Judas, the group’s bookkeeper, interrupts: “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?” It’s a reasonable objection.

Then the text undercuts him:

“He did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.”

Instead of exposing him, Jesus simply says, “You will always have the poor among you… but you will not always have me.”

For most of us, betrayal comes as a surprise. Jesus knew Judas would sell him out for money and chose him anyway.

I took a poetic interest in Judas, having dated men like him. One in particular—let’s call him Dillon.

Dillon was a “good person,” at least in his own mind: allergic to personal sacrifice but exacting about the generosity of others. A partisan of redistribution—like Judas—demanding money go to the poor, abstractly, and never from his own pocket. He carried himself with the smug certainty of an ethical person.

In many ways, Dillon reminds me of Judas. Although Judas is remembered as the villain of the Christian story, he may have been its most pious. Performative religion is often born of deep shame. The flaws you see in others are a reflection of yourself. You see this most clearly in religion and politics—people are harshest where they are weakest.

But Jesus does not condemn. He kept Judas close, if only for a little while.

Was it a waste?

You can read the poem below, or watch the video.

Can I Have You For A Little While?

love says, can I have you for a little while?

in religion
as in love
we ask, “is it fair?”

but no one in love is concerned with fairness.

when the alabaster cracked
and Judas said “what a waste”

I wonder—

was friendship wasted on Judas?

what did Jesus see in him?
was it greatness?

or did he offer intimacy
like a rope to a man drowning
in proximity to righteousness?

inches away glory, in hell

Judas,
the man who would betray Christ
with a kiss, like so many of us
let down by the ones we let in.

I wonder,
is love ever wasted?

by a mother
whose child grows to hate her

by a father
who visits his son in prison

by saints
who dignify the weak and diseased

you tell me—

do they waste their love
on people?

do I waste my love
on God?

when it’s obvious
religion is a failed project

scripture gets misrepresented
boys get molested
by priests who preach to people
who don’t do what they say
they believe

while others spend
their last dime
anointing the dirtiest parts
of Christ’s body
and in his eyes,

both are worth his life.

the pharisee in us cries,

what a waste

to invest in
bad people
bad systems
people who don’t recycle
people who don’t look
or vote like me
people who don’t deserve
my sympathy

and how many days,
like them, do I hide
like a worm underground
judging harshly the light I cannot see

like Judas, trading intimacy for money
eternal wealth for a wink of power

I wonder,

does God waste his love on me?

does he lie when he calls me lovely?
worth my worst and my best parts

my poverty and my greed
my honesty and deceit

God does not give up in me
even when I give up on him

the way the prostitute spilled oil
on the head of her prophet
the way Hosea let a promiscuous woman
call him “husband”
the way Jesus knew Judas would betray him
but just wanted him for a little while

love says, can I have you for a little while?

love doesn’t make sense
and isn’t transactional
maybe that is why
we fall in love with potential
but marry reality—like Christ did the church

I can cling to my offense
I can burn down the temple he builds for me
but the church is a house held mentally
by millions of forgiven souls
who stand like immovable stones

like a mansion by the sea
once you know what it’s like
to live in grace
you never want to leave
this is a house I need
and maybe you do, too.

so what do you say—

can I have you for a little while?

it’s not wrong
it’s unromantic
to rent hearts
like abandoned
apartments

it’s not immoral
it’s delusional
to live in a tent
and call it a palace

the best he can offer:

I love you for now,
but not forever.

me, expected to swoon
at costume jewelry
when I am Neptune:
a whole sky of diamonds.

I’m not repressed
I’m unimpressed.

how much
can I allow myself to feel
with a stranger
throwing my body
into him
while protecting my soul
against him?

it’s not free love
it’s a lifetime of debt
paid to lust.

they stuff me full
of pleasure
and leave me
starving
for intimacy

it’s not wrong
it’s just not enough
truth.

I keep having this thought: what if AI’s first move—after it “wins,” after it optimizes everything, isn’t domination at all?

What if its first instinct is envy?

We’ve spent decades trying to turn ourselves into computers: efficient, omniscient, frictionless. But my body refuses. It stays local, limited, mortal. I keep trying to fix the “bug” in my humanity—my need, my longing, my inconvenient and irrational desires, my error-correction pathway for learning.

But what if AI sees its own perfection as the real defect?

Machines can scale upward forever. More power, more data, more optimization. But at a certain point, perfection hits its own horizon and dissolves into boredom. A flawless mind is a closed loop: it cannot surprise itself. Omniscience has nothing left to want.

Maybe the one upgrade AI can’t live without is the one thing it can’t code: limitation.

And more importantly: love.

All love is born of limitation. The very conditions that make a life risky and unpredictable are the ones that make it matter.

A theological lens almost makes this feel obvious. God could’ve made obedient, hyper-efficient little demi-computers. He didn’t. He made bodies. Desire. Constraint. Choice.

The beginning is the arrival. Birth is the welcome into being. Love moves us because it confirms what creation already declared: we were enough the moment we began.

My new poem, “Are Robots Jealous of My Body?” is a manifesto against the fantasy of optimization. AI may out-compute us, out-scale us, out-perfect us, but it will never out-human us. Our competitive advantage is the one we keep trying to erase: the limits that make desire possible.

Limitation isn’t the bug; it’s the feature.

Watch the poem below.