Golgotha's Day (Iconoclast)
I have laid out funeral robes
I intend to wear for my burial,
when they come to wrap me
in all things I have done
after whipping me raw
with all things I cannot change
… this is my day …
the moment when I will make
storytellers' heads spin
they will tell my fables
and housewives will remember to repeat them by rote
my death will form two millennia
sandals now old
always meant to patch them
never got the chance,
so busy running around, spreading rumors
thin as the hair on my donkey's ass
now they will have to bear me
through the dusty streets
a bent thing, sigh of a man,
promised meat on the bone
so what if I die a man's death?
who will mourn me?
a people, a generation, a tired throng
who will kill again and again in my name
to avenge
one death
just one
mine…
the death chosen for me
this robe is old, too
it is patch-worked, faded, tied to the strands
of my disparate faith…
I'm the iconoclast
I'm the one who tore
the rotted fabric of religion's current
I rocked the boat in shallow river water
just to give a baptism
They may make a golden statue of me, an icon,
something to hang above the crowds and say:
this, this is the generation's sore mouthpiece!
this is the dream, blind meat,
rotted to appease your empty mouth!
There is nothing left to do, I've washed my final toes
by the sodden reeds on mud-lined river
the last cup laid aside, to spurn the wicked
time has come to go, leave this garden
long path to Golgotha
think I'll take it
one step at a time
