The following monologues are meant to be read aloud in your best bloody bollocks east end cockney. Also, they incorporate a polyglot slang. They involve the suspect circumstances surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth circa 33AD. Note: kitt(im)=Roman. The author reads selections of his work here,
and VIDEOS OF A LIVE PEFORMANCE are here.

I:     SEVERENUS

 
Let's have a look under those skirts, Jesu. 
                Corporal, accommodate our lord and messiah. 
       “He's packin' but it ain't cordite, Sergeant.
                All nipped and tidy like.
         No wonder Lady Magdala keeps moanin' about the afterlife."
Alright, Nazarene, and let's have no drunk and disorderly.
                 We got our Sumerian friends in there,
      And lads in uniform from Sardinia
What might not take too kindly to your rantings
    About your pappy and his Judean patrimony,
            Not that I fucking much appreciate that shit meself.
They're engineers from Basra, they are, the Sumeez, I mean.
    A curious lot not to be trusted neither,
But on Tiberius's payroll. So mind yourself,
            Or we'll break some heads.
What's that, inn keep? Our little Jesus has taken private rooms.
          Where that lot of homeless kikes get that kind a booty?
             Picking pockets in the market I'll wager.
And I'll wager there's some cut rate cunt coming up the alley.
            What's that bloke, Matthew, bumping his head on the swill bucket
               To greet them? Maybe our little Galilean tax collector
Palmed a couple of denarii out the Emperor's till.
         Well, you enjoy your little party, son a god.
The Procurator's got his eye on you
     For that stunt you pulled in the tetrarch's Temple.
So fly right, pretty boy,
      Or I'll personally escort you up to Skull Hill.

And there he goes, corporal.
     The sad little Jew boy lost to the world.
Though that chippie a his is quite the looker
         For being bred on the streets.
Aside from his horse's sprengel, what's a girl like her,
                All fine turns and fragrant thighs,
            See in a low class operator like him
Who's two steps forward and one back from a
                 Just and thorough hanging?
          I'd toss off the missus in a moment
To put a couple of volleys i' that. Sell me two slaves too.
         I wager I don't need the Sybils to suppose
  She might be free to gaze upon my Gaelic prick
         In the not too distant future seein's
How Tiberius no longer pays us foreign contractors in species.
       Oh, we got the procurator's gymnasiums and theaters but
               On derby days we're detailed to break heads and maintain order,
                       Not to bet a promising philly,
               So's a fella's gotta make his own fun.
And that whore's just the ticket to wipe the frown off my face
             After as duty demands I first drive me pilum
                    Through that little pecker head.
  


II:      SEVERENUS  

 
Germanicus promised us land
               And that got me X.
    But we chased Arminius heel and hoof 
                      Out the Rhine---
     To avenge Teutoburg, so he said,
And buried Roman corpses for two weeks.
           Sweetened the coursin' with a bounty,
                  But we grunts knew it was to break contract and
 Make us serve our full 20 in the bargain. That was back in 16
       And here I am 17 years later and
Frankly, fuck the back forty.
                 I'd settle for a good bath
     And a pair of sweet young lips wrapped around me pilum.
           Been up to Hammat Gader, you lot?
           Nah, from the stench of ya, likes not
Nice up there, some dark skinned Nubian boy
                        Toweling you off,
     Not that the accommodations hereabouts are bad,
Most months there's a full ration
      Even with the Senatus and the negotiatories stealing half. 
                At least Sejenus was a bottom up thief. 
Where are you lads from? "Cappadocia, Sir."
            Cappafuckin'docia? Why what's that, 8 by ass? 12 for a waltz?
                  And me halfway around the world from me father's grave.
You two been tapped by the speculatores before? 
            "Yes sir. Twice, Sir."
          Ever worked Golgotha?
            "No Sir. Nor Skull Hill, neither."
                 Hmmm. Not the shine on the penny, are we?
Well then, the two Siciliano, Enzo and Carlo,
            Have been detailed to me before.
                       We'll be three short a squad so
       Let them work the crosses.
You keep the blubbering families at a distance,
            And keep an eye out no thief run off with the rope or basket a nails.
             And it's my detail, so it's my dice.
If your good boys I'll stand you to a couple of pints
           And watch you piss at the stars
                      Or piss on Venus if such is your whim.
Enzo is Nero's own demon with the nails,
           A carpenter by trade, built barges at Stifone.
So's he knows how the spikes is put in just right
           Does my little hair lip anatomist
               As I witnessed avengin' our brave, dead lads at Teutoburg.

Teutoburg. How alien the sound a that?
           The Cheruscans and Bructerians. What were they to me?
Or these two big eared Cappies the speculatore's assigned?
                    Six years hence and three legions buried.
      For once, 'All men moved to deep commiseration'
And, universal solemnity, I suppose,
                    Seeins' as the general calamities of war hit us flush,
Some 20,000 dead and all,
     And the condition of humanity.'
Not comrade or kinsmen discernable,
                     Some succumbed to hysteria's forensics
    And held skulls aforesaid and
          Passed on condolences.
But all as friends and relations mourned
         With our vengeful mocking and cursing of Arminius.
The shallow foss and field of whitening bones
          Of men and horses,
                     Silent under the shining menses.
          Firelight glancing off the shards of javelins.
                      Skulls fixed upon tree trunks,
               Gratefully keeping their silence.
And those having escaped captivity and the sword
         Related the particulars.
         'Here the commanders of the legion were slain;
               There we lost the eagles.
Here Varus was first wounded.
         There he gave himself another,
           And died by his own hand.
And on that spot Arminius ranted,
           How many gibbets he erected.
What trenches he dug. And the bastard mocked our colors.
         And that's the way the historians told it back to me.
Truth be told, against me given nature,
      In all my service to Rome, by blood rite,
    I sought more tenderness among men than women, 
                         And received no gentle coition from the state,
    All credit accrued to whatever periwinkle's on the throne.
No matter what the ration.
No matter what barbarian I teach to discern
           A proconsul from a Parthian or
                     To spot a legionnaire from any other object in the universe.
That's all. Hang a bunch of rebels and shamans and thieves,
       That's me job. And later booty paid and
  A surcharge collected from the family
      For the detail's service to the empire,
And it's in the cups to toast and blubber
                                     And of Fortune a sweet fuck, one hopes."



III:      Enzo
 





That poor daft beggar.
          'Which one?' The Nazarene.
Back in Rhegium we'fe herbs for what ailed that boy:
                 Monks pepper with honeyed wine.
     A firm hand the imperium holds out to these messiahs,
Hitched up like butcher's offal wif thieves and cutthroats
     Not dangerous by the half to the unpracticed eye
But that we have the procurator in his infinite wisdom
     To alert us to slinking sedition
     Lest a zealot cut a throat
              Whilst a citizen buys plums in the market. 
    Don't like to do women though.
  Even so that Nazarene's whore's a bit of a looker, I'd say.
Dirty but ain't they all in these parts. And that cold stare she gave Sev
     What dispatched her beau.
Looked like the curse of death.
     He froze like a fucking Etruscan bronze,
Looked like he'd seen the Medusa at privy
         While from the tip of his pilum
The boy's blood burst
      Bright red stars in the dust.
            Then that squall what blew up her skirts,
     And the old man for all his talk
Wouldn't or couldn't look,
  And she was built as advertised, but
The killing put me off me wood.
            Phineas, our hulking Dacian, had just put the dice to
The Nazarene's rags when Praise Jove! That storm
     Got us off that fucking hill and
               Under a dry roof with a good, hot meal.
Now that's a fucking god a bloke can get behind.
            So's our Nazarene made peace with our deific diadem, he did.
Sorely sufferin', he mustered a scream
                      'Father, why you fuckin' givin' up on me?'
      As best my Aramaic could attest. 
              He tossed his eyes up and cast about
Saw but Jove there in the weathery bluster
             For the Jew god is too plenary for such parlor tricks
Having slew the Eqypts what our would-be immortals,
                    Merely stoop to fuck,
        Dis alite visum.
And another yelp, a blubbering whimper,
               And the death rattle. 




IV:      HEROD ANTIPAS
 
Shut the fuck up about the Nazarene, Hypatos!
                And listena me toast what you damned spat in
         Wif mention of that gentleman. 
A carpenter so it's a fuckin' tree a life is it.
         And if a stone mason
                 Mount Olympos all nymphed up, no doubt?
Or a potter, the world a fuckin' kiln?
         Or a snake charmer sedatin' the uroboros?
This rebbi on the planks,
                His blood's not on me.
          I've been to Rome and know
                 The Palatine's catenate,
                          What's the soul a trade.
So's I expect by this hangin'
                 Pilato has given expression to some covert desire.
          All cack 'round that tart Salome.
Me dispatch a the Baptist
                  Was trifling with the tetrarch's domestic bliss.
          What concern of mine messiahs and prophets
                  But ridicule for these charlatans
Caterwauling under the walls a Sepphoris and Tiberias
                      What I built,
           Happy for the shade from the procurator's light
As it's Rome's jackboot what stirs maenads
           And ignorant that this rebbi good and hanged rose
                       As that dunker was once falsely wont.
Now, me pop, he fuckin' outlasted Caesar,
            Cassius, Antony and Octavian
Whooped the Hasmoneans and 
                       Woulda fed the Nazarene's flesh to the fuckin' pigs
            Milled the rebbi's bones to bread
                 And boiled his blood to a fruity shiraz, 
As from him Herodian does arise and the Temple, Masada,
                 Maritima, good roads and baths ad nauseam.
'Sides one can read in the pulps
                         And know Zalmoxis rose after three years,
                 A stunt what shames the rebbis long weekend,
          And Pythagoras and Rhampsinitus
                Who shot craps in Hades with Demeter.
And Orpheus… and Protesilaus… and Heracles and Theseus
        That as torn to pieces by dogs
                Lose out in the tellin' a Maenads
Better passion than sore instinct for good tales
                     At pot or podium.
And what about the Law, the rebbi bein' clear a Jew
         While I of Emon more firm to the letter?
                   How break away yet cite Tanakh
When he but neglects the Law and despise
         And put us innocent in his filth
                   What the kitts test. 
Putting the dead dunker on me
         And now I hear the rabble his disciple
What could a been Pilate's thought all along
                  Come straight from Rome and ghost a Sejanus.
Some slanderous offence
         A me good fortune
             If not me father's lack a regard.
         What murdered wives and siblings,
                 Heirs drowned like cats
         And tacked up more pious rebbis than the Nazarene, I'll wager.
No, not my concern to dispose when
         At least Antioch or better the Principate
Be the worm in their stool.
                   I'd straight ask that smart mouf fuckin' rebbi,
              Who's the fox now?
Where's his stinkin' pelt?
         To tolerate these low life fucks
               What want rule on their word
From what can take a kingdom and  carry it.
         To defraud me person to compete with vagrants
                What ignorant canon?
        What delusion?
Me a fucking tetrarch, world traveler and architect.
                Short of king being reserved for Archelaus
What was took down by Augustus
                For prick he was to his people.
Blame him for some tramps murder
         As the rolls be not want!
        

Ragged Galilee and Perea me sole patrimony
        And the misfortune a those what walk it.
           Nothin' but fealty to the loony, old sot
        What me brother Antipater rushed to poison.
And steady reign these 37 years in me dad's memory.
        I apologize to me guests
                 For this in intent be but a toast
And am mortally grieved such good wine chases after
                 Such wretched swine.
But fuck 'em! Fuck 'em what don't know good rule
         At 200 talents a year and a bargain a the public weal.
Sepphoris, Macherus, and Livias and Tiberius
                 Just to snuggle a bit a Roman bottom,
         No offense Lucius.
I'll end me ablution
            With no more rancor
         Lest our wine grow bitter with the past. 




V:      DIDYMUS JUDA THOMAS
 
If I tell you my doubt was warrant
         How will I be fed?
If I tell you Yeshua  was me twin
         How will you say he does not live in me?
Joseph knew father and mother
         So be cursed a child of a whore.
But of Vestali and Mars seems me twin and I;
         This brute Panthera and me ma Miri.
As Aunt Sal, what coaxed us forth to light,
            Shout down me bruvver
'Who are you mister?
            Climbin' on me couch and gorgin' me vittles
As if you owned the fuckin' joint.
           Granted the things of your father, you say?
Don't fuck with me boy.
           Your ma's ravin a one not born by bitch and billy,
Believe me that ain't your daddy
                   As pray some Maccabee one day have his head.'
But Aunt Sal see her sis crazy to hide her Roman frat
       And despair of her kitt litter
What bore to drown and sack the whole brood,
            And Yeshua predilect,
And I the eidolon of Jesus
               And he to die to outshine me
Not by me own hand yet to found a kingdom
         From the bowels a kitt fable.
Tore to pieces a lion wif his bare hands
               Did this giant Panthera,
What blood of lion me twin found circumstance
         In bof bein' devoured  and eatin' thereof.
We commune and thus coin flows.
              What was not to teach was well aimed beside.
          Patch a wall to make a plot.
              Motion and rest. Rest and motion.
Death well-rehearsed assures the kingdom.
          And the sight of me to throw all in doubt
As I brief made thrall as me twin,
          And sealed him manifest as resurrect
For who, played the fool, so affirming herself
              Seeks a wound
Or one so far invested points one up. 

Dens and nests and we but a stone to lie under.
So hard and pained not born a Caesar,
            Was Yeshsuah, that he claimed neither womb
Nor what rose in the human heart
             But a father to father in one burst
Like an Attic megraine from bangin' nails at Sepphoris
         Full exotic and ripe for novel disposition.
While trades but build stables for kings
         That delusion counts for messiah,
A virgin birth me ma panicked
                And once that, twin and shadow.
Shadow wide a sundown
          For I likes me ruggelah and babka
                 And with not no speakin' part.
But still see our goat torn by lions
                Yet our goat appear
And thus Magdala's shrewd edge,
          What said 'On the day when you were one,
You became two.
          But when two, what will you do?'
Emptied tomb and this concoct as I stood in mist and light
                But twice before fever and bogey swirl
            And thus it birthed nog a many,
And many vie from boy and twin
            And lied what we stood about five clay doves
Knowin' what true pigeons be. 




VI:      Pontius Pilate

 
A dozen graves robbed this week alone!
    What? Are my granaries empty
That these Jews now turn to gobbling their dead?
    The city teeming with messiahs
On both sides of the speculatore's ledger.
     A dozen bodies not recovered
And rumors racing through the shanties,
     Some offering themselves up for crucifixion
That they might too taste eternal life.
        Such pompous and desperate shite
To equate themselves with a god,
                  Even to equate their man with one.
            Of course, if the tetrarch suggests we put 
                              The balance of his men under arms, 
                                         We'll know the game.
     The corpses of the two Zealots,
What do the Jews call them, biryonim, have been recovered,
      At least I'm given to understand.
And this Barabbas that crawled away from eight pugio
                   Not intractable but perhaps more the threat upon appearance.
And this situation with the Nazarene remains prickly.
           Fraud for certain, but appropriations for Judea this Julian
Cannot bear outlays for a thousand more executions
     Or I'd give them all their desire.
Hang the whole messianic lot of 'em
                  Two to a fuckin' cross what our purse warrants.
      That coy little son of god imposter--
          'If you say so,' he smirks under his breath.
'It is as you say.' Clever rube.
      Then it turns out he's working this Levi, and Zacchaeus,
          Using my tax collectors to fund rebellion.
And with another, this Matthew, in his ranks.
     The whole lot probably in league with the Sicarii;
Who cut the throats of the lads detailed to guard the tomb,
      The Jews feasting on their bodies like wild beasts
Pitching the remains into Tribute Gully for the dogs.           

