FAITHS AND SPRING FEVER

I always read church signs. Some are funny, some inspiring (there's one up by Muddy Creek and 214 that tends to have broad, hopeful messages that have startled me from a slump now and again)--but so many are so damn sanctimonious.

"Juked" is used for sound. I don't think any of its literal meanings fit here. But I'd like to find a literal meaning that does, because it feels like the right word to me.

Written (in my head) while driving back from Safeway, on a gloomy spring day turned unexpectedly pretty, as Charlene Drew Jarvis reminisced on the radio about the MLK assassination and how many doors it opened.

FAITHS AND SPRING FEVER

I’d like to pull all those letters
off your church signs and rearrange them
into messages of joy
words that rhyme
prayers that sing

I know Jesus juked a table or two
with cause in his time but
shit! you folks act like
you can’t shake off that stage beard
and water shoes

can’t remember kisses confusion or gin
never went to the mountaintop
never saw the redbud of your mountain roads
screaming full and purple
in your faces