in Plate's wash water

floated My Son’s sins

:  innocence, obedience

   allegiance

   and long sufferance

while the chief priests, scribes

and elders

circled round, in a frenzy

smelling

blood in the water, although

‘twas theirs

not His, and yet

not all alone Whose mother

stood outside the praetorium gate

and heard

from he who sitteth in the seat of

Gabbatha, “see ye to it”

the flagellated snap of

the CX whiplashes on Him

bound to the pillar

Who used to succor at my breast

yielded He

His back to be beaten,

His beard to be plucked,

His Mother to seek help from He

Who dispels disgrace

whilst His flinty face shielded He

not from buffets nor from the spitting

so that His blood

be upon them and upon

their children

witnessed, a scourged Jesus (Who

   suffered them, to

   come unto Him) and whose

parents’ bloody deeds

live

long ever after

ecce Verbus!

cloaked in regal purples

garlanded with glorious thorns

spat upon by blinded eyes

smitten with a royal reed

knelt before by unwise men

My Son utters not

an Empyrean Word, of distress

casteth off not

the inconsolate plaited crown

spiked with 3”

Spinae, from Parkinsonia aculeata

:  tissue tearing, scalp flaying,

   fault finding,

   fissure splintering (as if planting

   a cross

   on a skull)

and yet

-- neither their slings

    nor arrows

    can pierce Us –

    not His vellum

    nor My velum --

meant to be

merely chastised, at best

for being Zoroaster the Lesser,

or a false Mazdus, so they said

but

made to be sin without sin

instead; thus

behold,

this is the

Lex of the Jews

lo, verily led a Way

to the canyon of

the Shadow of

Sorrows

toward His

personal holocaust

where He’d succumb to

their scorched earth policy

My Son staggered

neath the load

of the world’s most cruel cross,

smitten by Love; He

evensang

:  Thy will be done, His theme A

to their theme B, My wannabe’s be-

wailed laments, from station-

ary spurned to stationary strickened

for who alone canst

heed the Cyrene call?

Rufus? Alexander? who wilt

lead the Way?

Onely, He

carries His shame

on a lower-case t, crossing

the narrow pathway up

the hill

where they flew a flag

of black

but there He raised,

the One of White  

DDC

and then some

of the massacred innocents lay

in that cold concrete room

on the floor

while the gases cleared, overhead

overheard, the Word, over-

all the Lamentations soldiers smirked

goosestepping back to Herod’s hall

their mighty work just begun

the echoes of the mothers’ cries

:  Rachel runs round about the cities

            weeping

   her clothes rent, ashen mouthed

                         mourning

   hair streaming, eyes screaming

                                       comfortless

   through Bethlehem and all

   the borders thereof til

Herod’s shifting sands from the upper hour-

glass chamber to the lower of

the other, Pilate stands, in place, in

all the H’s shadows . . .

a little off, to the side, in space and time

before My Son

and wonders in his heart,

“who do I say He is”

from Galilee

shall He be

entombed, lie upon

a cold slab too, suffocated there, as

well exhaled, His last gasp

expired

like all the others

:  MMMMMM

and then some