That's how I see it in my mind's eye.
Still, I want to say to Rome 'nuisance' not threat
         Though I sense the latter. 
I wager the Nazarene and
        Jesus Barabbas in cahoots.
                Note that in my report.
 No scratch that.
                Sejanus has taken a tumble and
 Any twaddle about conspiracies is
                License my enemies conspire against me.
But one of those Nazarene thugs, Matthew, the tax collector
                    Is yet another embezzler, I warrant,
     Maybe in league with those who counterfeited the procurator's coin,
A source of the bribes and financing
       For the cults movements these past three years.
No doubt he'll squeal accepted practice under Caesar's law.
              Note that and arrest made and justice dealt.
I wonder if the Antipas has any insights,
     Though the Sadducees can't keep their fucking dead buried
Anymore than a Gaul can keep his prick in his tunic.
            I can't have old women and every Judean nancy tripping
Over the Jew boy's ghost
            At the term of every cave and alley way.
As for the men detailed to the tomb.
      "That was Sergeant Severenus' detail."
         Severenus, by Jove, that gunny goes back before the wheel.
Stationed under my uncle at Teutoburg.
    More than likely gave some of my kinsmen a proper burial, that lot.
But took the imperial promise of land grants too much to heart
      Like some hayseed out of Works and Days.
       'There is not one kind of Strife alone,
       But all over the earth there are two.
       One fosters evil war and harsh battle cruel
       The other settles in the roots of the earth,
                                      Far gentler in her rule.'
Poor beggar. Did the full 20 and more
      Only to come to merit a flaming sagum.
              To be burned alive as duty
And failure to perform that duty demands.
      Court martialed
    With but the dogs to resurrect his body. 
                           Or perhaps I'll throw out the manual and
Crucify him on Skull Hill face to face with the detail he was assigned,
           Providing we can find their giblets.
He can bark his sergeant's seminar
         On how empires go sour. How's that bilge go-- "[M]aniple by maniple"
         As though apes could strut the Plautine ludi.
It pains me some does Severenus. Loyal generally.
    Trustworthy to a fault, this fuck up being said fault.
              And of course dumb as Pontine mud.
       It says the inn keep reported Severenus stood his men drinks
After completing a speculatore's detail on Skull Hill,
                     And then shared a Fish Gate bar girl.
"Yes Sir. After ten crucifixions, including 3 women, a detail expects a bit a relief.
     And after Private Enzo tacked up the Nazarene,
The weather went south to boot and they sought shelter."
          No fucking excuses Captain for this lot
          Unless you too find Golgotha
Or a lighted torch hovering about the hem of
                      Your oil soaked skivvies to your liking.
So the young Cappies and the Dacian detailed to guard the tomb, dead drunk,
     And/or had their throats slit and their bodies dragged off
To make it look like they fled all agog at this risen ghoul.
     And all the while the Sergeant in his cups
With his two Sicilian paisan, this Enzo and Carlo,
      Dreaming of capon and scented Pelerium pud outside the cemetery gate.
"That's the way it looks, Sir." Keep Sergeant Severenus under lock and key
                   Until you get orders from me.
     For his service in life has bearing on the way
The empire will serve up him up to the gods this day. 




VII:      YOSEF BAR KAYAFA (CAIAPHAS)

 
The Temple Guard to proxy a Roman detail--- agreed.
     But this Nazarene received at the Temple
                After sundown during Pesach…Bah!
After my condemnation of this, Yeshsuah's pranks on Sabbath.
           What feint by Pilate to shift onus
And call to doubt the Temple's purity
                      And of the eight days?
If our little corner of Empire has become too inchoate for Rome
           Let Caesar dismount and remove the burr.
If the Temple Mount be too perplexing
           Let the procurator entreat his idols at Caesarea.
If it discomfits Pilato to see his guard spat upon
                 Let him withdraw beyond the arc of the people's rage.
If he wants to hook and gut our messiahs so be it
          Lest they school his hydra.
                 It's our fuckin' deliverance we celebrate for god's sake.
I never looked upon this Yeshsuah, it past sundown Shabbat,
                 Nor Annas still earnest in his duty,
            Nor weeks in advance.  
And ordered Isham to the procurator
                Malchus bleeding from the ear and
          Lest Jesu's henchman lurking by kill me
As report by Malchi's sister.
          Sent word to Pilato
                 To forestall the corruption of our deliverance.
          There's no Temple in this murder;
The Nazarene obliged the law
                 And comity with the priests
          As best could his defects.
Tossed a few tables along the skirt of the Temple
          As with Isaiah, Hosea, Jeremiah
                Sacrifice less held
And tax collapses behind well-meaning charity
          And obedience, kindness, justice and morality;
               The Mount 200 stadia in which a tantrum but bleats,
Nor arrest nor sign of threat to kitt control.
        But that fucking hypocrite, washing his hands,
                 Where but one execution by the Sanhedrin,
Yet thousands by our procurator
               That we now import tradesmen
Only to be led to slaughter
              And the people want for tunics and pots.
And thus Rome consumes us like a furnace
                 And we become molten and easily worked.
What sadism that Pilato would take the most innocuous
       And kill and clear this message to every common corner
That any nobody might be plucked at whim and hanged.
          That the temple might slander itself to appease the Roman cohort!
That Antioch does not prize my stewardship.
           And what that I feared the Nazarene's gang
As to kill him thus blunt them as they fled,
           Or thumped and scourged at Temple
Our skinny rebbi become Samson.
           Or what I might know or fear of imaginary temples
Rather than the rash claim to finance a second
           With the stolen gold of aged widows.
Leave the holy out of tussles for empire.
       To stir the people is to smear shit upon heaven.
To instruct them is to make a deliverance
            As flesh can but fancy a paradise.
That's my franchise. So let Rome chase
            Ghosts of its own creation,
And rumor rage through the shanties
                    Swifter than a procession baring the corpus dilecti.
           Pilato outmaneuvered by a miller's daughter
And a gang of publicans and fishmongers
           And their counterattack from beyond the grave.
The second coming armed with whatever lurks beyond the veil
           And has its full belly of Roman gods
And their earthly puppets.




VIII:      SEVERENUS

 
So this is what's its come to.
      Two men shy a squad.
Three a them from backwaters
      Not yet with scabs on their sacks
Posting up darkies all day under a broiling solis
      Hanging out waiting for the Nazarene to give it up
With a bit of help from me pilum,
         Him looking all ghastly in his crown. 
        And just then a storm blows off Galilee.
A sign it's time for some chow with the Sicilians,
         And the big Dacian and the stinking Cappies.
Seein' how's we saw the messiah to his new accommodations
        At the direction of our esteemed speculatore.
      How's I to know there was fraud afoot
    --Our newly dead messiah bein' all peace this, love that.
           Then would have his assassins off me men
And his body spirited away?
                   I guess no optio for yours truly, Gaviolus.
Nor evocati neither though, praise Hermes, I could use the fuckin' money.
                   Plus a reduction in rank for all that.
And the missus will be cut out too
   For this fuck up, no doubt.
             Pilato, Tibi, Germanicus. The fucking Imperium owes me.
I buried Rome's bleached bones and kinsmen
                   And avenged Teuteborg.
  And I foreswore a land grant to serve Tiberius.
I can tell a tale or two of valor,
                  Though fuck if I'd take one for the emperor--
Or Germanicus. I'm talking valor, terror holding off death,
      For what's the procurator, or the emperor for that matter,
            Next to death.
Once you're plunged into that mare even the Frisicum
              Seems a warm bath
  As bathed from within by hot blood you are.
              Slash, jab. Shield, parry. Slash, jab.
    The mob thins out, flight, death, wound, exhaustion, madness, shock-
           One's too spent to give a Gaelic turd.
    The field grows dark and quiet but for the shrieks and moans, 
                      Less fumbling to the dying's dispatch
             In that caterwauling moonlight.
And I can't say I didn't like it--killing.
      Where else could the red-blooded son of a smithie
Take the blade pretty and deep under license from the gods and empire,
                So we reasoned. I know my time has come.
                              I feel death near.
      I can thump me breast and boast I've had me run.
        But swagger and past pride will not dispel the fear.
Rome is finished.
    Outwitted by a pack of ambitious Jew dogs,
Willing to suicide their prophets that their empire might bloom.
               Gaviolus, tell them to spare no expense.
   Send me body home to Brutii. Don't just stare.
It's Severenus. We drank, fucked,
       Cast knucks,
                  Served wif honor.
Round up your daughters and slaves.
             I'll pay them to weep for me.
Wake up Pluto by their shrieks and cries,
             I come outflanked by those,
Those who are determined through the lightless
             Seam of their bony pecks pressed to the wall of lifeless stone,
            Those who possess nothing
  And have never known loss for want of something to lose.
I performed my duty, jigged to the ditties of Tullius Cicero
       And mouthed the one sided oaths on the Palatine silex. Rome.
That Rome will not slowly erode
     Unto the scraping moon's protracted day. The twins, my liege,
Will be cut away like a lanced boil by those who despise them,
        Which is to say
Cut away by the manifest empire itself.
              This engine of ginned homology and hatred.
This folly to inbreed the world.




XIX:      GAVIOLUS
 
Severenus, you ever fancy why us warrior types
      Equate our weapons with our phallae.
Nah, me neither. Not really.
  However, a limb's more a limb
  When there's fear a losing it,
So mostly it's jest to stave Timor's tremors.
     Mars' sop to make any hick plebe feel witty.
          Like he's Lucretius weighing out Nature
          One t'the other
   Each with extension in space in common
Mimicking the other in some things and
                               At disputation otherwise.
Holding hence his pilum,
          The stick a death, the other the stick a life.
One open at the eye, opened to the possibility of birth.
      The other closed to that possibility
Smithied shut to an abstraction, point to void.
          Passes the time thinkin' on the like
Stuck down here underground all day, watching the likes a you quake
           And gag into your own cess
       Before you go off to the circus or Skull Hill.
 Thinkin' on such I feel clever,
          Like a poet. Like Petronius.
Puts me in mind of them actors at the Pulpitum
       And their dick jokes, 
Get a private little chuckle thinkin' how's us
      Law and order types go around with
This extra appendage always at the ready.
               Always engorged. Steel more at the ready
                        Than flesh. Death more vigilant, more dogged than life.
The final victor. Colder, worn down by its own employ,
               Like a cup of hot wine left on the sill.
That's what we're engaged in, this empire, this day;
               Sapping the life from the world with our cold steel.
Putting the world down like a wounded horse.
               An empire's like a breeder what puts
All his stock into one seed.
               I know. I'm rambling. Bored in this blackness.
And you with more important things on your mind.
      But that's me point.
You've come to your place in the august order.
          Now us mortals know about Severenus. Know what Jove knew.
       Your limp body like a sandbag,
And all this death a berm for the cold stars
    That project the gods. Don't fret this life.
       And don't dwell on what might have been.
Within order's perfection we all fuck up
    Perfection, calculation, precision is a sign of decline 
So your dust up with the Jew cult
           Rubbed a little heat against oblivion.
See what I learned from that Sybilline poet we burned last equinox;
           Last Feast Day of the Infanticide
Though I'm certain that's not how it rattles around
        In the collective memory of our kike charges.
Them Greeks are a real skull fuck.
     Six years in Athens and
             See how I went native.
   Taken up the technical aspect of the problem.
               The clean, the clinical, the liturgical,
Here to calm an old comrade.
     Like I calmed the lads under the hack saw at Teuteborg,
'Listen son. This'll only sting a bit.
          Think of pussy, or your mum, Or your mum's pussy' And when they'd 
   laugh, 'Hold tight sergeant'
      And I'd cut. Trepanned steady as she goes.
      Boozed up too.
But many a boy could count to five when I got through,
         And that'd be a good bit higher than some goin' in.
           Fuck Rome. Rome is just a pale show
      From whence us bits and parts were made to go.
         From your recent cameo at the proscenium
To the pulpitum to the aulaeum tollitur
    You have progressed
One's night's march
   To the empire of harmonious lassitude
Where the stones fit as one.
                     Got word my dear Sylvana
    Died back in Rhegium, bit by a viper.
So's I took me a little bitch from Bethlehem
        What can cook
Such that I now sprout these rings of Saturn.
                   My eldest son, Ace, I heard
           Was killed at the edge of the world
Not a full year in the ranks,
                   Head stoved in by a naked blue man
With his pecker hanging out
                   Or that's the telling.
     Dead washed up against the Ouroboros.
A hop, skip and a jump from Avernus.
              He was a fuzzy headed little Republican, Ace was,
And for more than cheek probably got what he deserved.
              For first delusion determines the last.




X:      SIMON GAMALA

 
You tell that fucking whore I want me money.
          I got the whole Tenth Fretensis
Chasing me and her corpse,
      Lest that batty berk think Pilate fell
            For that 'He has risen! Hosanna!' shite.
    And don't think me people didn't spot Matthew and Zacchaeus
Hightailing it out a town.
      And that slow fucker, Peter, the fisherman, padding his catch
By sinking bodies in the Galilee.
        Feeding the fish with kitts me own knife filleted. 
Contracted with that fat bloke
         Until the arse dumped a stiff into the Dead Sea.
Ain't no body gonna sink in the Dead Sea. Am I right?
       I hear he copped out on your dead rebbi too. 
So's what's it to him to turn on me
         For his thirty pieces.
Us Sicarii' bide an oath,
      "Call no one Lord except God,
Especially not some skinny Nazarene kike.
         Even if tortured or killed by some Roman
Or his fucking Jew collaborators."
                And you tell Magdalene if that fat sot
Ever pulls a shiv on me again, I'll knock his neck a grin
                His soul will never forget.
Practically bitched the whole operation.
                And tell her from the son of Judas Gamala, no money, no body
          And no more common sire shit between me and the Nazarene
                 Trying to undercut our deal with blood tales.
Tell her she's got 24 hours or I'm gonna sell her messiah up the silk road
          As a carny attraction.
'Come see the son a god. Swear to the same.
     Two shekels or a sheep's ass.'
Tell her for a couple of hundred extra I'll dispose a the body meself,
      And we can all just walk away.
The stiff's hot now irregard whoever mother's son.
              Worse than when he was alive,
                        Cause of this springin' up and goin' forth shite
Tagged to a simple body snatch.
             The bitch could a told me this was the way
              They was gonna play it.
My rates go up when there's a lingering fraud involved.
       And these meshuga crones throwing themselves on the ground,
Tearing at their garments, screamin' and cryin' 'I saw him.'
       'He anointed me twat.
He come to me at me chamber pot and butt fucked me!'
        All the while I've got the stiff
   Here stinkin' up me root cellar,
             Pilate's dicks taking affidavits from every loon
                  What wants their name in the papers
    And the Fretensis shaking down me lads. Fuck.
Tell her to track down Matty
          And bring me me money before my people
Ferret him out and take it from him--
          With a healthy bonus for our trouble. 




