In a hot-wood-oven tabernacle,
a close knit box for the parish swarm,
children are dressed in stocks and shackles,

Sunday suits and dresses worn
and worn out from incessant usage,
stinking and sticking to the wet and warm

pinkly skin, red-blue from abuses,
lessons taught to listen silent.
Blood boils to their eyes like bruised eggs.

They sit in itching fear of violence
on swelling pews in orange steam.
The air is sick, the message is timeless:

"He who hangs above me calls thee,"
quoth the pompous pulpit pawn.
"He who died and rose on dawn three,

"He commands thee, 'Suffer long.'
"Wouldst thou question such an offer?
"Canst thou refuse the blood He's drawn?

"Pay Him back with pain, thou paupers!
Beg for breath and bless each throb."
Bonnie Bleary clutched her coppers.

Three whole pennies she pressed in her palm,
plunked them into the basketed pike
when it reached her lap, 'tween Dad and Mom.

She gleaned disdain from sideways eyes
and tossed to hide her shameful face,
but low places teemed with heads full of spite,

so she mustered some valor and looked up for grace.
And up near the rafters the effigy caught her.
His eyes deep and saddened leapt out across space.

She swore He was calling, "See, fragile daughter?
"See how they chastise my broken facade?
"Hung here for centuries, choked without water,

"They leave me in ruin and call me a god.
"Their gods are their pockets and cottages furnished.
"No god could love men, so for boredom He's gone.

"There is no Elysium, no tortured furnace,
"nothing save solitude, peace in the earth.
"There are no pearl laurels for stalwart nor earnest.

"There's nothing in life left to worship of worth,
"nothing save love--of a child, doe, or man.
"So go, Bonnie Bleary; get out of this church!

And she threw down her Bible and threw up her hands.
"Liars, all liars, life wasters and thieves,"
she cried out and hurled in an epiphanic trance.

"This house is a desert, and God stole the leaves,"
she shook, and she foamed as her face fell agloss.
The deacons arrested her onto her knees.

"Let Him down, damn you all, down from the cross!"
And they dragged her away, by hair and by nape.
"Please, He is suffering. See? We have lost!

"There's no use in keeping Him captured and sacred.
"You've missed the point, twisted His words into crime.
"Let Him go, please, he is suffering and naked."

She wept as they dragged her out, stomping in time
with the hymn now erupting and stifling her noise.
And the old cedar doors hid her sin from the minds

of the good men and wives, and good girls and boys
in the hot wooden chapel that smells like wet wool,
where they're sure to remember an upstart employs

the fork of the Devil as his prying tool.
And those who ask questions in church are the foulest of fools.

02/13/2008

Author's Note: Playing around with terza rima.

Posted on 02/13/2008
Copyright © 2024 Ryan Nardi