Crucifixion Poem by Bernard Kennedy

Three stages- walk, death, burial:
Ignominy, defeat, non-material being.
Perhaps its true that Pasolini says it best,
in The Gospel According to Matthew,
the film according to Pier Paulo.

Walking in subjection to opinion,
manufactured as plasticine,
truth is stalked,
cry guilty from crowd, though Simon of Cyrene
emerges, as forced pathos of Angel.
Pilate washes his hands of Truth.

It still exists this public humiliation,
in public punishments, electric chair, or public
ritual humiliation, visceral. How often do we see this
on our screens. A human need to objectify
our within, to without and bind it safe,
out into desert.

And burial, Aramithea lends a house,
a paupers grave, a homeless one,
a dead refugee on a borrowed shore,
a fence to protect from outsider-electrified,
like farm fields to keep in and keep out,
in our recession thrusted unequal world.

Crucifixion- eviction-recession-
walk-death-burial,
in the age of desire, the age of anxiety,
we objectify,
this holy week ends-
with the story, narrative, reflection,
the perennial human tale.