XI:      GATIAN

 
    Fuck. There's got to be a new god in the offing
Who'll lend his name to cursing this detail.
   I didn't sign on to spend my day listening
                      To hysterical of old hags.
What ain't in on the joke. And that ass, Atilius.
                        Blew our best lead.
  This Simon Peter, the one mug we could have sweated
That would have put an end to this nonsense.
                  Shoulda picked up the fella for questioning
          Seeins how he cut the ear of one of  Pilate's Datian grunts.
And a witness saw him dump a body in the Dead just last full Moon
                   Full moon, mind you. In the salt.
He disposin' of a body or makin' jerky.
         Not the brightest candle in the offertory.
A few in the crowd fingered him
         As a bad boy yardie and
        An accomplice to this Jesus fellow.
But Atilius looking to a warm bath,  cut fat prick loose.
          The damage is already done.
      These folks is desperate,
           To nourish at any bish.
Its days like these. Hot. Sweat trickling down me ass crack,
   The brass attacking from the other direction,
Makes me wish I stayed at the duty office
        Cutting the odd sack of wheat for Damascus shivs
Or the odd purse.
      Palming the odd denari
To stand an odd fuck or favor.
         Been in the fucking Fretensis five years
And I haven't seen a day's action.
      You seen any fucking action?
   Might as well be scribbling wine manifests
As much as scribbling the gibberish of these loons.
             What can these poor beggars do?
         Desperate enough to think some scrawny kid from the boonies
Is their god or the son of their god?
      Who the fuck is crazy enough to die for a Caesar in the flesh
         Much less a Caesar abstractus
Whose bivouacked his forces in an afterlife
            And squirrels his fortune in the clouds.
    And yet it ain't no show for sham and shine like back in Rome.
From the pathology,
    If I may borrow that Greek gen,
From the pathology I'd say this credulous mess
           Has fallen hard for this shite about rising from the dead,
Stavin' off  how it does what
      Daily faces them square.
Nothing quite like imperial humiliation
                        To take the spunk outta most and the put the spark in a few.
        Far's I can tell they're all daft,
        And been so, 
                    Long before Romulus knocked the bitches titty 
        Outta Remus's mouth.
You know they fried Severenus this morning.
        Soaked his cloak in oil,
Draped it over his bald pate and lit him up.
       That ain't in the manual mind you. 
And Carlo, they cut off his nose and ears,
          Ripped out his tongue,
        And left him naked in the market.
Hair lip Enzo's at large, escaped the fustuarium.
       Banished by now more than like. 
One fuck up and you're hunted like
      A Greek slave with the ass a Venus and the prick of Apollo. 
Though them Sicilians are a bad lot of mongrel scrap.
     No sign of the Dacian or the Cappies. Presumed dead.
And like I said Severenus burned alive.
            Old school,Severenus. But not a bad guy.
And bad at cards. So good to know.
            Rough on the locals.
     No tears shed for him in the Sheep's Gate.
Nor the Watergate neither.
      A fearsome little bugger
Without a brain in his head.
                       His original gone to souse.
A dumb prick model soldier.
             Like he lacked a limb, hobbled by some past buff from Pluto,
Like his brain needed
            Portage to every conclusion. 
The Imperial army, one big cripple hospital
     That calls to the weak and furtive,
Poured to a casting and beaten out.
             The empire, the fucking empire, superior,
                Simply by superior force of arms
Of which Severenus laid claim as a cock's meat exemplar.
     Best pilum, therefore best circus,
                             Best music and best toilets,
                  The latter finding my ass gleaming with adulation.
And if you didn't want to enrage
            That beet red blister on a gristle stump,
              You better but let his drunk ass ramble.
How his lorica held, every link, at Teutoburg
         Never once mentioning it was smithied in Gaul.
Or mounted ballistas would
                     Never supplant the phalanx or the trench
Or the offal dumped in it.
          Yet his wife, her calm forbearance,
A bit mopsie but a lovely woman.
        Priscilla? No, Prisca. Yes, Prisca 
Always had a crust of bread and cheese
         To serve up. She'll have to make do now.
      Sell those slaves old Sev would invite us to mount
            Manners proxy for custom
With us Romans so distant from the Latium springs.
    And the evening started out polite like
With foot washing
            And inquiries of the missus about her boy
Apprenticed to a stone carver in Antioch, I think.
      Severenus, listening intently, a vague, moist smile upon his lips.
          Not yet in his cups.
But the grousing gathering behind his brow
    Like the clouds of Jove hisself.
Then 'GODDAMN ANTHONY AND HIS NIGGER WIFE.'
          Full gale and me splitting me sides
His color regal with rage.
   Veins like little eels on the frons.
And the tale about the steam siege at Vetera,
                        Its nostrils shooting hot vapor like a tea pot,
       The mouth hurling scraps of molten iron
Before a red flame like a dragon.
    And Sev's tiny little head like a siege stone,
His nostrils working like Pluto's bellows,
       Mouth sputtering a frothy cannonade into me plum stew.
Or. Or? Or! The norse people,
           Hair the color of straw like Bacchus
       And the women seven feet tall.
And our guffaws would ignite
           But what gasket could hold our howling?
Then, whoa Sevi. Don't strike the missus. The slaves takin' shelter.
         We're just having a bit a fun.
Haven't got one of them Amazons
          In your cupboard b'any chance, Sevi?
He'd take a swing like a ballista
         Pulling at its moorings.
Fall dead drunk in a heap.
     Now, he's gone that little mud brick.
No doubt already replaced.
             Washed out of the great wall,
             For which the Basques named us all.
From the firm agger to the tall vallum, we are the wall.
      True as far as it goes.
    And not a cosmopolitan lot, not taught b'some Greek nancy, 
                 We face out at what we do not know
         Our backsides to our betters.
There's always going to be thieves and malcontents,
     And we can deal with that,
                      If you get me meaning.
But this averto bustum, this demens audacia
              Not consequent lurking cosmic censure.
We're not the beneficiarii
             Putting a whole city on lock down
       While the procurator slithers to dinner,
And the burden of guilt shifts.
       The sicariis' bitch incarnate.
          Fuck these musings. Let's clock out, Ursinus.
I'm so hungry I could eat a bear. 



XII:      SAFIYA

 

Yeah, I tells the guard,
                 I sees the Nazarene wif that fat geezer,
           The same what cut me bruvver Malchus behind the ear
To protect a naked boy he be at.
              And they asks
                     And he
           What would a fisher
Want with that vagrant loon,
                      Loud and he spat
           Like they's sage murder about the rebbi.
The kitts would a took him for dispatch.
                 Ask me bruvver, he be a proper geezer
About the slice up his ear
                       And if the rebbi Kayafa palmed
            Weren't the same
What was cavortin' wif  dis Simon.
                 I knows me mugs and
I won't be stood for a liar ebed or no.
       You might say I got beef wif this Simon
             For me bruvva's ear.
But that's precise what puts him there wif the rebbi.
           And ain't I done me washin'
And he there outside the tetrarch's house.
                What he be there for but to tally his boy.
Fuck him what denies his own
           But to have what is unknown tol'
So's worse in the  tellin, and
                 What me masters bein' tol'.
Caiaphas what Vitellius already takes aim,
            And likes me and me bruvver
Bein' in service a the same;
                   What of us when the low pretend to greatness
          And me likes come to scrub blood from the temple steps.
Bodies in the streets on the way to prayer.
          Tax wine for wood and nails a Skull Hill
But for beggars scavenge iron for the speculatores.
                 What of us to credit publicans and fishmongers
          Over rule and the law;
A corpse a some vagabond
          What promised deliverance
And can't even keep his own.
          Slave I got but me senses and
      I knows what I see, and claims it. 




XIII:      EZEKIAL
 
Got roughed up by them Palantine pricks today,
      They's lookin' for the body a'that
Daft mug they strung up five days ago.
          Mind you we was slinging stones
               And doin' a little messiah baitin',
But them fucking guineas put Jacob in hospital
               And hauled the rest us to the Antonia for 'questioning.'
Look at the welts on me back
               And squeezed me nodgers
    And butt fucked pretty Mordecai,
                        The kitts did.
So stretched his mavis had no wrinkles and
                Baptized Joshua with a gag of rag and water,
Then beat the bugger senseless.
                Snapped the fucker's arm at the elbow,
Wavin' about on its sinew, all for a guff.
                 And not one knock about the Nazarene.
   Not question dotto,
Like we 'd know where the bloody body was hid.
       Like we're fuckin' Sicarii
        With our whistling slings slicin' the air
Stead of a cool thin gut bound sica.
         If I was sicarii, I'd shave the sheep gut from
From some a that Roman salami. I mean,
         When are these kitt fuckers goin' home?
What the fuck we got they need?
    Slaves? What the Greeks stop fornicatin'?
             I toght bale hoodoos was their chief export.
Olives? Dates? Figs? Don't the fecund sprout from
                 Napoli tephra such as they boast,
Tears wellin' and all fancy of the Aventine?
          We got no gold to speak of.
       Let 'em murder Ethiops for gold.
      And gods. They got a dung cart fulla gods.
                A god for every prick and primp.   
See me best shirt. This blood won't come out.
    Looks like the mark of the first born.
What are they but Tibi's errand boys
    All tagged and cut alike.
Called 'em out too.
       Called 'em toadies and wankers
And they didn't like that mind you.
           They laughed, but there's balk for truth in those mincers
Hearing their cosmic rank so cleanly put
          And low such as a slave's resentment looks a covenant.
Their signia militaria all props
          For a few leagues of fraternity and sentiment. 

And what do the gnosti want
          To get good boys beat with their peace and love?
        Secreting the bodies of their prophets
In caves and catacombs and the like
    Just to rattle the nest of Roman hornets.
            No honey i' that.
    And how's a pleb supposed to earn his bugs
When a pickpocket winds up in a six page report by a beneficarii
          For bein' seen chatting up that shapely priestess,
The bitch what turned down good Tyres
    Stamped with a mugshot of Melgart hisself,
Picked ripe from the market tagging after Matthew
    Distracting the shoppers,
Babbling on about an upcoming speech by his boy on the Olivet.
    And at temple damned if that skinny little fucker
Didn't slander the rebbis
    And I took his meaning, what that was not hedged and muddied,
To pinch a bit of what's Pilato's and Herod's,
           So's I tagged along to Capernaum thinking
Maybe his goons had a cache of weapons and plate
           Stashed in the caves at the fork to Bethany
Guarded by lepers seein' as how the reckless fuck
     And his girl embrace the luckless, stinking lot.
He sat down and began his fear mongering and self-contradicts
       But the ladies were so star struck
And the gents so meek and cowed, the boy
       Havin' a bark for the gullible.
               Straight on I swear he said
   'Beware of false prophets,
           Wolves in sheep's clothing.'
And he in a wool tunic for a hoot. His old lady
   Laughing behind that pretty hand
That's reached for the scepter
                     On more than one occasion, I'll wager.
So I left the shakedown having business in Emmaus,
      Plannin' to come back later and rough up the lepers,
        That hung rotting about the perimeter
And find out behind which fetid monster
        The cult stashed its loot.
So I didn't stay for the whole show,
                   No novel shakes in it I could see.
Then I spotted me boys tailin' the detail
             Down Hebron Street and I picked me stones.           



XIV:      EZEKIAL
 



You knew the Nazarene's old man, you say? 
                     Name of Pantheras? And what?
    A kittim butter bar?
           Tref in mamma's trench.
We may not have to rummage about in leper stink
         After all.
What you think that Magdala lot would pay to keep
    That shit out the papers?
              And where's pops now?
I fancy he's bred mongrels up and down
         This whole fucking wolf fressing Empire
And won't be comin' back for a cut most likes
    Or to carve up any working man's entrails.
Shet, this is a beautiful piece of intel.
          Maybe better put to the tetrarch,
Or even the procurator in exchange for a purse
         And dismissal of all outstanding warrants?
Nah. Safer to take the lady's money to avoid official treachery
    And intrigue and possible hangin'.
Were not scripting a bon bon for fat Claudia
         To consume reclining on her ottoman.
How more Roman these new Jews are?
           And these Essenes have little to counter us
But a just and profitable outcome
           If we bargained armed
And gave some hazy guarantee.
                 Shet, find Magdala and tell her Ezekial ben Nomus wants a meet. 
      Be discreet and tell her it's no simple bump and grind,
       Say we got somethin' on her boy. 
And don't take no 'He has risen!' shit.
         Tell her we're at least three Roman murders past that.
Tell her from lineage we know Gamala's MO too.
     If she won't meet, tell her Mat or Tommy will do.
Oh, and one other thing Shet.
        How come you to know this Pantheras?
You aren't his minnow or some benficiari's snitch,
     B' any chance
Cause this piece of luck either comes from
                      Deep in the archive or is a nod to the sparrow.
Mind for now that's all past with pop's long absence.
              Zacarias go with him.
   The Essenes are harmless.
Even though, if this is a set up, Zack, pull the alarm,
        And fuck Shet.
Let him gnaw his way out the trap. 

No trust in this lot.
      Not like me father's father told it
                      And his father before him
Still with the sting of Judas Maccabee in't,
            And the Hasids.
Hard thievin' on the one hand
            But no gerim to a righteous cause.
When a gangster could be a patriot.
             Hanged me brother, Hillel,
Staring straight at the Nazarene
          And not a tear shed beyond me sisters
                             And sainted mother
For the brave boy what knifed two Romans out the shadows
         Down by Watergate last Saturnalia,
Picked up on a lesser charge.
                     Done his patriotic duty which is more said
      Than these fuckin' Nazarene schemers,
Not to mention them toad Sanhedrins.
           Fealty. The kitts do beat out a shank of the real thing
          From their tref levies.
Blood only goes so far.
     Can't do an empire on blood alone or
                Mutual suffering.
It's as the ballista proceeds, mechanicals and other siege guns,
           Spare parts from all over the goddamn world
And the stolen gold to pay for it.
          Datian iron, Pannonian copper, lumber form Cappadocia
Nails and lynches, details in helmet and stout legora
           Pacing the compass of the vallum and no more,
Armed clerks logging a lifetime of vigilia,
           Eyes fixed on a single point, so's the ideal,
From the walls that contain the world
           And the trogs what lurk outside the limes. 




XV:      SIMON GAMALA

 
Zeke, Zeke, Zeke. You and your wanksta pops.
                 Like father, like son. Greedy.
    And dead by me hand.
What I'm not gonna surveil Maggie's little cadre?
          What business did your boy Shet have
            With them cash strapped bunkos?
    At first, I thought you young blokes
    Might turn up me balance of payments
       Or a couple of gunnies full of weapons
The Essenes might have stowed away
       If their poetic incantations failed to soften old Tibi's heart
To this prospect Jew nation of ours.
        But no you had to go and queer me deal 
With pretty Maggie Dal and her merry band
      Of cheek turning pussies.
    The way their little Tommy fled the scene at Golgotha 
                      Not seein' no dragon teeth's amongst the gore
   Not one of the butchered boy's fillin's springin' up,
The fragrant bouquet what I took up in me own arms
                   What gesture that fuck Peter likes to stab me for.
  Ditches engorged with Jew blood
Testifyin' that one day, this day,
                   The fucking desert blooms.
Phantom armies, the envy of the fucking Empire.
                     Knocked off daddy and his offspring.
     I feel positively fuckin' Sophoclean.
A most informing slaughter has taken place
     And as a result me payment will arrive apace.
Yet sometimes we don't kill for money
           So's to take the novelty out of other arrears. 



XVI:      SALOME ZEBEDEE

 



If not him who
         That me boys sit on his right and left;
Too much to ask and me carin' for his ma,
         Trapesin' after bofe,
His discoursin' and preachment,
                   Listenin' to that tripe,
Playin' lame where folks don't connoitre a Zebedee.
         And me put the kettle on
                   Midwifin' that whelp and his twin into the world.
To the knuckles I pressed me hand
                   Up her cooch be it she becked
            What fucked by the Roman captain
But these her fourth and fifth
            And she hysterical beyond ratio
                   For tympan what don't fall after first acts.
            Joseph tossin' the house despaired
                    Learnin' these Romulus and Remus a fierce Pantera;
Me fingers past cherry
            What her brood long burst.
The rebbi a kitt bastard
            Who all endured    
                  For advance a fortune or fear of sanction.
         For what to hand the Zebedees be so close to estate,
The rapt mob, the patrons
                 Dropping their gold at his feet
                       For fancy and audience.
And at the  tug of me nephew's golden barb.
          Me boys prime to drop a net
                 To bring back such booty.
          Me boys be the thunder what boom the field
                  What put the public in address
And bait knife to Herodian or kitt
                 When danger sense it.
And at the last didn't Yeshua
           Tax John take up his ma,
She wretch a seven but pickin' me boy.
           So's to me to fund favor in action,
My mistake and may pride bitch me
                 But me and these been loyal and trusty
            On the road be I with our sweet rebbi.
Ain't a blessin' see a man hang, much less blood,
           No matter how much rancor he cause.
And the tomb what lay empty, what I told this kitt Gatian
               Was surprise to me, the fuckin' Romans dissectin'
Not grave rob from resurrect
          Both of the same burr and needle
And extra employ for our guinea masters.
          A place for hoi poloi scratch under their skirts is it;
To surmise ass as good as pate
                From what we know a our deities
         And those cheeky enough to scratch a livin' thereby. 




