soon returned to the show:
    "Suck that bacuda, for Saint Croix"
    "Lick that ol' conch, Saint Croix"
    "Take it like a choir boy, for Saint Croix...."

And no sooner than the words sprung from my mouth
I knew: I had become a born-again cathar-lick!

Like Paul on the Road to Damascus
    (not a Hope-Crosby film, by the way)
or Cardinal Newman, stopping to visit the Folies Bergere
    on the road to Notre Dame, I was struck
down by my New Belief. Converted from my firm
adherence to the Jeezus of the gospels,
I was now transformed by a new renewal of faith!
No longer one of His Elect,
I chose to worship at the footstool of His truly Erect.

In that dark theater, among the old-maid popcorn kernels,
I fell to my knees and prayed to my beautiful Saint Croix,
    and then & there
I was shot through & through
    with the lightning of his sacred Thor-like hammer.

In the darkness I was anointed like a lover.
I was conceived from the beauty of her black belly.
As the brightness of her smile projected above me on the screen--
    I was bathed in the whited charisma of his blessed tool.

Saint Croix is much less difficult and rigid taskmaster.
He is hard, but forgiving, too.
Like Saint Anthony and the blessed beasts,
I soon found forgiveness in the hardness of his holy rule.

And now each year we pilgrimage to the island of Saint Croix,
blessed with his name, washed with the warm caribbean winds,
and take his holy sacrament in this church by the sea.

Like the native Crucians, I embrace the holy cross.
Like the Rosy Crucians, I sunburn lightly as a penance.
Like the Virgin Islands, I am reborn each day at dawn. And
    as one newly christened, with each new "maarn in"
I give good Jesus with the warmest latitude.