martyr

Another day and the meaning is elusive. All the words lined up, birds on a wire, stones in a row. Dust all that is left of the garden, some warnings about the machinations of snakes, fig leaves and another angry thunderer. The precepts of poems and history, laid down between the readings. The vastness travelled always somehow lost in transit. These old bones, this new skin. Stories meant for telling by a camp fire. Their shadows stolen by the fleeing wind.

Their pieties arise as the masonry crumbles, too long persuaded to recognize change as distinct from danger. Too long ruled by principle to realize the presumption was wrong. The sacrifice the only sanctimony needed. The flesh always offered, whatever the ends. Forget the suspension of disbelief. Suspense itself will do.

Hanged by his heel or nailed to a tree, there is grief ground from these aspirations. The story scans the same, whether there are long allusions to yellow bricks or driven along by sharp spoken fiests. You glean the ghost that haunts you, erase all the evidence to the contrary in defense. They honor your accidents unto perpetuity, always quick to sacrifice. They murder you again and again, your blood so eagerly spent. The goat to slaughter while the wolf feeds free.