The Stone Christ (Prose) Poem by Jeff Hobbs

'Do you know what it's like to die?Sure, people say I died for them and they think of my sacrifice but no-one could comprehend the pain.The nails were nothing compared to the absolute agony of my whole weight haning on my arms.And then that weight slowly moves across my chest, pushing on it and up to my throat.Every breath becomes a total action of concentration.By that stage my arms and legs are so numb I couldn't feel them - all that existed was my burning throat and the huge weight on my chest.Finally my mind hurt so much I forgot to breathe, for an instant everything stopped and I was dead.

And then was the worst part.For an instant there was nothing.I thought perhaps I had been wrong, deluded, misleading, a liar.I wasn't aware of my consciousness - all there was was nothing and I wanted to scream.I had a terrible fear that it would last forever - I was alone in a nothingness so great that it wasn't even black.That instant seemed to last for ages, for half of all time.It's that agony which hurt the most.It's that instant of pain I cannot face.People think 'You did it once, you can do it again.'Nothing can make me face that despair of nothingness again.I'm too weak, lost - my power is in the Spirit now.'

(7 May,1983 - written after reading a short story in Omni Magazine about the day God died and the statues in the Church came to life - the Christ statue being too scared to take on his role.)