poem

 Golgotha

I dreamed of a Calvary of many thieves. Not just the two. Dozens and dozens of manned crosses dotting a skull shaped hill near Jerusalem. This is how it looked from across the valley. The wide angle view, not the sculpted synecdoche we learned from scripture. This was a darkened place of mass suffering. Groans and rasps of the damned suffused the evening air like lambs herded in a slaughterhouse. It wasn’t just two thieves. Everyone there had stolen something. A centurion approached and demanded an explanation for our presence. We came to bear witness, we tried to say, in a language neither of us could decipher. So he lowered his spear and retreated into the rictal grin of the dead land. All around us, faces of anguish and rage and utter exhaustion roiled in the darkness. We were spat at and cursed. To the last of them, all forsaken. We wandered aimlessly through a catalog of the Christ of us. How to begin? Who to mock. Who to comfort. Who to bring water to. Who to kneel and pray before. Who to whisper lies to. Who to simply sit with. Who to read Keats to. Who to caress. Who to help down and who to leave up. How would we ever know? We decided: we would love them all—until the one true masterpiece hidden in a gallery of Boschian counterfeits began to shine.

7/16/24