Factory Settings

a poem: a bone to pick with Jesus

I.

The final boss of old age
is when they forget your name
the name they picked
and wrote in wet sand
up in Mendocino
and engraved on a necklace
that they polished every birthday
and hand embroidered
on your tote bag for your swim class
with your favorite teacher Gus
(whose name they somehow still remember)

Untimely erasure
like the wiping of the hard drive
accidentally too soon
like a finger slipped to yes
when the pop-up double checked
–Are you sure?

All souls return eventually
to factory settings
up at the Genius Bardo
blanking out the disk space
for some new stranger’s
username and profile

But glitches slip through
sometimes
random artifacts
like stowaways
of previous user preferences

Like when my aunt got a new heart
from a dead man who liked spicy food
and ever after ate her meat
with bottles of tabasco

II.

The story always haunted me
of Jesus in the temple
left behind by accident
by harried working parents
at the tender age of twelve
in the caravan’s dust cloud

And did he drop a pin for them
or page them on the intercom?

God no

And when his Ima and Aba
bug-eyed frantic blistered
three days later
finally found their only son
who could have been abducted
or worse for all they knew
right there in the temple
talking Torah with the rabbis

Did this amber alert
of a lost boy-child
collapse into their arms?

Heaven forfend

He looked at them all nonchalant
and actually had the gumph to say
— Did you not know
that I must be
in my Father’s house?

While his dad was standing right there

I wouldn’t choose that heartbreak fate
of premature erasure
of raising an enlightened kid
who came out cleanly wiped
who grew up unattached
immaculate
and eternally
unrecoverable