Poem: "With You Wherever You Go"
This poem was written outside the regular prompt calls. It fills the "City" square in my 8-1-24 card for the Discworld Bingo fest. It has been sponsored by a pool with Dreamwidth user Fuzzyred. This poem belongs to the Big One thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.
"With You Wherever You Go"
[June 2016]
After the Big One,
artists started seeing
Jesus everywhere.
They painted Him
with all different faces,
Hebrew and African,
European and Asian.
They sculpted Him
with muscles flexing,
shoulders bowed,
and brow furrowed.
They placed Him in
every sundered city
along the West Coast,
in the wreck of Rain City
and the spreading cracks
of San Francisco and
the broken wings
of Los Angeles.
The signifiers
were often subtle,
but they were there.
He was the ditch digger
with an orange halo from
the wildfire behind him.
In a soup kitchen line,
his scarred hands offered
bread bowls of fish stew
to the ravenous refugees.
He was the barefoot beggar
carrying orphans toward
the relief station, with
spotted bandages
around his arches.
A desperate carpenter
shoved support beams
under the rubble so that
other aid workers could
free the trapped victims.
He was the grief counselor
with old, faint lines from
a thorny crown stitched
across his forehead.
A shattered water pipe
cast a shining rainbow
around a plumber's brow.
Everywhere, everywhere,
Jesus was embodied, manifest,
embedded in humanity's suffering
and the hard work to relieve it.
The artists made inscriptions
about His omnipresence:
Be strong and courageous.
Do not be frightened,
and do not be dismayed,
for the Lord your God is
with you wherever you go.
* * *
Notes:
"Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
-- Joshua 1:9 ESV
These are some plausible extrapolations what Jesus would have looked like. Remember he was a Middle Eastern man, so he would have had olive to brown skin with brown or black hair and eyes.
Face of Jesus Forensic Reconstruction
Face of Jesus AI by Bas Uterwijk
Some of the other versions are ... less plausible.
Faces of Jesus Collage with 5 Faces
Faces of Jesus Collage with 15 Faces
Faces of Jesus Collage with 16 Faces
Sometimes artists place Jesus in contexts of poverty.
Homeless Jesus on Bench with Other Homeless People
Homeless Jesus Begging Statue
Homeless Jesus Sleeping on Bench Sculpture
The bench sculpture is especially famous because people keep calling the cops on homeless Jesus.
"With You Wherever You Go"
[June 2016]
After the Big One,
artists started seeing
Jesus everywhere.
They painted Him
with all different faces,
Hebrew and African,
European and Asian.
They sculpted Him
with muscles flexing,
shoulders bowed,
and brow furrowed.
They placed Him in
every sundered city
along the West Coast,
in the wreck of Rain City
and the spreading cracks
of San Francisco and
the broken wings
of Los Angeles.
The signifiers
were often subtle,
but they were there.
He was the ditch digger
with an orange halo from
the wildfire behind him.
In a soup kitchen line,
his scarred hands offered
bread bowls of fish stew
to the ravenous refugees.
He was the barefoot beggar
carrying orphans toward
the relief station, with
spotted bandages
around his arches.
A desperate carpenter
shoved support beams
under the rubble so that
other aid workers could
free the trapped victims.
He was the grief counselor
with old, faint lines from
a thorny crown stitched
across his forehead.
A shattered water pipe
cast a shining rainbow
around a plumber's brow.
Everywhere, everywhere,
Jesus was embodied, manifest,
embedded in humanity's suffering
and the hard work to relieve it.
The artists made inscriptions
about His omnipresence:
Be strong and courageous.
Do not be frightened,
and do not be dismayed,
for the Lord your God is
with you wherever you go.
* * *
Notes:
"Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
-- Joshua 1:9 ESV
These are some plausible extrapolations what Jesus would have looked like. Remember he was a Middle Eastern man, so he would have had olive to brown skin with brown or black hair and eyes.
Face of Jesus Forensic Reconstruction
Face of Jesus AI by Bas Uterwijk
Some of the other versions are ... less plausible.
Faces of Jesus Collage with 5 Faces
Faces of Jesus Collage with 15 Faces
Faces of Jesus Collage with 16 Faces
Sometimes artists place Jesus in contexts of poverty.
Homeless Jesus on Bench with Other Homeless People
Homeless Jesus Begging Statue
Homeless Jesus Sleeping on Bench Sculpture
The bench sculpture is especially famous because people keep calling the cops on homeless Jesus.