XVII:      IBRAHIM

 

Me father earned his tins and coppers as Androcles
        Wif a ruddy sheep's mantel and a bear's skull
Pitched and tacked wif wool,
       Nicked from the circus at Philippi,
             Playin' bofe man and lion at fairs,
No boy to play a lion to a daft father,
       I ain't sayin, but maybe convinced of his power,
             In a manner of speakin' healin'.
Quite a modern tale, this Androcles
             Brought on by days' events.
       Its fuck flat the procurator knows, and if he Rome.
No, not the fuckin' lion jackanory.
             I'm an informer ain't I,
                  Me ham cured by the Nazarene half a dozen times,
Most a any messiah and good wage too.
             Even brought back me arm
From under me tunic, did the priest,
      Such cons as natural as love
But missed for the stagin'
             And only two arms to folly.
That shite publican Matthew were there.
            And the Simons.
      I blind wif me confederate, Yacub, healed,
And later that day I doubled
              As deaf man possessed,
Me having method of the mad me very father so.
        And by the by cured of dropsy after beat about me eyes
Wif wet reeds.
             And then the  rebbi would babble about custom,
For he knew custom as a tart knows her donkey
       And good coin working by,
And performed his stunts on Sabbath to enflame.
             At Olivet, the cart of Zebedee's fish and bread
                  What I and Tulius hid from a few dozen stragglers
What to coax their appetites to tithe.
        All this, Gatian knows
As paid I am by kitts. 

              But boosting the rebbi's body? Fuck no.
Arimathea pried the body from Pilato with fuck knows
              What one rich fuck barters another.
Ask him's what I tol' the kitts. Him and Nicodemus
        Both Sanhedrin, but if one strays from the Talmud
A lone lion may bring down a buffalo
                Without stampeding the herd.  



XVIII:      AAMIR
 
Into Yeshua's arms I drawn from me tomb,
          From me bitter darkness inta the light.
His beauty manifest what could as passion mirror
         Come to him in me winding sheet,
              Me swaddling 
Which from that wedding forth I wore.
               As master cooed, in the earth whom I desire
Besides thee is none.
               David has brought me into his chambers
          And as Yohan, brought to the banqueting house,
               I shall lie all night upon your breast
Tuggin' at your undergarment.
              Me mouf pilgrim at your rod
What I stalked in me cerement
           Agog the blessed face, the banded thighs,
The goblet of thy navel.
                  Thy musky sack. What altar so pure
              But to enter you and be wif you,
But not abide having bedded one possessed.
              And turn away me kinswomen,
What cacky you find me
                  Where Jonathan you find me before,
      What run with Ezekial and his urchin lot
                  And be thus abused, rough trade
But by ration I be their banty
          Be I at best of belle Augustus til blessed
Pud wash over me for you bait me baggette not worthy
              Though his summons, “Neaniskos,” I answer
And you bat boy a the one and only.
            I fly the kitts in the garden
What laid first hands on me as you.
           Fear like fat Simon
And run naked to our bed
               And their wept thee abandoned
For your tenderness had but prepared me to live
           As from the abyss.

And upon Golgotha your ma clenched me hand
               And sobbed.
          She lay her head upon me
Chosen for you in me whom you loved
          And that night we and Mary Clop and Salome wept together
And for three days. Thy winding cloth a spikenard,
               Fine kalamos and cinnamon, frankincense and myrrh.
Arise me love, me fair one, and come away. 
          But as come about Magdala's cruel plot.
This love what finds dispatch for lovely kitt batties
                 Blood to root,
         And disturb for me beloved.
The beam of me house is cedar, me rafters fir,
           I am sick with love,
Me left hand under his head and me right doth embrace,
                Wake him not. 







XIX:      SANBALLAT

 
Dominus vobiscum, Jesu.
        It's a day closer to hell what I host the lamb of god
Though you're the third messiah stunk up me rooms this Julian.
            Dosetheos Samarit rot here not more than a month ago
And earlier that rube calling hisself Elijah Come Again.
                    And what's this about the body and blood.
    Heard your boys James and Didy disputatin'.
When they dropped you off.
                    If it's true, I make a fine lamb stew.
           And of you if I but imbibe
                     Will in place rot forever?
    What's involved, the spells and incantations? 
               Accipite et manducate ex hoc omnes, 
    By any chance. 
                Hoc est enim corpus meam
         You see. I was a consuliare.
Saw many a your likes to the gallows, truth be told
        Pro bono if it weren't for the Praetores. You hot heads
         Buttin' heads with the Caesars
And losin' 'em as quick as your pappies could sew another.
          But now a Batanea onion or Gilboan garlic or no
I'm a cook what can't gauge your fet
      With me nose scrape to bone every pass of me forefinger.
       A bit a dark, running diptych 
            In the midst of rank ruin.
I'm just playing with ya.
            I ain't gonna gnaw on ya.
         I may be leper once lawyer,
But I'm not no ghoul
             Like some in these caves be at, as I hear tell.
You're a real world beater you are.
             Care for a crust? No. Don't mind if I do.
           You don't remember me, do you?
Don't remember your Sanballat?
              Your little piece a fetid tref,
Sanballat on the road outside Bemesilus.
              A group of lepers all scabs, pustules, abrades,
Blind as you as on faith you is me charge.
        The lepers, on the Bemisilus
Upon which you laid hands,
               And me a gentile what didn't bathe upon your blessing.
Your taoma, and Didy reasoned
               That's why the cure didn't take
As I rotted in hope,
              You bastard Essenes.
            Rest up, son of your god.
In three days you'll be headed for Heshbon
              To your fucking denouement one hopes
      In the meantime, you're my guest at three sheks a day,
               Room no board paid by your widow.
This here my stone walled jeweled palace.
         My emeralds being my shiny eructations
Which I confine to the foyer
               Keepin' out nosy frumentari
In these times of such great civic concern.
                And here you are, another run at the mouth prophet,
Quiet for once, propped up before me
      In your filthy, malodorous, funereal rags,
             In a stone divan piled up by me own hand,
All the conversation driven out ya
           Even as you sucked air at the jabba jab jab of the pilum.
You past healing this snake. Past rubbing these scales,
        Even if he did oblige to do a proper soap and wash 
                               With one of your priests.
      Nah, me lord's in no shape for a second audience with old Sanny. 
                            All tuckered out
"Master, have mercy," I shouted. But no.
           You wanted me lathered and ten dinari in the bargain
     To be collected from some rich bitch
Dragging her fat ass and her guilt to temple.
      Fuck you!
    Had enough of this Messiah shite now, have ya. 
               Believe it, this stink of a world has too.
Pilate worked your ass over pretty good as is his wont.
           And a week to smell ya as ripe as me.
            Clever that crew of yours
Mixing your funk with mine,
            To create a world rumor,
    And paying down Gamala with rigged wine then iron.
That's the bloke what stole ya.
       Gamala. That fetid heap right over there.
Wedged in that cut in the rock
                       Primed with shadow.
           Poor bugger didn't think your woman had it in her.
His brother's hysterical inquirin' up and down Judea,
          Blood thicker the more a man pays out in it.
                   But he won't venture here.
No not to the underworld.
                       Lot a people dyin' around you,
    And plenty more to come I suspect,
                        Especially with this ruse and all.
Cruel to see them widows and hags bite,
           Too desperate, too worn down to recant
                       Tacked up flush against the stake.
Oh, by the by, your brother's nursing a jab in the side.
           What's that? Is that a purse for a whole man?
Ya know, Barabbas, Bar Aba, Son of the Father,
            That's the moniker given Judah bar Judah.
But clouded orbs make fear for trust and tight lips too.
    Didy's like as like's not been kin to either you felons.
So say the stones and bones.
           Set those Sadducee fucks up real good, did ya,
'Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.'
           Yeah, I heard.
Your majesty's on his way to becomin'
           The most famous corpse in Judea.
        And the bloodiest
In the wake of these rumors.
           Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth'
         And here we are in my cave and
My contract for precisely three days.
                      And then you're out on your ass.
I wash me hands a ya.
                     But while you're in me house,
I'll please you not to stink up the vestibule.
            And I'll thank your friend Gamala to do the same.





XX:      MATTHEW
 
Well disposed the king of the Jew's
       If the boys donnit aright,
But not this blood oath I foreswore.
    And by libation and swank thigh
And a fine garrote of fish line
      Accounts settled with Gamala, 
      Off the books,
Far from that shit Capito's prying eyes
           By our bad boy yardies.
        Simon's as good a cutthroat as Peter,
And not given to histrionics.
         Not of this pot bellied all the world's a stage mincing about, 
The neighbors calling it in; the blood curdling barney
      In the adjoining crib,
Peter sitting his ass down to boil an egg
                  And quaff a pint of the stiff's lager
Calm like the gallows was just another morrow's matinee.
         But Simon Kananaios quiet, humming under his breath
        La-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la-la,
Then's curtains. I guess there's some show in that then,
         I'm no killer, I swear, so's I wouldn't know first hand.
A publican, a little Mokhes is me.
   And Zacchaeus is a big Mokhes.
   Tax collectors, more despised than vermin,
Than a leper with a law degree,
        With molotovs in me umbrella stand every other Quintidi
And the royal expense of two burly Persian Pushtis
      Treading on me hem.
The rebbi said, 'Levi, I could use a bloke like you.
      Give up your cozy little Roman vig.
   To grow rich is glorious.'
And there was some gibberish about the afterlife
        I figgered was meant for the rubes.
       Why else would Jesu break bread with publicans?
We both extort our people for a crust.
    This messiah and me, of a kind.
              So I leased me franchise and tailed along
   And I'll be damned if I've seen a dinari
              Since November last Julian.
Blew Judas's trust fund
        On cartloads of fish and bread,
        Bribing actors to mock a limp, gimp or rheum, 
So'd the brothers had to dump their old man in a common grave.
        And Judas gone mad from it,
Practically blowing the whole game
   Until Magdala came up with this risky feint
And talked, nay bewitched the Nazarene, into his present state.
       And me from embezzlement to murder,
Several I might add.
       Gulled wives of a dozen Pharisees
If that of itself ain't tempting Tyche.
       But shite, they can only crucify me once. Right?
Time ta slip that hook, bounce about this vast cesspool of an empire.
            Make bread and wine a this Nazarene snake oil.
       On the lamb hawking fillister's horse piss tonic.
What times we live in.
    What narrow chance Fortune thrusts upon us.
Several patrimonies squandered on cloudy speculation
       And not one lamb scored what can be counted on for chops.
And I'll never collect another copper for Tibi
           But to lose a hand in the reaching
And my head in the thought.
           Maybe James and I'll go to Zebulun and open a brothel.
See if all them other-life kickbacks and gratuities goes appreciated.
           I here tell the local centurion, that Syrian mere, Adad,
                   Still runs the garrison in Capernaum.
      Hopes to remember caresses and furtive oaths of pleasure
And profit sealed in the garrison's calidarium.
         I'll look up old madams and their whores
That so thoroughly lightened the burden of governance
          When I last close up observed the people's business.
Collect me get out of jail free card from the local guilds
    From what I nicked and jigged Tibi's extort.
Grease the frumentarii and
         Get me name scrubbed from Herod's shit list.
Maybe I'll write a book.
                       Capernaum where I tipped the scales
For that Peter and his brother Andrew
         And got that fat swine
Contracts from the zealotry.
      Business for his sack and anchor
              Consortium dispatching any number
Of our dear Roman constabulary out Antonia
         To the black Gehenna of Galilee, that is,
           Or to fragrant Himam,
What couldn't be fed to Gentile pigs,
         All the while imbibing the latest in messiah speak.  

In the synagogue at Capernaum,
       Wheres I first heard the rebbi.
Clever that backing into to riches shite, I thought,
   Inferin' a pay day
All cloaked abstract and like but
               Always shaped around the real thing,
Crowns and jewels, kings and kingdoms, robes and what the fuck.
        And there's me makin' off with an extra bit of
Imperial coin crammed in me rectum
          If not stashed in me girl's cooch.
                       So's I signed on as booker.
Lined up the acts. Do a gimp for the messiah,
        And I'll let your sty pass sans tax, 
Oh look yet another fuckin' miracle!
                Bartholemew and Matthias passed a hat
                       Attached to a lovely long stick for maximum pocket gropin',
Aisle after aisle of craning, slack jawed credulity,
       And Magdala would kick mine back.
Whence I threw a bash for our golden cow
                With Capernaum's other publicans, city's leading lights.
The crème de la creme and other sinners.
   But with Magdalene about Jesus was privately held.
            The time I arrived with two achim sicarii
To Peter's crib a stone's throw from the synagogue
        With a Roman beneficiarii in a wheel barrel
                    Who had been transferred from Gamala's purse
    To a sack for some indifferent transgression.
And there was the rebbi
       Getting his feet washed.
Smiling that resigned smile that pursed
    What was in him deep? Fortune? Destiny?
His manifest resignation
                 What with his whole body sighed
           Which most took for cowardice.
       Resigned to be sure but quick to rage against his Fate,
Like one who sees what the next day brings?
                  Who nods dreaming the script?
                           Cryptic toward confidantes?
Awash in some celestial gossip
                  Most take for raging spirits.
Blocked by shadows that detour the light.
         And Simon's mother-in-law lay dead,
         Who 3 years before sick abed with fever
Rose up for custom's sake,
As do crone's remember what even god forgets,
            Rose to prepare a meal for her guests
Fobbing all illness which, as instructed,
     I capped as miraculous
To those neighbors and beggars
                  What whispered in the doorway,
             The light behind,
And thus declared genius and invaluable,
       Received quick payment from Magdala




XXI:      SIMON PETER


I coulda gut stabbed the fucker
     And let him die slow.
But no, a quick stick
           Under the armpit and Gamala fell like Jericho.
What that tell ya about me respect
        For what the Zealots done for Judea
Garroting Romans and Herodians
            What transgress the people's will? 

    Quiet this little piece of Tibi's empire, this ditch,
What I can make out beyond the frost on me eyes.
    What I hear tell Pilato's cutter can relieve with a fish hook
And me with a pocket full of barbs but no savant.
     A Malwani calan when the goy torched Beth Hamikdosh,
And still backward enough to have
     Roman tref stand on our face.
Who are we
     To abide a world without stars?
No Sadducee but the magoi's GPS sigs
        From Rab-mag at the brazen birth
Was how his dear mother muddled it.
     And who could deny her
For what hard slap could she bear beyond such lunacy with
      Her little gold amulet from some jeebie up the silk road.
      The Romans just for the glance up
         Find Aquila's impression
Shimmering just beyond recline.
     Buck up me little imperial stooge,
With talons in heaven to strike.
     Or this Hippalus fella I saw docked at Joppa,
Who by the stars some say sailed from Erythraea to Tamil.
            What wandering then with heaven glazed over like me eyes.
Our salvation at such as no stars i' the night.
                    And godly counsel extinguished
With Eudoxus pinned in the current, like a catch
            Washed into the shallows and clubbed.
Seems stab out the stars and
            You stab out the emperor's eyes.
That woulda been a dandy if the master had pulled that off,
            Not but these low level carny cons and tent shows
                     Netting mackerel blinded by his moon shine
             What duped us all.
Extinguish the stars, Tibi's fleet ruined on the rocks
       Or furtive under dead winds and broilin' suns.
No chattin' up the god's what ram to sacrifice
            Who's patrimony to rape.
Blinding the stars or him what nurses from 'em.
                    That woulda settled Tibi's hash.
            But what's the master left me;
A go for broke rumor about a risen body,
            Some fucking warmed over Leviticus
And 'the undiluted star' of the Gathas.
            A man a no fortune wi' a name ta come.
            What's a reputed helmsman to make a that?
One time fish monger with a side
                     Hosing Roman offal off the decks,
The work of some stick pig low life zealot.
                     A pretty bunch of pirates the master assembled
             All naked and gleaming that full-moon at Gethsemane.
Drunk and made the rounds
             Dowsin' many a nava cock
Until Judas mad from the swindles
             And his old man in a pauper's jug
Brought the heat.
             I may have dry snitched the Nazarene
For who in their hearts
            Didn't blaspheme that smug little fucker.
But this cock's crow apocrypha is bullshit and
             I'll thank any Gamala
                       Not to repeat it.
The night, the master dead drunk
             Wandered out that sand bar at low tide,
Mary screaming hysterical, and I to preserve him
             Sank missing a slip,
Both blessed not to drown.
        And the master embroilin' me with the high priest
Nicknaming me the 'Rock,'
                    'Caiaphas' in common parlance
              For a fuckin' drunken laugh.
And shoutin' for Bar Jonah in the market
          In front of a kitt detail.
                     Me what cut the Ha-Koph's ha-koph,
What's puts up with Magda and her cunny wisdom,
          And her little Nazarene shite
What thinks dyin's the hard part. 

