<hart's "bed of nails">
2003-03-16.12:44 p.m.
Bed of Nails Henry Hart The one they call an imposter Smudges bulls-eyes on his palms With carpenters' chalk, lifts A cross as big as an I-beam To his shoulder. Stumbling Down a bombed-out alley, Adjusting barbed-wire on his brow, He bends to catch a goat's Saliva in a tin cup, sweat Splashing from his eyes. A general prods him with a baton Up a hill shaped like a satellite dish. Glaring into teleprompters, He scoffs at the imposter's love Of enemies, his parables of stones And seeds. White-coated servants Pour tea for journalists pecking laptops And cell phones under a marquee, For lieutenants tamping sand Against the cross with gold shovels. In a concrete apartment below, A mother stops breastfeeding Her son to listen to hammers On bones, a Mercedes sputtering Over gravel, flies thudding on walls. She closes her son's eyelids With her thumbs, sings a lullaby About a gold moon soaring From a bed of nails into a cave Chiseled with the secrets of infinity.
back /& forth /& frosting
names are often sad