Living With a Rusty Christ

The clean church Christ

hangs on rusty nails,

dozen-fold years

denied a resurrection,

tied to everlasting

pain and death,

heaven denied,

mortal redemption denied

because the flesh,

existing between hope and despair,

refuses the soul’s release.

The congregation

is dead to peace,

only knowing the scrapping

of their knuckles on the smooth stone-

dead to the light,

seeing only the night,

dead to divine comprehension,

dead to the angels hiding

in their coarse crosses

of common wood.

Outside the lamb

bleats in the snow

wandering unheard

in the wilderness,

fearing slaughter

more than charity,

wandering far from

their muffled mouths,

wandering far from

their questioning,

wandering far from

their sense of things.