Passion Play Poem by Gilbert Ortega

A star was cast in a Hollywood passion play
About the method actor who faithfully portrayed a suicide
And life imitates art in a reel of surreal images
A rarity to be enjoyed on celluloid; black and white red blood.

A star cast in a morality play faked his death on a movie set
He walked off with a mask of Prometheus
Living in a lucid dream silver screen fantasy
They become them, they live in us
Incarnations of light like the angels.

A star was cast in a play of cruelty
The stage was a gauntlet of beating and battering
A spate of spattering drops like rain
A river of guts like Lethe 'round the brain
Preaching revelation like spreading the plague
The methods of cruelty are often vague.

Behind the scenes of a miracle play
The cast knelt down and prayed
And the man on whom the story's based
Listened before taking his place
The spectacle went on with in intricacies of clockwork
And, like a key, it opened doors
The actors played before a sea of smiles and tears
And what they saw, those that sat in awe
Were incarnations of light like the angels.