god stole my gun last night

god stole my gun last night

right from my locked car
center console
i bet he didn't look anything like my sunday school god
hunched
in a filthy hoodie
thumping the top of a shim
with a gloved and open palm
at night, no doubt
so as to not be seen
by mere mortals
i know he didn’t smash the window
didn’t leave a trace or a scratch
i bet he at least had a beard

god stole my gun last night

he left the door cracked
waving just a little bit
just so I knew
that’s the first sign
i saw that i had been
touched by an angel

My heart skipped when I saw it
 
but I’m no stranger to intrusion
i’ve given and taken
taken so, so much
he left the console open
but not wholly so
It wasn’t even close
to closed
my second sign
 of divine
intervention

i fell into the car with my wife
we had fallen out overnight
so when she saw and asked
i told her i did it anyway
there is enough darkness
hung over our door
for one day
we don't have the proper silverware
 for a visit from big G god

God stole my gun last night
He didn’t take anything else
 and there was nothing else
 ripe for picking
i saw no blue light
no uniforms going door to door
like the times before
i saw no clipboard
no other victims milling about
complaining about the useless gates
we all pay for

this God came for me alone

how could he have known?
i didn’t
now he's sleeping
on a bench
in the park again


god stole my gun last night

he picked it up, so i couldn't
he felt the metallic heft
the raw
always-available power
of a firearm
he wondered who made these things
which greedy and absolutist
heavenly colleague?

i hope he held it lightly, between finger and thumb

like the rust on the slide wasn’t rust
but mud, or something sticky
i don’t know what he did with it
that’s not for me to know.
i know he didn’t leave it there
to do that thing it does
make metaphorical messes into real ones
might have dropped it at a pawn shop

god stole my gun last night, and it saved my life