Good Friday Poem by Laurence Overmire

Are you were you man or myth?
You died with bloody hands
Our necks outstretched to see you suffer
We nailed our indifference like an edict through your flesh
We laughed at your tears
Your naked body stretched and soiled
For what foul crime have you summoned our wrath
Political pawn or religious zealot
You try to set fire the conscience of men
We who need hunger to stomach the poor
We who lay waste to your Kingdom of fools
Speak you of love in a world kissed with hate
Our sons and our daughters shall kill for your sake
Tear down Jerusalem in a pious Crusade
Shoot bullets in the hearts of Catholic and Jew, Protestant, Muslim
Our race is our creed and color is blind
To the cross of a sword
Your name is a blasphemy on self-righteous lips
Bleed, bleed if man you be
Your daily deaths are nothing new
And soon forgotten
Truth is lost in Golgothic dust
And myths are made to hide the sins
Of those entombed
Roll the stone away and let us see
The light that burns
Within.


(Previously published in Manx Fiction, Dec. '99, Vol.1, No.6)