But it's fuckin' Malchus and his fuckin' sister Safiya
               What fingers me to this Gatian
Taken affadavits,
               Kittim meddling in kin.
Me jacket turned over to Caiaphas.
        Twice the cunt says she saw me
When once woulda been the tale
                      And profilin' me twang from Galilee.
         As flimsy a toss as that
What which way every stroker puts
              His plaits and tanks North of Zebulun.
Fuck. I'm off. Sorted me nets to the Zebedees
          Out the pry of the frumentarii
Watching Tibi's stars turn as best can this half-blind sot.
              There the cross. Always with us,
And Orion looking off with his cudgel.
              And somewhere Pisces, what terror made
Me trade. And dame justice Astraea and
             What by me eyes, scales make fish
And me boning knife, freedom. 



XXII:      JUDAS ISCARIOT

 
Jesu bar Kozibe. Anointed One,
                  The messianic buffet in rooms above a pub.
          Rustic eschatology for the rabble.      
A lie for the ages and
          Me supposed hanged by me own hand
                  For grief of a kiss.
Who'll put a stop to their slanders and cons.
                  There was no fucking surrender plan.
          They were naked and debauched in the Garden
And I a belly full of the master's drunken sleights
              Thinking of me dear old dad dead in a jar
In a cave what the lepers and serpents
                     Slither to cool themselves,
               So's I kissed what I would have loved.
          After these gangsters guzzled away me fortune.
Cleaner to kill for the sicarii
                    Than to shill for this Nazarene's lot
           Discovering late I had passion for neither.
These? They're guff won't toss off Herod much less Tibi.
          Smug with their little plagiared songs and sonnets.
What use are they but to thin their own race
                    By proxy and default?
Who by ignorant seeming make
          A myth of incantations and grave robbing
What scam the poor and shove their ranks into Herod's grinder.
                    Granted the tetrarch's not a man content to build
His memory in stone, but that blood be mixed with mortar.
         What does our skinny shaman
Telling the despised he alone did not,
                    Even as he faked and unfrocked them
          Naked and trembling splayed across the transept
                    Face down, inchoate on Golgotha.
Hiring a cartman with me birthright
         To haul loaves and fishes to Bethsaida,
When he coulda just as well babbled in the market
         And the chumps refreshed themselves
                     At Andy's stall.
And how many of those young boys
         Woulda jumped to speed their master's demise
Not content with fucking each other
         Hungry for a shot at Magdala?
How many are so sated this very day
          Even as the rumor spreads?
                   The lamp is set aright
Yet the house burns,
         And scorching chitties on the world are unlaced?
               Fraud most displeases god.
It's the starving at table ill-served
         By the eschatological banquet.
Mercatores and negotiatores,
         Andrew and Peter as former,
Matthew and yours truly, the latter.
         That's how to seize an empire.
Build a house on lease and trade and
         The spears bristle outward from your walls.
               Ready commerce with far away Ostia and Brioni.
          Wine, oil, date honey,
Daily manifests read while you bung season the earth
                       And refresh the stink at the frontiers of your kingdom,
 Mingere per a telos like god meant the badger and the baboon.
          Not the dissipate gaggle of ovates and
Their sleight of hand and bleaching afterlife.
         Its either death or diminution for the sort
                       What believe that sortie;
Livestock for the slaughter pens of yet unborn fasces.
         Stare down the barrel of a Krupp
                       And look up at naught but a stick pig stiletto
And it's off to another amnesiac carnal round
         Of bloody incantation and incarnation.
The Romans have many gods to hide behind.
                       We but one.
What messiah would leap up to claim Vulcan,
          But to stir a guild, or claim a contract?
What woman, Venus, but to rule the stage,
                And not a less fickle empire?
And Tiberius for empire effected
          To embody earthly dimensions
Pantheons, when adhered,
     Act a practical palliative to demagogues;
                For keeping no talent Nazarene in their holes.
Lips meant for kissing not speeches.
          A message for the body coded in the soul.
There was rapture being close.
           Quivering, meant to, intended rapture.
His nape, collapsing upon his fragrant nape,
           The passion real but
In three days adulterated with fraud
           Loving too much the love of the flagellum, 

The crown of nettles, the nails.
                    Professing love of his lictors,
           All intimate shared love lost, abstracted
                    And confided to caul his onanism.
Me stranded out the garden
                  And he weepin' for joy in it.
And after Simon made his row Jesu went,
           Magdala's meek money shot
And all certain inchoate they'd get paid
           As a cynic or philosopher might wager god in the odds.   




XXIII:      GATIAN

 

Gatian to Aulus, his uncle, many greetings, 
         Before all else I wish you good health 
And make obeisance on your behalf to all the gods.
         We cast lots for a writin’ kit. A sergeant’s 
                 Executed for dereliction of duty,
And Sors blew on me dice
                 So I toght I’d write. 
          Bloke’s I mentioned before. Severenus.
Who knew he could scribble?
          How’s our Campagnian barley 
                  Though I suspects not to hear from you a harvest hence
Bein’ stuck in this rocky and desolate asylum.
          Every week it’s a new messiah,
A hundred widows tucked up,
          A dozen new lictors schooled in the half-death.
                  And every day five to ten details up Skull Hill
          To keep the rabble to a minimum.
                  
Been tagged to find the body of a Nazarene priest
                  What went missing about the time a the Floran carnival,
What you oldsters call Fufluns.
          Atilius, the same what I played trigons with
Back at the baths at Capua,
                   You might say dropped the ball,
And me key witness, a Simon Peter escaped.
          The rebbi’s whole gang on the lam
Leaving desperate hags and cripples
                   To hang.
Opened the franchise to Gentiles
             To detour the flagellum with ready perps
Like a purse snatch’ll knock a grain sack or nipper under foot.
                      The Antipast ain’t too particular. 
         As long as he can garnish Pilato’s plate
             So Pilato can convey good graces to Tibi.
Does Tibi still come through asummer 
                   To cavort with his minnows on Capri?
The pedi old fuck.
                   Rumor’s about, that the Frisians hanged Tibi’s tax men
And cut up our boys right good
       At some backwater called Badu-henna-wood
                   While the Senate weighed bribes and quids required 
To erect an Altar to Mercy and another to Friendship
                   With statues of Tibi and Sejanus outflanking both.
And, Tibi sucking fry cock at Capri, sent no reprise at those German fucks.
                            We got no Acta but we get the news.
       And me stuck pushing paper here where 
              The Empire’s too dilute to cop sense.
Bavarian canninefantes and three native units cut down at the Rhine.
                     What are they to me? 
The coalition squabbles 
                     By measure and money not the fasces.
          And the olives here seasoned with vinegar, cilantro and mint
Give me the shits a fortnight.
           And the wine’s cooked down and treacly
Like Raetian honey.
                      Just sayin’ some things is done odd
           When its empire.
                 Not Athronges and his bull-necked brothers;   
          Clever this fresh lot of Essenes
Doing by rumor and surreptitious inter 
          What couldn’t be contrived by force of arms.
Not like tinder yet, but where there’s smoke…
                  Nicked a naked whelp out a burial shirt. 
          The whole confederacy, armed, beyond the east wall
At the Lion’s Gate along Jericho Road
                 A drunk, naked Bacchi in a stand a olive trees called Gethsemane
When the temple guard and a squad of hastati under Iduma,
                 With some old siccari fuck turned states what 
Runs up and baseez the rebbi right on his blisters.
          Then curses same, his brother and self 
               Tucked up by the Bacchis out daddy’s pension.
          And the woman, the cult’s priestess, rises up
Having it on with one of the boys behind a berm,
           Whispers in the Nazarene’s ear,
At which he meekly sets out with Iduma and the gendarmerie,
           When one of the twelve lunges blind with a bait knife
Misses Big Red but cuts his slave behind the ear
           Avoidin’ a summary execution by a couple of sacks of wine.
They takes this skinny messiah 
                  All resigned and like to the Sanhedrin
And the fire’s gone out a him
           What railed in the temple just a fortnight before.
But by law they can’t off the little bugger,
            So’s they hauls him over to Pilato 
Who’s shacked up at Herod’s 
                  To keep the peace during Passover by breakin’ the heads
            Of any bloke what gets the holiday spirit too forthright.
Pilato, mind you, ain’t yet taken nor had divined 
                            His mornin’ shite and 
                  He’s puttin’ thumbs down on hearsay from fuckers
What would see the procurator’s throat cut at first nicks a sunshine.
            So’s he’s in no mood.  
‘Rome don’t quake at no Jew kid and some fat fuck with a bait knife.
            Let his kingdom come. It’s not on my mortal watch.’
So’s it’s off to Antipas with the begger. But no dice.
            Then back to Pilato who offers the flagellum 
To tear the Nazarene a new one. 
            Then Jesus Barabbas what robbed many a good Judean? No.
They hang the skinny little fuck for insult,
                     Wearin’ a spiny mocked-out diadem
And 2 times 40 lashes,
             And nine others in the bargain including three women
In one detail led by that self-same Severenus 
                      Whose skins and quill I won at lots,
             One speculatore’s detail among ten 
                       On one day in Tibi’s Palestine. 
And over the weekend somebody steals the rebbi’s body.
                    A fucking rash a that 
                             And me subsequent employment and complaint.
The growl of an empty belly
              In tales about flying corpses.
And for the likes of ME,
                             A blade as sure as a blessing.

And, to think, little Vitus shipped out by now,
              Light infantry to Numidia.
                     The boys come to the capite censi so fast
       Given our unific and expanding order.
Lucky little minti, that lad, 
               The sons of Jugurtha bein’ so tight with Tibi.
                             Not like here where every olive branch
        Been shaved to a punji,
And every welk carries a knapped obsidian shank
                               In his linin’,
Thinkin’ to float a nation on an optio’s blood.
                Soon to be optio immunis
Once papers clear Caesarea.
                
                   Now to mess, then bed. Good health.
And, by the by, thanks to Aunt Carmina for the two pair a sandals 
                 And the two pair a underpants 
           And the Sattuan socks. 
The rest I leave to my trusty messenger, Actoris.



XXIV:      CLAUDIA PROCLAS
 

Too much fucking wine 
                 And these goddamned Nicosian olives 
         Give me the honking farts.
 I didn’t mumble vows over Pilato’s pruny prick 
         To have exotic wonders limited to a species of olea.
                 It’s not the Aegypt cook’s eccentricities or
The ensuing aromatics,
          Or the serpent’s nocturnal house visits 
                 Both yarrow and incubus,   
          Dreams bein’ brood of visceral longing
And kin to bad figs, badly sauced. Oh! Lubentia who wattles
          Snake and staff. This lady has gas.
And this exhaust, well, it exhausts
                 Such that Hypnos parts and Morpheus enters.
I lay upon me belly under Narcissus thorn, and
                Behind savyon bank about the Negev.
A lion ambles, gauges and snorts,
          Blowing up me skirts,
                Licks me nape, sneezes 
Then takes me from behind.
                My eyes dart below their lids 
          My effigy chummed to a pole
Driven about by dark ocular frenzy,
           A shaken totem,
      Tantalus wearing the sun at his back
And his mother, Plouto, hunched and smiling.
       And a death rattle of dried beans.  
           The rebbi, the dreamer dreamed, 
                 The intermediary between two worlds.
That for some all must dream
            Lest we die in their sleep.  
Calibrate your windlass into the muck,
           Auger to augury.
                Pilo was healed as Smedia,
Though I saw the exchange myself
                Coin whose miracle is its many shapes.
          And Mata wept swaddling our little defect 
A slave’s hope more communal than a king’s. 
          Me omina said fuckin’ Tiberius 
                        Saw the Nazarene’s death in a dream.
Should I fear being found out 
                Or rejoice that my lion flies to Rome,
An auger to the dreams of the emperor.
           The imperium which makes all things incest,
All limbs withered and heads bloated. 
                Pilato so attuned to fraud
          Is the patriarchy I cannot bear.
His sciences must allow trespass,
                 The inordinate breach of
Unsustainable reason with sustainable superstition,
           Such is the pan-episteme.
Take pity upon us that seek refuge from you,
           Under his skirts these faces that smote you with kin killing
                 One day to be shorn of tinder.
Because, Pilato, you and Socrates are so unbearable, so insufferable
           Compared that sweet face and limber joints,
That happy fakery of paradise
            Where the young mount the old
Under nettles in the desert. 
  


XXV:      BARTHOLEMEW

 
Sacks a silver what to go with to their graves.
           I kneel meek, hands outstretched, before this bunko.
Coin freely given and the mark dies
           Or can’t report the swindle but die.   
Why furrow fuck Gaia for the tetrarch and his kittae masters,
                  To be tagged and tithed to chattel,
When you can bite hard silver pure and full digested 
           Just for bein’ a bit charmin and appearin’ novel.
Who prefers breakin’ the crust of the earth 
           To throwing down some pensioners coin 
And breaking a crust a warm bread, a peach 
                     And a fine, sweet Givon in the bargain. 
       What accompanies a plowman’s perspire compared to
The purgin’ beads of the calidarium,
            Nibbling a honeyed date
Slidin’ off the client’s business end, of the moment
            To hit the hookah, 
         All takin’ place in the transit of  
                 That burnished and consight orb?
And what to god as opposed a brute beast,
              Though I ain’t sayin’ the mind don’t like its meat?
What hayseed, bent with his back to god, 
                 Scratches at the roof of hell 
Don’t make a pact with the reaper
                        Even while abiding luminal accord. 
What base agro, taxed into brutishness 
                 By his betters, 
Ten months in his tunic for a bushel of turnips, 
                 Reads Hesiod what with the tag and tale 
What poetry’s a fragrance for eunuchs.
         I’d like as not read those dainty bon bons
As to know I abodes among them that do,
                 What with my readin’ beamin’ down 
From the moon and the equinox
          And not the vex of symbols and marks. 
And if anyone asks, 
          This sack a silver is for killing a lion
The story not to be construed from a bib of lamb’s blood 
           As killing a beast is often entangled with a wont to eat.
But the stories kept separate and dramatical,
                  That after repast, our rebbi was hanged,
But slew we not the beast to eat,
          But that we be welcomed at table for doin’ same.
And as to cover our claim supposed 
              An anonymous benefactor bestowed 18 silver mites,
And that’s how we came to fortune.
           Not by hustling alms and estates.
That bein’ too ecumenical
                   And hard taught at the flagellum.
Too common a purpose for our lord and messiah
           Or what’s left of him cut up and offered 
To the Negev below Hebron        
           At Makhtesh Katan.

