Betray
what you will, when
will is free

when arms cast down
a multitude of shadows,
weaving a soul

dancing naked
before the sun.

Away betrays
the warrior, the only
one
still mocking his
conscience, by folly
begotten.

Away, away
you, a heart made of stone
left bitter and coddled
by the soil,
You wear a skin

one
that time
does not remember,
a flesh
tarnished

by the deluge of
pity
before the tempest,
by the bone-white
knuckles
of defiant sands.

Betray
such might, a
might made strong
by forgiveness,

Mercy
lays with judgment
as a child
lays with wonder

And in his wandering, Man
finds himself
lost before two rivers:

one he fears
and one he must
tread,

not knowing
the two are
but streams of saliva,
quickly escaping the
same mouth.

And when the tide
pulls him under,
bleak by satisfaction

and by the wisdom
of mortality,
he whispers softly:

Oh, Mother.

You have such soft eyelids.
I wanted to kiss them,
     I kissed them.
I want to kiss them.

Down the gallows, fiery and cold
the raven does call
in rude awakening for the dead-cow stench
of the pendulum man
strung up, black-naked by yesterday’s vice.

Today I drink milk
from a cancerous breast,
one that does mend a mouth,
but swells the heart also.

Down the gallows, the children do praise
bucolic, bent backward; allegiance
to a broken neck.

And there lies a strange stillness in the air:
the rope-halo has coiled, the serpent eternal,
pulled taut by man’s laws and quick by his fear.

Today, God is laughing
at the newborn’s cry and
today God is laughing
at the folly of his growth,
and the folly of his death.

Here, the parable of the persistent widow
assaults the carcass of tomorrow,
And one has ended
from continuing the deluge,
and Christ crucified, upon Christ for causes
a battle contested
under the root of his tongue:

I have been a multitude of shapes,
before I assumed a consistent form.
I have been a noose, hurried over branches,
and those I call my hands.
I am the man on the limb, I am
judgment applauded and guilt forgotten.

And we hang our flags at half-mast.