Christ, Like

There's nobody who loses like Jesus,

Who buried, dead in his grave,

Reduced to ashes and dust by the man who killed him,

Placed to his rest  In the ground,

Sealed up in his casket
--like they did to my Uncle Jim who died when he was eighty-seven years old,

But I was only ten and did not understand

Death,

And when they removed his glasses from his face, 

Lowered the lid down over his body,

As I saw for the last time, ever,

A person, whom I would remember, forever,

As first alive now dead--

Then,

Three days later,

Like, everybody had moved on from that news about the schmuck who raised a disturbance and had to pay for his sin of disturbing the public peace by hanging on a cross.

And he says, nothing,

But rises up from the dead,

And then people tell all sorts of stories about how you never really died.

You just sort of reappeared to your disciples,

On the road to Emmaus,

And in other stories we tell our children

And ask them to believe are true.

To test them:

If you are going to lose, lose like he did.