Nathanael of Cana

<< previous page | Contents | next page >>

1- when it used to be Twitter,

     that God of banter, as it were;

     who was following who

was of more interest than the yodeller and the echo;

Christ and the message turned mundane,

so you'd check out His lesser

known followers for game;

     like Nathanael of Cana;

who had thought nothing good would come out of Nazareth,

     but one day as he sat under a fig tree, he got the tweet,

     come and see

and up the steps he went

to see this Nazarene;

his shoes fell off where they lay,

     as he bent down to wail with ecstacy,

so astounded was he, by this thumbnail

image of a babe and three Magi,

had he a smartphone, not so smartly

he may even have retweeted

come and see

what the Big C gave to me

in my hometown of Cana -- come see Christ

turn water      into rosebud wine,

his first miracle at a wedding feast where the guests

     were simply out of their minds,

come and see!

come and see

a modern day retelling of how

     a Nathanael of the street

bows down and eats his treat;

for his Saviour blessed him as one

in whom there is no deceit,

but he was never made a disciple of the twelve;

     Christ's Nathanael of Cana, honest and true,

is unknown to me and you,

but he sure is God's gift in Hebrew,

     like a sweet little secret you discover

is the Nathanael of our tale;

wet through and through

with his testimony,

though not from rain, only his surprised relent,

showered as he was with Love's great intent,

soaked from head to toe

for the proclaimed King of Israel;

2- nowadays, in Lebanon, of course,

water is still turned to wine

by the new kings of Israel;

when bombs drop from the sky

as easily as human discourse drops an f-bomb

in a sentence after every I,

and the Nathanaels are still the disciples unknown,

still a dime a dozen, but not of the twelve we know;

and there is no such call from Twitter to

come and see

the refugee boys

who have to whore themselves out

in Greek market stalls for a few euros,

so their mothers and sisters can eat:

so much meat in Stygmata Square:

so much forbidden pork at a moveable feast;

so many sacrificials for the Abrahams of the East,

come and see!

come and see!

this is the mantra of the twenty first century:

where there'll always be leaders and followers

in this inhuman monument of ours;

and the predeliction to come,

and the preoccupation to see:

so come to year two thousand and eleven,

and we see that Christ was following the flock

     in that year Osama bin Laden was finally allowed to fly,

the newspapers still only with a mere

few thousand followers on a blue bird's wing, tweeting

     back then, and who remembers the Guardian

     following a carpet weaving group

and a mini-circus based in Kabul for children?

while in Aghanistan, the Taliban had a Twitter account no less,

following an American armed force logistics officer;

     makes you wonder how that phrase went:

keep your friends close

     but follow your enemies on Twitter;

     come and see

come and see

Taliban on Twitter, you can't make up this reality,

     when they use their children as religious fodder,

the ones not lucky enough to escape to Greece

to be fucked by old Greek men, for no worse, or no better;

but for the Taliban to embrace technology

is a little odd; odder still

considering that they declared the Internet

against Islam in the year two thousand and one;

     then ten years later

while the whole world thought Osama

     holed up in a cave,

they found him in a million dollar compound

of computers and drives that astounded

     even America the brave;

     come and see!

come and see!

came the cry, Osama is dead,

but Christ, the dead don't die:

the first testament to belief,

the first witness to the truth

is that the dead don't die;

those refugees forced to sell themselves die,

they die while they live;

while their religious brothers in the East live to die;

but our Nathanael lives

in the Kingdom of Heaven

with his Saviour on high;

3-      come and see,

now today       how in darkness

our faces peer through curtains

          in fright,

     then we turn and prostrate ourselves

          in delirious delight,

for our candles burn at both ends

     throughout a long night,

come and see!

come and see!

to see how we come:

pop this pill      before you pop me,

smoke this joint       before you blow me,

blow this pipe       before you lay me,

lay me down

     before you know me;

turn me willingly into a refugee

in Stygmata Square who sells himself

in the land of plenty,

come and see!

come and see!

as our Nathanael goes to God's Lamb

     to load him up

with the Holy sacrament,

our Kings now buy their children Gifts of God

that send you to a cloudy firmament,

for a pretty penny, to ride a pretty pony,

alive or dead, it's just meat

they see, and they come;

come and see

the material and modus operandi

of the twenty first century

Published 1 May, 2026

In Human Excavation >>