We nicked the bunko off Nazo’s father
          What killed a panther genuine,
Hence his hero’s name, Pantheras. 
           Regular Herakles, Jesu’s dad.
But what of the chip.
       No Romans slew, but for the slave
Simon cut behind the ear, and a couple of zealot hires,
           And the three at the crypt posthumous.
                 No iron bars bent or fire swiggin’ but
A bunch of parlor sleights, and healin’ the amply bribed,
           And a cartload of fish packed in salt hid under hay
                 Bought cut rate at the Zebedees.
           A disgrace for all that, though it did sluice in the dosh.
And likes daddy and demigod, 
          In spite his steamy accessory,
       He rejoiced Laconian
                  At love among warriors
But tended no warlike quality but a quick temper, 
           Say like that little barney in the temple.
That not likely an extort
           With only the two Simons as muscle
But a farsighted canard, nonetheless, 
                  What build his empire first
In the rabble mind.
            Crucifixion bein’ the engine, 
Mind its fruit excludes the tree.
            The body snatch come natural
But what for those what said they claimed witness 
            By his own tellin’,
       We did eat him that last supper
What spilled out the garden and the moon.
           So’s at Negev, what could get past the stink,
Cut morsels before we hurled our dear rebbi into the makhtesh
                   And covered him with stones.
John at some distance, knelt and turned out his gut 
                   And back handed squared with custom,
           As the Levites warn--- 
So signs and symbols hold caveats 
                   What have pitched a lunch or two.
Not that there ain’t an industry in the motions,
                   Pointing up the four elements, the threes and sevens, 
And the tala to awaken.  
            But at that last repast
      We was tumbly and 
A trinity of incarnations as to fress 
                   Or fressing, or as to drink what 
With wine come first to make the bloody unthinkable habitable
              And then only bare and converse so.
        No matter what the Sanhedrin say
              The master was trimmed and proper bled.
But what are we ta make a that table scrap?
                   Body and blood which does but dishonor
For as I could see, the master was 
              Neither woolly beast nor angel,
But a good man with shells and a beautiful wife;
             And except for the income,
                    I wish to be done with it
Even as me cuddie Philip sizes our mantel.  




XXVI:      MARTHA
 
Frumentarii hoofin’ it to Bethany what get me hanged?
           Told the kitts, I’s surprised as the next 
To find the seal popped and what keepin’ me sis together
                     And don’t kitts got mommas too,
Playin’ all the weepy, weary, dried out crone.    
            
           Two days before Passover 
I set table at me bruvver’s house 
                   To celebrate the big score raisin’ up Lazarus,
Our kinsman by marriage, the shill what hid in a crypt 4 days,
            Off to hekhalot was he,
                   Now the guest a honor 
Thanatose havin’ overflowed the till.
         Who was there? The whole lot, I tol’ this frumentarii, 
               But if you must tax an old woman---
         Peter and Andrew and the two Zebedees, fishermen
                   What stench you get cordial wif bein’ family.
And the Zebedees bruvver, Jesus, what did most the stunts
                And his girl Magdala.
And Bella, Jamilla and Oro, I tol’ him 
                What are dolly dancers
At a spot what an aid to the Syrian legate holds an interest
                 Wif some of the temple heat.
         This Gatian, strappin’fella for a fuckin’ guinea,
                 Base kit outta Compagna,
          What our rebbis call Posomanga;  
This Gatian fella asks if a sicarii named Judas 
         Was there, and another Simon,
                   And I tol’ him Judas was a good boy,
His dad havin’ just passed and as for Simon, 
          I knew me a lot a Simon’s but I don’t truck with no thug Simons.
And there was Phil and that slow one Bart, 
                  Juda, the rebbi’s twin, Leb, and Alphie, 
And Matthew all worked up about his low life tax connects
              Not gettin’ an invite.
A good home cooked meal for me boys, 
                      I tol’ the kitt fuck
And left it off.
                      We was flush, cash and past doubt, in our cups 
When that lusty bitch what had spent a thousand quid on spykenard
                Knelt before her rebbi
Drenched his feet and in her advanced state
            Mopped said stenchers with her hair mind you,
What give Oro and Bella the giggles,
                  Bella grabbin’ the vile and spraying the room,
The women goin’ down on the boys, and boys on boys,
                   Sausage and beans all around,
             Magdala kneelin’ hair draped deep over her rebbi’s pegs
But no takers for me ol’ kebab.
                  Me sisters past out, Lazarus dead drunk,
       And me bruvver Simon what brought Magdala to the trade
Gloomy and resigned in a corner.
       Judas the bank was miffed reflectin’ on his father
                  Sittin’ in a jar six inches from sunlight.
And Matthew livid about the oil 
                   Moneys lost for advancin’ the cause and frontin’ miracles
              Though neither turned down the tarts 
What made their rounds.
              ‘Course, I tol’ the frumentarii we was celebratin’ our deliverance,
        And I don’t serve tref,
What me gags to laugh on a bit. 
         What’s a kitt know about custom, all guineas bein’ mongrel Greek,
And but pitch over the futtocks of us settled folk
               So the fucking Roman ship of state might float.  






XXVII:      JOHNNY GAMALA

 
               Arrive with two dozen khehrev  
And the Nazarene, faithless cunts what they are, 
                     Scatter to the four winds.
         Twelve they say to mock Jacob;
Then twelve I’ll have.
               
Me sabba killed, abba alike and 2000  more
                Butchered by Varus, 
And me mishpakh blamed for the zeicher L’churban
                      And now shammua ‘bout me Ah,
Cut down for vengeance by the brothers of one of our’s martyred,
           Or the procurator and his Herodian tref or
                Treachery at the hands of some Magda wench, 
The whore a some prophet or prefect
        What claims to be the Yeshua bar Yosef 
                 What settled with 600 armed men
Nine years north a Camel Rock near Palmyra.
          His council what to be allied to the Parthians
Against his ambition. He broke a
          Bodhi with the old modus what read 
                         God alone is King, and hedging that is he
          Or son to him, 
But malcha shamem, could preserve his throne,
           And threat to destroy the temple with fire
Lest his mint be faced,
            He so declared.
                     His yardies gumming the gears of empire 
            With rumor and stunts. 
But me object is disjecta, not from force a arms  
            But a rag on a dowel.
Not liftin’a finger, but meek like and resigned. 
            I have it the bloody lot like to break faith with zealots
And murder dagol kin so  
             Soons as see Pilate’s or Herod’s hand in this,
As somehow the puppet has worked its masters,
                     And in this ebb to grope subdura like me pugio,
          Likes to find Asmodai snagged 
              As to sort this tale by mincers and lears.
Who erecting a throne forsakes hisself  
           To leave the gems niggled and the seat razed
By thieves and seminarians what learned the bunko.
 
What’s this kitt riddle from the rebbi
                    About dead sparrows and Rome god chosen?
           How fuckin’ modern, me down from Golan to avenge me brother 
With the Hasmoni and Judah Maccabee as bloody back drop and
Seleucid Hellens as kitt
           Chattin’ the rubes about
                  A gatherin’ of fish mongers, farmers, a piece a shit tax collector,
           And a couple of has been sicarii,
Nibbling at the gibblets of empire 
                  Like Tibi’s fry nibble at his cock
Wonder the Procurator tacked the clown up broadside on Skull Hill.
                  Coulda chain ganged ‘em and 
Let ‘em hiss back at some fabri’s whip 
                  Humping Sena Road or desert castrum on the southern flank. 
Who’s swayed by the Nazarite fuck what’s hands out markers 
                      On Israel what exceed the corpus of days?
            There’s a threat to temple income to make so many fools.
And to this I’ll bend me labor,
            Herakles bound to his twelve and Shamsoun to his riddles, 
                       Works so I might be to none,
                  And levy a tax 
While Rome frets its own.
             Not Judas but he right his daddy.
I say Matthew and the Zacchaeus, Jericho’s own chief of customs, 
             Who sups with kitt and Herodian
                  Funded the Nazarite’s pranks.
And after Maccabee and Mattathias 
             Fops WILL get hanged for a misunderstanding,
Rome’s agents in the Seleucid and 
                  What purchased the Persian archive.
       The crew cast lots
And me agents say Philip’s hightailed it to Damascus
             Already claimin’ great feats in the name of the dead.
Didymus. Judas Thomas, the rebbi’s double to Parthia;
             Judas Thaddeus to Samaria
And this Simon Peter to Antioch under Herod’s snout.
             The others vanished better than their rebbi.
Matthew no trace and with funds 
              And Magda, no doubt, in tow.
I’ll roust the Nazarite’s mum and aunt on the morrow.
       For now cat and mouse with the frumentarii.



XXVIII:      JESUS BARABBAS

 
Jesus Nazarene or Jesus Barabbas, a choice true.
        Difference between an ass and avengin’ angel.
             The Nazarene, a poofter, a pissant,
And the crowd what I’d be back 
                    Trimmin’ tref  beards and slicin’
       Kitt fat as soon as Pilato punked custom.
Thumbs up! Thumbs up for Jesus Barabbas! True son of the father!
           My peeps and so armed.
Bar abba of fuckin’ Israel,      
          Not no fuckin’ Nazarine dilute,
                  But pure shmarim from Sepph.
          Me blood spilled as accelerant,
Pardoned by the procurator with the pointed seals of Roman daggers,
           Common kitt treachery.
                  No dead sparrows and deus fasces.
No feints and pretty thoughts against Roman gladii.
                          While the boy broke to a few thistles and nails.
           The boy what thinks dyin’s the hard part.

And that Nazarine lot took rooms here just a fortnight, you say. 
           Before the farce at Pilato’s
                   Where’s, you mighta heard, I got jacked by a kitt detail, shackled and
           Tossed into a brack a vipers,
                   With six days the leper, Sanballat, me wet nurse.
The night before, the rebbi and Thomas, his twin, the twelve carryin’ on, 
            He in his breast,
                And Magda locked out, downstairs tendin’ two mules
Symbolizin’ to my mind,
             Flight upon threat to tumble the temple.
                The whole death fressin’ lot.
Not a man among ‘em but the woman what 
             Found her nature among that chaff.
And me stuck eight times and left for dead by the procurator’s fucks;
                  So, you tell me, who’s the resurrect.
            No truck with Gamala’s warrior cult neither
With their blood aspirations 
           What steals from those that were hard indentured to steal
And not just by private tutelage and pedigree.
           And not slow to rob being all robbed hereabouts.
           And not from no fortified Hump,
My retinue collects beyond Solomon Lake
          With the Gamlans lookin’ over their shoulder 
At a risin’ star like meself, like Saul what said, 
                “What more can he have but the kingdom?”   
       I’d NO sooner bow to a Gamala than to Caesar,
I bare my neck but to go low and geld a better
       Bleed him out at the thigh.
That’s a feint worthy of a messiah.
                      Not this nancy dance Nazarine horsehit,
What puts no torch to temple or blind shoulder to stone
          But in obscure fables destiny postponed.
                    Belief be the traitor to truth;
          Theories of heaven where there’s but sky.
As Pilato confirms, no more secure his throat
           At the barber’s than from my dagger.
No less one, taking strength from me, 
                   May strike the blow.
           So may the Antipas go the way of Janneus, and  
Hellenes and Herodian upon a sea of blood
           As they could this day sail on me wounds to Hell.
       Heathen tutelaries linin’ the temples as they’s stadiums and forums,
                    Base confounded with good.
Caesarea Maritima, Caesarea Philippi, Caesarea a tergo.
                           Herod leasing Cypriot copper from Rome,
                   And a maritime monopoly in asphalt 
           With Antony’s copper bitch. 
I prosper as me people, just as we are.
           What cast out Saul is timely to me.
Who to slay his ten thousands and how to proceed.
                   No bloody timeless fiction a good will
When none’s to ground.
            Nor, who sired who, like a painted gall’ry a horse pizzle.
But one father and nation same.
            But one to die for, and many deaths to come.

You can believe what you want about Jesus Barabbas,
            But if not hero it’s other’s false,
Who saw some greatness in him and bore him aloft,
            Bloody and betrayed.
 


XXIX:      SIMON KANANAIOS

 

What? Feed Gamala to the pigs?
           Let me tack a bit a gordian:
Is tref the man or man the tref? 
                  If latter he’s swill for Kuthie hogs.
So’s the nature of the two Cappies and the Datian
           What we dispatched contrast that chafin’ prick Simon Gamala.
That kitt shit fuck frumentarii will best bivouac 
                 South a sow’s ass for relics a his detail,
And the mook what said we done the same for poor ol’ Mr. G.
          Better knows where we’ll sort his cold cuts.
A chasir fed a dog be a goy fed a dog 
                  And goy to hog or dog
What before the Tenth Plague
          Muzzled to better hear Eqypt wail,
But what Charon through his doggy little counterparts 
                  Drowns out prayer and contemplation since;
          And sooner lobster eat a man as man eat a lobster,
          Or make a sow kosher.
“I would rather be Herod’s hus than his huios.”
          Was I believe Augustan’s contribute 
                  To the law in praise of his Hellenes.
So I beg your pardon, I knows where me knifes been and me mouf
           And how bofe got there by the laws.
So certain I killed Gamala or partaked with Simon and Magda,
           And the kitt detail at the tomb,
But dispensation got practicals what abidance 
           Makes morrow and morrow’s killings today’s.
For weren’t it madness come from pigs
        That madness found its way back into them.

And that’s me judgment categorical.
         What whatever fall under me sica live and die by,
The soul got a butcher cut too,
         But it all begins wif a knife, dunnit?
Or we can leave off all the fine trimmin’,
         What gives shape to nothin’ at all.
Hashem from dust what I just dump there,
               Matted like broiled cutlet,
Its lumpen loaf cut and propped abreast.
         But no, the rebbi plays at horrors,
If food what law and profane such muggin’, 
               To say kashrut to abomination even jokey.
Bread as flesh and wine as blood,
         Resemblance uncanny and not missed by many
Except when the rebbi wear it.
         He sufficient bled out
The kitts seein’ ta that.
               Souced since Martha’s,
         He in the bread so’s I balked, 
Turned it about before eatin’.
             He in the wine, 
So’s first I smelt it cut wif sweet defrutum
         Before draught.
                I mean I killed for this gambit 
But this was razor’s, bit daft ya ask me,
                Even more so with memory in its mimicry.
What he may’a said and what we may believe he said.
        If in all credulity and fair to our sacrifice,
And a sheer hanging offense deep upon it,
        Where common cutthroat might go missed.
                I’ll kill a man, and on occasion it be that man,
But don’t ask me to dine
                Like John at Makhtesh Katan,
Who as all will now forgo real for ritual
        Watched him back up a piece of the rebbi for a better look.
Them kitts got no concern devouring a bear what devoured a man
       Fresh from the arena, or a hog what devoured their mates
South a Dung Gate at rates the Levant 
       Don’t show much love for our Roman masters
With no surcharge for the slipped moneta. 
.Look. All’s I’m sayin’ is I’d rather not think of the Nazarene 
              In chops and rashers,
And I could’a done without the boozy culinary.




