Month: April 2015

THREE HUNDRED NINE

poetry

P1140770

Today A Certain Betrayal Ends

 

(Written for and about a former classmate, brutally murdered.)

Chester and Laird

Clean and Unclean Animals. Cleansing of the Leper. Joy Complete

1.   And on the fifteenth day of the twelfth month they heard God say, “You have dominion over the fish in the sea and over the birds in the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every living creature: especially the faggots.”

2.   And it was on this day that the Lord, their God, placed in the hands of his bellicose servant a two dollar and eighty-nine cent utility knife.

3.   And on the first hour of the fifteenth day they entered into the darkened night.  And they came to the spot in the road where they encountered a kind fair skinned young man that walked the earth twenty six years.

4.  They saw he was a trusting man that would not deny a brother’s request.  Their rancor grew even stronger.

5.  And they looked at his appearance and at his stature and at the color of his hair and they rejected him.  And proclaimed, “Neither has the Lord, our God, choosen this one.”

6.  Now it came about that they delivered this first born son, brother of Annamarie, to a secluded lot in the Venice-Ashby part of town.  And they took him that day and did not let him return to the house of his father saying,

7.  “This day we will deliver you up into our hands, and we will strike you down and remove your head from you. And we will give your body this day to the birds of the sky and the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know there is a God.”

8.  And the faithful servant of the Lord looked upon his helper and saw he was wearing a bronze helmet on his head.  And he was clothed with armor which weighed more than five thousand shekels of gold.  And his sanguine spear shone like a lightening bolt on tender skin.

9.   Neither silver coin nor pagan invocation could redeem this diseased man.  And it came to pass that they seized his afflicted chest and his perverted body.  They took  the sword and drew it out of it’s grey sheath and slashed a valley of laggard death into his throat and sacrificed this blemished lamb.

10.  He fell to his knees as they rejoiced, his unlade blood wept into the cold earth.  When the servants saw that he was dying they set fire to his Nova and they fled.

11.   Their jubilation did not cease for within the midst of the burnt offering they saw the face of their God, and behold, a voice out of the heavens saying, “These are my sons, in whom I am well pleased.”

12  You are witness to these things.

 Jo Freehand