As hot as he was under the collar,
Pilate kept his cool since he had nothing
gain by losing it either way. He was a cop
and it was his job to keep the peace
and he intended to do just that and only that.
He got his orders straight from Rome
and Rome’s orders were to give the Jews
whatever they wanted and let them choke on it.
That’s more or less what the Jews were doing—
strangling themselves with a mish-mash
of violent crime and corruption.
The only thing Pilate really had to worry
about was the persistent gossip on the streets
of a Jewish Savior. Something like that
could really cramp the Romans’ style,
not to mention eat into their revenue stream,
which more or less amounted to the same thing.
My kid brother James still lived with our mother.
I knocked at the door about sunrise
and he came sleepily scratching his *** to the door.
The place was a two-story hacienda
where he eked out a living as our old man
had done as a carpenter, the old man having run off
with a ******* years ago, leaving the family high and dry.
“Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, “I thought you were doing time.”
He was genuinely surprised.
I came in and said, “Where’s ma?”
He kind of shrugged and kicked the dirt,
saying, “She ain’t here, man.”
“It’s the crack of dawn. What do you mean she ain’t here?
Where are the kids?” I said looking around.
The place was a dump and he was apparently living there alone.
“She hooked up with a guy.
You know—,” he stated with a shrug,
sort of embarrassed. “The kids are with them, I guess.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that she’s your mother?”
“Don’t seem to bother her any.”  
Mary, my mother came from the same house
of ****** as Magdalene and old Miriam,
the busiest cat house in Nazareth.
The house was run by a big-***** Mistress
that went by the name of Aunt Annie,
though all of her girls were called ‘Mary’,
partly for convenience sake since that made
it hard for the Romans to get a line on any one of them.
But the centurions all knew Annie.
Her graft was good and reliable
and she’d been in business for years.
The story went that our mother was a ******
when I was born. Don’t ask me how.
I never quite got that part of the story myself.