XXX:      ORANIUS

 
And you can tell that Capuan fuck Gatian
          Me proper animus a any punks what’s slinging stones at me detail,
Special when posted bounties for these body snatches, and a fuckin’
                 80 denarii donatio for any nasty bits a the Nazarene.
If these Jew mommas can’t keep their little Davids
          Out the road, I’ll bring Hephaistos down on ‘em to leave a mark.
Lucky I didn’t request me ordo send a writ to the speculatores.
           A mock drownin’ and a broken chalk’s a bargain 
What these whinin’ women better be gracious
           Or next it’ll be bread and the house
                            That’s goes missing.
And tell Gatian, Primus Pilus Oranius and his detail, 
                       Got nothin’ but for breakin’ kosher lumps
                  A them little bad boy yardies, and, no, tell mama same pilus
Did not gut them as such luvely unlacing seems 
           The kiss of some dowd,
Maybe a little David and Jonathan behind the temple and 
                 Before denouement.
This ain’t no war, but findin’ fat to scrape on crust be that. 
        The fuckin’ proconsul what called this fuck
Is long past time takin’ me reply
             Not that i’d be upta code, mind ya,
A gesture what ancient campfires kept for an unfortunate,
        Be he god, fief or king,
That most stately finger what
             Also finds deep to dig out stink
Or play the stop me mistress sings.
            That votive wick
Without which we deserve but to hold erect the planks 
                    What the great stride.
         That edge and straight what the G-man don’t get,
So fuck these yid hoppers
         What try knock it down
Though the whole a me and mine were but cans on a fence.
                I got fuckin’ fortune fo’ that
Like the Cumae zingie what watches me leavin’s
       For the copper I give her ghost at the stone cooch out Napoli. 
What she warned a this nascens puer auro,
               Gli umidi a bufo et clarum fulme.
No matter I gather up a dozen these vipers in me creel,
        As long as it amounts to fuckin’ Judea forgettin’ money.
And as Virgil casts the same by Cumae cunt,
        Ain’t I the literate fuckin’ guinea hopes to read in me palm 
Mugshots of  Tibi on silver stamp
                   Me little cuntie magpies bein’ attracted to shiny objects. 
             ‘Pears that fucker Gatian might know a little that Virgil claptrap, 
But ‘pears I know what the fable’s worth
        And I’ll beat any little prick I please
What might supply me moral.
              
            And what might that be? 
Come to me with a good scrap or bit and I’ll stand ya cups
        ‘Til Minerva squats on your face.
             Stuck in this shithole,
 I come to doubt what that pikey bitch tol’ me fortune at Cumae.
        With these heathen fuckin’ circling centuries anew,              
Brass ring coming round to snatch, 
        The rebbi what first in war then in peace 
Arrayed his faces?
               Justice from them sired by clouds, a golden age
A peace and love. 
        Seen any a that about. 
Unless bliss be watching Maecenas getting Maro’s suck.
          And don’t repeat to me them little shits didn’t know nuffin’
Taken aims at out casses like cans on a fence.
            But we didn’t off  none the little niggers.
That was Gamala and I’ll sign me X again to any depo
            And that fuck Gatian can va fa cula.




XXXI:      JOHN

 
We’re da t’under. We’re da boanerges. Me and me bruvver.
            What wade up to me ass like a dipper
To bite the cullies and pick a curle.
                    We’s the coliseum, 
We’re da circus I tell’s him, 
                    Him bein’ the rebbi,
            What wif audience up and down Kinneret to Bethany,
And well received, cuffed as these dollies are. 
              Angels joust with devils, don’ it.
Just spice it I says
          Wif promise of ten thousand times times ten t’ousand
What look about to be but a few. 
              Say an hundred and forty four t’ousand 
Of all tribes a Israel for that will sound like a lot.
             And monsters, swords and grave deeds,
And thrones, thrones bein’ kin to kings.
          Beasts wif eyes like spiders or honey bees,
A cricket wif a lion’s head
               What strike terror. And angels, 
          For what mook don’t puzzle over angels,
               Gorgeous fuck what wings confound,
Thus titillate and baffle wif many creatures, 
                       Not so much 
          To mock nature but suppose it.
Mix and collude with lambs and seals,
           And sniff a brimstone,
A pale horse what shades of terror
                      And dies irae,
               And t’under which I be 
                       By your own word,
Where’s I bellow to the crowd about the twelve fuckin’ tribes;
          Ruben or Gad, Asher and Dan, whatever the fuck
And as to descendant and disposition,
               Ascribed or otherwise no matter
But to pick at no cost and feel conjoined.
Fright ‘em wif death and win ‘em with vengeance.
        And lust, to get their pricks tight.
A monstrous cunny bitch with pud 
               To accommodate a great city.
Think a spite for some tart what turned down good coin,
        For a good spite soundeth sin 
And’s burned many a pretty witch
                As we be all ugly in the eye’s of the world. 
Conjure sins and armies, plagues and dragons.
        Eke horror and magic from the geomatria,
Number them fucked for fucking too much,
        What dowdies little fuck at all, 
Set them on one another, 
                As any that does, some must.
And calculate all things as colossal and immeasurable.
        What minds can’t sooth as words get in.
                Where in mind’s eye crowns on thy head like flapjacks
        And a bloody vesture and threat to eat 
                The flesh of kings and captains and horses…
Flame the very air with howls and stomps.
        Rend thy hair, hurl thyself to the ground, burn thy tunic.
                And point up and 
Evoke heroes and weep, weep like weepin’ the fuck
                Thine own shite has forsaken,
So that when properly fucked you be less than a publican.
         Threat all like Moses done at Cairo.
Start ‘em wif Gog a Magog and totty babble.
                Choke ‘em wif Hell what chokin’ gives pleasure 
        And release, heaven what they may choke anon.
               Budget for incense what stinks a burning bodies
And armageddon’s subligar.
        Advance rumor of the earthshakin’ and amazin’
With a knuck a shillings plant a couple a pugs in the pubs. 
               And heal if you must, shills bein’ expensive
                      And if extort, must be tucked off. 
And let t’under foam and broadcast brimstone to
         Spell the crowd while our gentle flock a sparrows swoops.
And white raiment 
         That fashion might kick back a bit a cabbage
And that way we make a tidy sum
         And our spectacle don’ go unappreciated.






XXXII:      JAMES

 
Twelve lictors, and me brother and me two.
       The boanerges, sons of rage, sons of thunder.
            Theos specked for loudmouths,
Is what I took it, bastardi dioscuri.
And he hanged, and still the Sea of Tiberius laps at me feet
       Where once the Kinneret.
Queer fella, our rebbi what said ‘Earthly kings tax the strangers;’
         What was me abba’s and his abba’s abba, 
          Estranged, dismantled onto stout actuariae
From a sea Tibi has never seen 
          And thunder Tibi has never heard.
Musht burst the net with tribute  
          And the dazy, bitty Nazarene leaves me but bombast and stir
                   To pry apart an Imperium
Like the cloudburst so named
           What stone’ll course.
Rage. Rage? With what?
                   Bare knuckles in the coliseum.
       Daggers in the marketplace.
              Or more speeches and stunts.
Another citizen of Golgotha,
           Tricked out in the disarray of cosmopolis.
He weren’t no great shakes at Caiaphas’s
            Caught off guard as we was in the Garden.
Him shiverin’ and stammerin’
       What for the Roman’s have done to hundreds of kinsmen a fortnight,
                         And a fortnight.
And now it’s on me what saw me house made Tibi’s,
       And the thunder Jove’s,
            By the Antipas and me traulers
Land bounty on the salt ships and canners of kitt legions.
                Now it’s on me what saw Simon and Kananaios,
And the Gamala’s slit the throats of the vigilia,
         And carry the rebbi and the lot off to the Negev for concealment.
Me to unruffle the scene, brush away the splashes of kitt blood,
        Dance about crying miracle, weep holdin’ the ma,
Consolin’ the wife, not knowing confederate to shill,
                A canopy of lies,
Ruses and me neck the only motivation.  
           And now it’s on me to compound a falsehood
Against an empire what has yet to fear the truth of arms.
          To thunder, yes, what’s not god’s thunder or a Caesar’s,
And possible because untouched by any assess or reflect
                But plot to anoint and feather the troupe.
 And now it’s on me to break loud and inchoate
           And break again that so thoroughly bloodied
It’s either wait the gallows or chew it down wif me teef.
          And in this there are multitudes insensate.
If he’s resurrect where the fuck is he, risen
                As crook’d as heaven.
The lightning from the east and his thunder.
          The destruction of the temple, not stone left on stone.
That rather conflict we can’t deliver;
                And glory we cannot own.
And as I turned upon his breast to kiss, rebbi said,
          ‘Thunder’s the turn for terror,
And the spotless deluded be army enough.
           Enough the spineless will stand up a wolf in a pen if its meat.
Where there’s impotence there’s rage and both to follow.
      Caresti, pesti, guerre , terramoti, eclissi, apocryfo,
             But at root  
Take the battle to the kitt tax. Out Judea,
      Eorum Mare to oblige. Ghosts and levies.
Both Matthew and Magda publicani wresting the same dinari
            Out the same self-righteous,
Disfigured and contorted as what eternal flames leap on.

I can thunder but from ignoble as a tax 
                 And Matthews attendance to finance.
           A scourge be sure 
                 But such footworn needs both myth and spectacle.
The kitt’s be brother without tribute.
           Apocalyptic twaddle and bloody Messiahs are at behest of tax.
A levy on bloodshed and the treasury’s spigot,
                  Render Caesar’s as chargeback from the Creator,
A vig what the temple can’t shark
            Suet above the liver and kidneys where 
                  Just our rebbi poised with his bits and pranks
Put his wick in the tallow for all mankind.




XXXIII:      LAZARUS

 

What for a ten quid owed two extra days sealed,
        To dark terror and desperate contortion,
              And me sister, his ma. 
The bloody little sadist quicker to the light
        After his conversion to the world plan,
Takes me hand and asks where’s me twelve quid
             And I says ten and he says two tugs for Wednesday and Thursday
And his missed the ap’intment.
         That’s the kinda mate he was.
A joke what leave a man in a dark hole.
        Saw the ghost a Judas Maccabee, didn’ I.    
                 And me all out to help me sisters, especially Maryam 
What need a new caravan 
          Her shiftless son cryin’ poverty but spill an estate in perfume
At me comin’ out.
          And I tells her, ‘The boy ain’t raised right 
                     What wif kitt tref in her trench,’
And he ‘Don’t talks to me ma likes dat, you fuckin’ lushy.’
                  ‘We’s about to come to blows son. 
I ain’t no spelunking scabby 
                  What can be pushed about by your fine tone.’
            So’s the boys at the pub ask
‘If he’s resurrect where the fuck is he?’  
        And what’s prominent ain’t likely to stand a round,
So I says he’s dead to me, the proper little prick,
             And try to juke a thimble ‘bout me own brush,
What me fuckin’ nephew ‘sposed to undone.  
             Too late for him to bait me into another hole,
So’s I need ta flog the legend and get me stood to drinks,
                    My calculate to be in me cups to the second coming.
I what lie there 4 days not to shit for bloke what drinks,
       But bloody pissed raw about me legs,
And our little ginger eatin’ rashers and huggin’ his aunt Martha
             Who, certain as Abraham, don’t want no kin, lush or no, to suffocate. 
What could as brat at Qumran be acted out
             In the caves above the wadi
And the messianic banquet.  And passing out loaves like the Levites,
        Miracle enough as the jetties be walking on water,
And the Maccabean priests their Essene coursing
              Descents of Jonathan and Simon.
And a cocky lad what joined arms at Palmyra
         Only to splinter into a sticks a messiahs
Of which he’s one to use me for his promote
         To hoist a few rounds all in the family.
‘Course Joe weren’t the daddy.
          Me sister havin’ a taste for cock wattle,
So many in need a the knife now, if you’s askin’.   
           Immanuel was crop a Abdes, Cohors I Saggitorium,
Panteras, the same what killed a lion in Sinai,
                   But none his brothers and sisters.
           And that may be the streak what Manny struck his rebbi
But, outcast, turned against his blood pa 
                Trained with Essenes and Sicarii at Qumran and Palmyra,
                   Flirted with arms but for the odds
And styled his angle what’s too humbly mumbly 
           To keep face to finish.
So fuck me nephew startin’ with his ma and 
                   Passion what temperance cannot slake
And us sainted temperate slake passion with booze.




XXXIV:      GATIAN
 
Eighty fuckin’ miles for what.
           To learn candlemaking from a bunch of pikeys,
To confirm Atilius ain’t gonna crack frumentraii.
          What condiments of four or five bodies 
In the Negev at Mashtesh Katan and 100  badu later
                  Sucking down goat’s eyes
Like they’s the nipples a Venus,
          But not one pap I can call the Nazarene’s.
No stir in Jerusalem around the fuck.
          Mostly from what I can puzzle
Down here mongst the heat and sheep shit, rumor is
               The messiah’s been rendered into tallow
          And bones burned with our loyal conscripts
And a sicarii named  Gamala,
         Lots a charred sites like  
                  Atilius’s intel--- cold.
And a land with no shape knows rumor for fact.
          And the gyppos, goum stands as one to the youngest,
Shout ‘sideeki’, point west, sent as we are to the foot of Mt. Sinai
          So’s I swear I can see Cleopatra’s pearlies,
And that’s that. As Jew Moses weren’t timely, 
                 And not given to pay the stars much mind,
I believe Ursinus and I’ll back out this place leaving a pikey 
         Or two on the prick of our pilae
Seein’s the sicarii ship suet and tallow regular from Cairo and Jerusalem
             Our sacrifice is not for want or cause. 
So’s I’ll say to Pilato and the beneficiarii,
                  I got here this bag a relics, charred bones most,
And a few candles you can buy with coppers from the badu.
         You can burn them to see which stinks ‘son a god’,
Or Roman or nasho. Or yard a pikey to spectro sniff
         There bein’ light in stench.
               Oh and the badus like holes drilled in the coppers 
To wear about them in bands.
          So what’s me packet do for Jew hysterics
What won’t a tax abatement and moratorium on wholesale slaughter.
          Now its sica and pugio, 
Ibn amm have no quarter. Me and me brothers against me cousins.
     And us three against the world what the pikeys say.
            
From the Castra Peregrina Mons Caelius a Roma 
         I spied on senators and Sejanus for Tibi
But after the Drusus murder, conducted meself to 
                        The centurions third frumentarii at Cyrenaica,
Then Second Traiana in Dalmatia, and to my present squat
         With the Tenth Fretensis
Just to have soothsayers and politicians undo me
         Rummaging me secrets for Fortune,
A tallow discard worn about the wick
               And no Priaps about me mourning. 
“A bowl of milk, Priapus and these cakes
          Are all you can expect year by year; 
The garden you watch is poor…”
            
             The ghost of the king of the Jews 
Almost sucked me up the devil’s ass
              For hose of a spreading rumor.
And the pikey hires, loom in me retreat,
         Abouts where Panther done his lion
No legend what held bones for his son.
               There is no sparing. 
Down the dessert to be part the perfect crime.
         Gone and promise to return
The denoue in the acolyte shift for its ephemera
               Clear as studded Leo
What Rome fuels with its onerous
         And superior arms
What forces redemption inward 
                 Bunched up with self-loathing and contempt
To be imagined in its orbit.

Four more nights of goat cheese and dessert wheat,
         And watching me back,
Then back to Fish Gate to attend both. 
          I’ll keep this black phalanx round me neck
What lay in one of the pits.
          And next I fancy a inside straight or pair of threes
I’ll raise with a chit from the risen
                 And fuckin’ see how that goes.





XXXV:      AWBASHI
 
            The bones of the dags bak.
Firangi? Yahoodi kitteem bashma. 
                 Danash blanc aamrea dashmen.
           Waste not good drift,
What grows from the sky and falls from the sand,
          Nor any god’s gift.    
                Badu’s use what Simon foretells,
Men the color of goat fat what don’t know camels,
          Look for ghosts among the creigs
Where sicarii have forged.
                 Any trespass sacrifice to allot,
Indolent taibse chasers.
        Like wild dags dig up Nazrani’s bones
                Wif not an abidance of place, so treaspass,
But damhsa toit what mocks na marbh 
              As dey go ‘bout deir lives.
Badu are at the breast of the dead,
               We pass water le solas coinnle,
By its blush we sew and eat. 
          We gad from campfeer and sun
               Wit’ our candles.
Kitteem what bones crack wif speech,
          Wif sceal and croga ded, and the likes.
And their fat hold the flame and, there, their spirit tear
               Nagat where we refresh
           For bodies what can no longer treaspass.
The flame, the eye they weep from
               And they will see us and weep to know we keep them.
And what we keep by candlelight, we muid fein coimead
           That by bond thar dia all shame shared. 

