One Honest Foot

 

One Honest Foot

(“For he knew that the chief priests had handed Him over out of envy.” Mark 15:10)

If you would put one honest foot inside my door
I would talk to you all afternoon.
If you would take one open gaze upon my face
We could break bread together; commune.

But your questions are traps, your inquiries snares
for the innocent. You shout for God and Country
and steal grain from the worker ants building the
gardens you claim as your own.

If you would see the crucified three sown on the hill
I would ask you why you washed your hands.
If you could confess the longest darkness at noon
we could find a way to sit in the shade and fill our rooms

With stories he told that you never understood,
with tattered lives walking the floors ankle and barefoot,
with flax now mended, candles now sending
their light after the smoke was nearly extinguished.

How long will your jealousy last, how long your disguises?
How many lives have you changed, what is your legacy?
The Crucified One dies while you despise his glory
(the seeds that fail do not make it into your top 10 list
of opulence or piety.)
Prepare your next podcast, get your presentation ready,
refute the truth that dying lives and humility make the
tulips rise. Call for contributions; we don’t want to see you
without a bird’s nest or fox’s den. We don’t want to see you
without a pillow for your head.

But, if with honest feet you come to seek
a quiet way to become the humanity
you were born to be,
then let’s embrace, and by the grace of sun and
moon and darkness and light
remind each other of the terrible day when
the greatest king laid down his life
for every jealous and envious judge who swore
he knew the difference between royalty and a
friend of whores.

But royalty he is, and was, and ever shall be,
though we still, locked within this chamber of echoes,
expect the nuclear option when
He chose the mud to grow His kingdom whole.