Golgotha

He hung above the weepers and cursers, and
from that vantage all the hairy scalps and

faces seemed the same. The sky,
the blue expanse, was infinitely preferable.

He asked where he was,
that this human form had cleaved him, and

as the dark lily of his second flowering
opened, his last hours hovered:

the whips, the furze crown, blood and saliva,
lance and sponge, all floated

through the calm of a Fra Angelico fresco.
He didn't remember much. He remembered

everything, and each memory is now calcified
into an object. He reminded God:

You put me in and took me from the womb.
You chose this body for me; I was yours even in

my mother's belly, and I hoped at the taste of
her milk that the world you made was good.

And he wondered, so this is what it is like
for them, us? To be poured out like water,

the bones undone of their design, tongue stuck
to jaws, heart melted wax in bowels. Dust.

And the nails ascended, and the hammer, too, the sound of it
coming down, over and over, its hard shudder through the body.