The bones of the dags bak.
               Many dags, big kitt dags,
To tear a babe from its mum,
           Each nagat and wahat they bones cinched about,
Buried bones what bak and rouse 
                      What kitt treaspass the baadya.
          And on winds their stink come to us
On the dust a the roads.
         Kitteem duisigh their dead in maks and scratches,
And the bones bak so char appear three days
                And we upon their becks 
But less a cleck a solas, fresh kill,
                Not the candy rot a Gamala,
Kitt mansters, jaws like goats, 
                        Pottered like scorpions,
                Fresh meat for our traed
         What bones they creck to the jelly.
As marrow’s to mate gan ta the heart.
         We welcome such as they live in our light
And weep wif laughter at our sceals
                 Tief inta the night.






XXXVI:      LUCIUS VITELLIUS

 
The baduz make tallow and tallow, rumor,
          The fuckin’ Nazarene up in smoke.
And what can’t be paraded must therein be true.
                 I’ll wager a year’s time we’ll have to drown ‘em 
           Like wee Caligula drowned cats.
The Nazarene, anointed for fools’ sake,
           Coalesce about each execution,
Processions run quickly to riot;
                      Flowers and huzzahs,
To stones and truncheons,
                The next day to go and women hanged in proxy marriage
To a ghost lest quim be plucked aboard the clouds.
                Pilato’s not inclined to throw them a bone 
          Nor Tibi, saving his for senators’ wives and ‘minnows.’
The Nazarene’s body would kill him off 
                  But this way, it’s the procurator’s word
Against a people wild to be done with us.
           Gatian and his uniformed frumentarii in effect ineffective,
And all petty agents and snitches.
           And the messiah’s off to plot our demise with his daddy
Whose like’s never been profiled
                     Once hid by Yosiya behind his own.
           Got a desperate and elusive improbability about it, dun’it? 
 A text a singular and harmonious worship,
                    What find to tithe at Temple only and to one god,
One flow a tax and that by way a Water Gate,
           Bent to one power,
The trannies bum rushed from schul 
                    But not the Temple trim,
           Effigies of Baal and Ashterah zerschmett
In light of Yosi’s economy 
           And all their priesthood unto Manasseh, 
                    Ephraim and Simeon as far as Naphtali.

On authority of Pilatus or Kayafa,
          On the spindly chocks of empire and bloody collaboration,
This Jesu is mine to stanch. 
                             Should I have Gatian play Hilkiah
                    And forge decrees from a honey comb 
Pulled from a bull’s ass in the Negev?
                    Have Kay read it, then
            Put pugio to those that guffaw n’ caper n’ mock,
Staved bellies propped at Temple walls.
            Of course, I could put it on Gatian.
                   Spies in uniform and trust of the people 
             Begins with fools trust even 
                   For clever and ambitious Compagnians.
Or with Pilatus, Sejanus havin’ takin’ a nasty fall 
                             Down the Germonian stairs. 
But no. Bleeding outs the proof 
             And candies zeal into amusement in the circus.
Laughing stock to be slapped about like a slave,
                    Most abhorred standard.
Pillory and a deeper bondage at Rome’s whim.
         And weakness no strength but as reason would suppose. 
Then back to Rome for laurels, heirs and a villa
              And to outlast Tibi, the Buggering Carp of Capri
And all the Second Acts the liberators can confound.

What of Carnuntum? The Datians?
         Where’s that five star butterbar now
But with his legion of nibbling fry,
         So much on his mind
That it’s migrated to his groin?
               And, Caesar engaged so with pedi scopi
And tender rupture,
         What to fear of this failure
From the Palatine or the Jew
         Henchmen of both scattered or worse.
 And their terror of words and laws.
               The Nazarene off havin’ a Turkish,
         No worse, Honi, the nozzle of god. 
One god but an economy of all gods
                Even the word stripped a that.
And Theudas head lost to further insurrection.
                 And that Yohan, heady fuck
Telling Antipas who he can hitch,
         And who that fox, 
Not to kill a prophet of Jerusalem,
         Does the ovate dis his own?
Is this John not auger to Elijah
                 A panderer to the unknown?
         What can come of this inchoate vanity?
Why fear what the warby badu render?



XXXVII:

 
In times like these a junkie can fix on a tale to tell,
         And me mine under a grape arbor 
               With nectar cut with d’frutum,
A this Nazarene what rose out his tomb 
               And slay 20 kitts and Temple Guard,
         And rejoined his force a sicarii in Palmyra---or Negev---
Where’s I paint’s ‘em as skulls and lurchin’ bones 
               A army of dead prophets. 
And what jaws drop, drop a coin or a crust.
          Does not the pesharim say the windbag?
Announce the bogdim, the C.I., the graffiti artist? 
          And what more his second comin’
A fortnight to drive Rome into the Sea,
                With a army a hideous golem
Shaped that night dancin’ naked with his mistress 
         And disciples in the Garden.
And them’s all agog like with tales a 
             Naked beauties and extra-terrestrial blobs 
                  And thens I stop,
Claimin’ failure to arouse precise and clear
         The latter transpiration knowin’ full well
Me messiahs and monsters. 
         Then’s what I hear the clink,
It’s off wif me saga and many a poor man’s 
                     If not wiser more entertainin’ 
             At his wheel or net next day
Contemplatin’ out loud some bloody bloke risin’ from the grave
         And openin’ a palace or two to lootin’
And gettin’ a taste about the other half
                   Out the grasp of the Temple guards and beneficiarii.  
         And after a fortnight they’s be ready for another banter
About brave sicarii in our midst
         What got Herodian neck at their blades
But by rumor and hoax I flourish
                   And keeps a furrow in me veins.	
				   


XXXVIII:      MARY MAGDALA

 
Me devi vindicated as the only seer 
                  Ain’t bane by bogus Armageddon.
            Profit though no quake rocks the tabloids
                  Or strat and angle what they peril their very rectums, 
Those what can’t adept 
                             The catch end a prophecy
                  The guard got report a bashy in the garden.
             Pissed and stoned we was
                And sure me rebbi nibbles his chicken
And certain I be on the turf wif
            Jimmy Zebedee gruntin’ over me.
They first took the colic runty what Jesus fucked,
                But he naked splashed over the Kidron 
            When Judas off’d ‘It ain’t ‘im.’
This is no mimsy show we collaborated here.
             Place and time be this here drunken serendipity,
                           So’s I told Jesus go 
                      Knowin’ full Pilato’s vex 
At havin’ to remove his medallions from the Temple 
            And baby sittin’ one bed time story a deliverance  
While sittin’ on the latest hoped for;
                     And as we are to sparrows
The likes a he to a Pharaoh. 
            And Tut Pilato galled? 
                 ‘Trigger happy’ ain’t the word for that guinea fuck.
And the Nazarene had outlived his usefulness,
             A more value dead
As otherwise we cool at every forego a the headlines.
                   And what better theater than Passover.
        Gotta be, mon ami, if be fortune a bit more democratic
As the point of King Alexander’s kopis schooled us.
               Better to die for a cause so as not to outlive it.
And Yeshsuah’s bootlicks dissolve into their own roots, 
               Conserving their energy
Just as he give out to me; 
               Gobble lamb, sandaled and gird, stave in their left hand
Frighted by the serious turn what things took. 
          But those shits won’t leave the larder to a lady
As who remains can stamp destiny into denarii 
               With all this Yosa gobblygook.
Where in the law are priests held blameless 
                      Profaning the Sabbath? 
               Or Ahimelek what inquired Davy’s blokes last split the hedge
Though snuffin’ down about a comrade’s crack still 
               Caught god’s ration a day old shewbread,
As the procurator’s torch befall the rebbi stealing Herodian corn
          So as to what good whatever law he imagines
               Found lacking a Roman law and the Temple
           Except what the scutica mitigates.
I can blither soul and spirit and mind,
          Aeon and oblivion
 Good as the rebbi,
          Much as any fishmonger or stick pig.
One can traipse about Galilee footsore,
                       Leaving words to the wind.
           Or better a corpse that grave words be for attribute.
Better yet, rumor of a corpse 
                      That grave words be incarnate,
                Greater than their vessel
That its seed may abide in the womb of its enemy.
       I’ll not let me matrimony slip
No matter how many declare father
       And the haploid condition fabricated and far fetched.
                 Bile may respire to wine
But most custom makes the universe
         And uncommon words be of common things.
Ain’t I the first to claim sight
         And who thought a that, 
                 They not yet adduced the hangin’
Those what come round to the bump the risin’ caused.
          Next be his image on tunics
And his name in books.
                 Oh, and I see’d his vision,
I see’d his after looks and incite others do the same. 
          And ain’t I dispose a Gamala and spare us a fee.
There’s fair takes for service rendered
          And when others fled stayed too defend mine
Much assailed as nothing at all
                 And at risk none the swinging dicks take
           To show what means violets shrink. 
And to him who has ears, there’s bris and moil
         But then again here’s me dagger.  
I am the lioness, I am the heirloom
                  What saw as Devorah,
         To strike as Yael
                  Though millions be at arms
To sear a hole in the stars.
                 To break away his grasp,
         That was and is not.
                  No mistake.
          I loved him dear. But 
Not our addled rebbi to this purpose
         As what I have set in motion.




XXXIX:      JAMES, The Nazarene's Brother

 
What sack! Pitching his shit in synagogue 
         What every cod and cunt knew 
                    He was a part time board banger 
Makin’ the shice up as he went.
         ‘Fuck ain’t that Mariam’s boy, the carpenter,
The brodder of James, Joseph, Juda and Simon.
          And are not his sisters Pazit and Ximena
                  Even now preparing the evening meal
From the offal a honest men.”
          Who was he kidding and now the family business
                  For what credit abides ones’ caught the eye of the frumentarii
          In these Roman troubles.
Me brother shanked death to me mum’s potluck 
          And so, tender and ladle, death is nab we’ll trade in
And franchise his omens and sooths
          And what faults in others, fascinate in him.
James Little, Simon Peter, Matthew line up, 
                  And me brother’s tottie Magdala,
          And this Saul what sees a sinecure 
And more than one widows stash a gold talents
          And fasces in relief what harvested 
Less back and blade but best by 
                  Sweet muck and flattery;
What he for lack a spit and guile can’t fancy or forge. 
                  Thus me and me brodders’ll feed our ma 
On her dead toddy’s blood 
         And his sisters what husbands fled
Lest Pilate have done with us lot
                  Like we’s a litter a Palatines
What among brood bruise rage and wealth.
          Ought but a smutty gesture I toss the procurator
                    Atop me purple 
And but we have the boy’s ditherings 
          And articles for household tally
What to build our franchise
                    Or quick sale and leave 
Blood, sweat and tears to the martyrs.

This Saul told don’t abide the law. But
          Is what he was, me brodder was first a Jew.
Not right, but right by the law and if say
           And if say not right be the law,
Let this epileptic find employ otherwise.
               Its jots and tittles if we ‘s to thrive
To the end a us breathers a law,
           What nod all the blokes want a piece a the boy.
Still take this to the Gentile
                Ain’t gonna please up to Moses.
Maybe no animal what gorge others
           But foreskin not taken at pap?
A test what Herakles would not submit.
          Come ‘ere, Herakles. I’m gonna peel your willie
And tan a bridle and set a chaps,
                 What you ‘spect the size 
             A the fluttery Gentile franchise be wif that.
Or them’s that like their pig straight off the bonnie. 
             Or randy pagans what can't keep niddah
And piss in their wives what still at blood. 
         Thoughs I suspect a bit a twist 
Might bring ‘em in and their coin
             But all at temple or none at all.




XL:      PAUL OF TARSUS

 
I say on that very day
                  When Yeshua was hanged
         I was cold cocked from me horse
To eureka this morbus comitialis;
                   Make it pay off,
           Rather wasted filth and froth on a zealot
                   Groveling in the dirt than what
       Makes appear false witness among the multitude
              Or possessed that the crowd tithe but to leave.
                   This against none credible in its infirmity;
Felled below Damascus 
          My privy vision
The master’s goad and light, the scent a new combed hay
                   And whatever ascribe the divine
What was once debit and affliction.
          Wandering the wide market as I do
                   And the Nazarene’s commonage with publicans.
And have not the kitts by subjugation 
          Fed a great hunger beyond Judea,
Herodians content forget what Rome circumscribes.  
          An empire of lambs good flogged 
                   With stock sticks in advance
So that my lash seem a refuge.
         That very day when they hanged the Nazarene
And left this light to suck me forth, to contend.
                   As a Pharisee and citizen I rose, 
          Now to rise in the world
That the kitts have girdled and mingled.
          Rhetoric better exploited run 
Like beeswax preserve a mappemunde.
                     What better the zealous and learned convert 
          When all aspire to such
To abridge the weights and scales a fornication and money
          And from this a gathering to convey me torment.
To tease Yeshua from the Law
            And make custom from a corpse
What Rome adulterates as draft for ambition.
                       For a temple of hardened stone 
Will not bear a likeness a Tiberius. 
            But a watery church bears all, bearing nonetheless,
Even to destruction open to franchise
                  In the cast of far flung mustard.
            And thus came to me as I came to salvation,
To make Yeshua and his laws rootless, 
                  Adrift but in me and subject.
            Honi rain dance second coming as some stall.
                  To push upon and wedge me 
            Bill between the door and the lintel. 
Others satiate with barbecue that their bellies rejoice 
            And their bowels huzzah at finding him.
       And no knife to wattle. 
My prospects turn on this cult and who better than I
                      That’s puzzled it with goings and comings.
I’ll buy time sword or no,
           But likely no but to stay kitt censure and my own withering,
But apocalyptic terror inchoate and exotic 
                       That its contemplation be submerged
               In the pleasure of its depiction.

These other blokes, his fuckin’ brood and his fawnin’ lot a errand boys, 
                      Could, mind you, be trouble
               So be me last pogrom?
Do I counsel their ascent, objects of worship,
                       Before I ascend 
              Their eyes beyond the sting of me incense.
This report from beneficiarii Lucius, X Fretensis, out of Caesarea
              Compiled by one Gatian Alcimus Consus, 
          Let’s see,
We got Bartholemew, sod buster, and a host of fishpeddlers,
                    And Matthew, a tax collector 
Franchised to Zacchaeus.
                     Ah, much loved that load. 
              Raffle off the nails and lest a pig’s lean
For a kitt legate, house bid to the vultures on that meat.
                 And a couple of sicarii, Simon and Judas,
The latter the bank off the books
          Or at least juggling two sets I’ll wager
                     As between law and lamb.
And Stick Pig Peter earnin’ swag from the Gamalas;
          Distractin’ the angels from their Melgarts and silver Tibis
              And not one a Roman citizen nor Pharisee. 
They don’t know the kitt spooks do;
             Plenty here to throw down
                   To extort me way in
To Fortune I never met
            By the boy who is without sin.

Me, I’ll evangel a corpse, the one true god
            Better to speak through me
Wif his mocked and candied peace and love
            For one a anything’s 
As much as most minds want forborn.
           And what these janky rubes know 
About reverse engineerin’ an empire? A hegemon
           What fucks wif the whole world,
Profanes gods, mixes nature,
           Whets emptiness wif luxuries, 
                  And force a arms and murder.
            Unheard lunacies---
The stronger given as the wiser
            So’s killin’ extorts truth confess its kinship.
                  Great armies from shepherds grow 
Such that if there’s a regal throat to be cut 
             It’s our own.
        And ascend among what kleptocrats crop us,
And lease us out their own concerns and polity.
         To look beyond the morrow
                  That there be one,
Not petty gonifs and their sage what take no thought
         But spill widow’s fortunes in debauch
When there’s a world plumbed and lined 
                  To be plucked.
Aye. Prime a second coming on the first,
         And species so devalued drops on beggars in bags.

I’m Saul of Tarsus. I’m a fuckin’ Pharisee and a god damned Roman citizen.
         I shall have my kingdom.


 
 

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For information about live performances of The Canaanite Gospel
see our Live Performance online flyer.

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