POETRY ABOUT THE CRUCIFIXION FROM 1975

 

You prayed it wouldn't come to this

yet you knew it would

closest friends have their own lives to live and have gone

alone you face this

 

Dried saliva covers your swollen face blindfolded you're knocked down

insane shouting fills your head

The light of dawn tightens your forehead

 

while rope carves away your wrists you stand stripped before them as they beat you

down

bone and jagged metal lash into you

as flesh peels away violently

 

You watch them bowing and reeling before you blinking as blood flows down into your eyes

one of them comes close and rips away much of your beard yanking with it part of your face

 

You carry death.

it grinds into your open back!

you stumble tasting dust rising off the ground

death is cold heaviness crushing -

 

You are a worm, and no man

all they that see you laugh you to scorn they shoot out their lips,

they shake their heads they gaze upon you with their mouths

 

as a ravening and a roaring lion

You lay still upon death as bloody volcanoes of pain erupt from your hands and feet

 

you rise slowly fastened to death to hang upon the sky

death sinks solidly into rock as hands and feet split open

 

You are poured out like water

and all your bones are out of joint your heart melts in the midst of your bowels strength is dried away

your tongue clings to your jaws

 

you are brought into the dusts of death

They stare upon you in astonishment

your face marred more than any man

your body is hardly that of man

 

They see adultery, fornication, filthiness

they see lasciviousness, idolatry, sorcery they see hatred, strife, jealousy, wrath

 

they see envy, murder, rape

they see insolence, pride, mercilessness

they see it on you

 

but they don't see you

 

You die for this

you die for man

you die for love

you die for life

 

you live for life

You prayed it would come to this

yet you knew it would

 

It is finished!

4/2/75