Death from the podium

On Madison Street a girl hugs the street lamp
On Wiseher Street her light dies from the pastor's blowing
A lectern, a thick lectern, a rich lectern
Jesus' voice prisoned inside the chained tome.
Psychology and philosophy strut on a brightly lit podium,
They sing and clap and make a celebration out of Christ

Woe is me, Jesus raised me and my pastor killed me!

On Madison Street our pastor commissions a revival
On Wiseher Street a hall is decorated with clapping, with whistling
He took the voice of Christ and parades in costly ties and a vacant heart
Winged on jets and choppers and the hunger of a fasting Mary:

Tithe, oh tithe, a thousandfold tithe!
God is working and the bowls are filling!

But
Jesus bleeds on inside the ancient tome watching
Mary clap to the crash of her lamp and the silence of her murdered light
To the growth of her penury, and the
Rising cost of her pastor's ties.

in love he died

He scoops and lifts up his handful of vanity
A knee bends, petals wither under Katherina's table
Candies and a box of pain
Solitude, a stifling hug
Solitude of a dancing moth
Evenings thin as folly thickens on the he-brow

Passion crawls down the lifted hand
His heart grows weak, his frame ill
The pate,
His pate quivers as a sparrow beneath a threatening sky
Plastic roses and chocolates and wines,
Pizza, ice-cream - vanilla flavoured,
Stroll on the beach, hands locked, jaws locked
More ice-cream, more plastic, more wines
His pate heats up with pulsing febrility
Kathrina's cavern grumbles loudly from stranded moths
More plastic, more wines, more folly!
And a ring.

A ring?

Blood crawls down his frozen hand
The knee rises from the finished grave
Candies and a box of pain
Astride the distance she watches with her stuffed moths
In his hands rests a remainder of vanity and
love.