Savior As Icon
You knew how wearing flesh is personal,
Inclusive of our vomit and our kiss,
Inclusive of our meager, pondered love,
Our panic at the vast, impersonal wheel
That grinds our fertile eyes to feed blind roots.
You knew how personal is dangerous;
And yet you put your knowing in our frame,
Your being in our dark, communal fear,
Your holiness inside our pitiful doubt,
Your sacred image in our ravenous minds.
And we consumed you, each one for himself,
As holes of thirsty earth suck in the flood;
We lusted your perfection with our guilt;
We ate raw confidence with starving dreams;
We bowed before uniqueness, seeking us.
We set you on our sacrificial throne,
Replacing Baal’s isolating curse.
We made you idol. We enshrined your face.
We died for visions of your touching hands.
We prayed for pity and–to keep our sins.
We never saw you guidance, path or way,
But icon to appease our dreadful awe;
And when you left the body to return,
We heard, “Wait dead for me until I come.
When I am ready, then you can be whole.”
You knew how personal is dangerous;
And yet you fed the seasons of the worm.
You let us drink your blood like mothers’ milk;
And when your voice was still it raged in heads
So far from heaven in us–like a hell.