Take This

Take this, my body – break it – 

and this, my blood – to drink – 

thin, like rain.

In any ceremony of betrayal,

in the consecrated songs of flesh,

the fat-cheeked faithful, the jaundiced,

the lost and unredeemed, all the penitent

and straggler souls go fumbling

in their purgatory.

Take this ruin of heaven, its portents
foretelling, predicting, prescient,
runes read over wine and bread,
meagre crusts multiplied by hunger
and multitudes.

We have given
names to the prophets
named their first coming, their second,
named gilt-winged angels descending
to the shores of seas and lakes,
arms wide to gather us.

Take human frailty,
the gnawing doubt we foster;
our abrasive fear brings promise to its knees,
lays bare the flaws in everything, lays them
to rest under dismal headstones,
drags down every hope
of resurrection.

Prophets, saviours and messiahs:
the gods that send them are stone
or, carved into stone, idols for us to worship,
while every immanent being made mortal
has to show its scars, peel back frail flesh
to prove itself divine.

Take this, our contrived piety,
take our invented devotion,
demand too much as evidence,
demand so little…

…we might as well worship
a pound of cheap meat,
the weight of a human heart
pulled into a face, a grimace,
blank eyes staring,
skin and bone.

© BH, 2018

---

It was the pound of cheap meat pulled into a face - a quote from Pinkybrae - that begat this. Then the pondering on ‘take this, my body’, then a jaded look at the nature of human faith in these dismal times. Ho hum!