By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
Jesus appears as an unbeatable striker who rejects profit from crosses, walks over stars before earth exists, and leaves behind a fiery, mixed inheritance.
The poem imagines Jesus as physically unconquerable, which turns sanctity into force without making it merely martial. The line about Joseph not making money off crosses is sharp and funny, a refusal of religious commerce before it starts. By placing him among stars before the earth and sending him away with "a mixture of things," the poem keeps Christ cosmic, combustible, and unresolved.
Jesus is imagined here as sheer unbeatable force: 'if he / wanted tostrike / There is no one / Ever that could / whip him.' Against 'Destany, fate, and karma' the speaker plants a homely, funny wager - 'I'd bet the farm he told / Joseph not to make money / off of crosses' - a refusal of religious profit even at its source. The close keeps him cosmic and unfinished: he 'walked over the stars / long before the earth was born,' came with 'fire' and left with 'a mixture of things,' arriving and departing as combustible mystery.