Saxophone Cry (Eli Eli Lamma Lamma Sabacthani) Poem by Justin Aptaker

My God!
My teeth are falling out
and the hair that warms my head

the beast is subdued
by the music of unfettered chaos

My God! My God!

why have you
left me here to die alone
in a cosmos cold and uncaring
my screams echo against the sky
reflected back at me
you are ever unanswering

sometimes I just feel
like I am talking to myself
the ceiling is cold
and hard
like your eternal decrees

if you care, why don't you care
enough to say something
anything
to calm the storm
that is raging in my tattered brain

I could cry a river
that runs endlessly to oceans
that the sun could never exhaust
with its persistent radiation

I could bleed my heart out
in the ink that dribbles from this imaginary pen
and then
just when I had started
i'd find myself at the beginning again

Where is your holy Sabboath?
Where is your cursed day of rest?
Today I labor, all in vain
tonight you lay me down to rest

where is the peace of man?
Where is that balm in Gilead?
That I could sate my tongue on one drop of
your holy water
sometimes, you are an oasis within a mirage within an endless river of sand

My God
My God
Death calls
And I
dead and all
as I already am
have no more left to say