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20.  Lenny Bruce Presents ... Job


O, Righteous Job, a really stand up guy.
A deal gets cut with God; no one knows why.
Some organizing Devil has it in for God or Job
& tries to float a win-win situation, double-play.
“If tails, bad wins; if heads, the good guys lose.”
No fail, the Devil thinks.
“Okay,” says God, “We test on happy prosp’rous man
To see who’s best.
How can he lose?  -- He’s God.
And so, He lets poor Job get blasted by misfortune,
pests & pestulance, all manner of surprise.
But Job hangs in there, never does despise the Force
behind the loss of all his kids.
If it were me, I’d wonder what I did.






His neighbors asked.
They hung around & said, “Your luck is so spectacularly
bad, what with your fortune gone & children dead,
some huge-o sin you’ve whacked to make God mad!”
Except it wasn’t so.
Job knew it, too.
His “friends” were part of episodic woe, sent down
he knew not why.
Nothing to do.
No one for him to see; no place to go.
But not a ‘leph this yeoman deviates.
Berefted of his children, wracked with pain,
  “God gives,” he says, “and takes away.”
Damn’d straight, until self-pity mildews in his brain.
Then, sinking to self-righteousness & woe,
  he shows us just how low a ‘man can go.






“Okay,” says God, “It’s time that We appear
& straighten out the mess We let be made.
You handled all the trauma, all the fear, the ‘tempts of
  faith, the loans & debts unpaid, the loss of all your
  children.
But, you know, you’re just a piece of dung, a little speck.
And when We hear you cantanate your woe,
We must remind you, man creates his heck.
So don’t succumb to mere self-pity, Job; self-pity is
  presumption, its own woe.
Therefore, before we weigh you down with robes, we
  visit with you now, that you may know.”
“I understand”, said Job, “that I am dust.”
God grants him sons, but not the ones he lost.
Jim's 5th book, Harry's Joy, is now available for $39.95.  Go here to order.