Be Sure to Look Away

A poem for Good Friday

Formatting-wise, this is best viewed on a desktop computer

Be sure to look away from the cross

Today we sit in silent reverence
                  solicit delicate renditions of grief
Today we speak of suffering in sentimental whispers

Be sure to speak only in the abstract
      about love and hurt and justice and mercy
make sure the moment is beautiful
do not let this romanticized sorrow
     give way to the ugly horror of trauma.

Do not give it physicality
Do not ask what rusty nails did to his wrist
If he could still clench his fingers, or if they were
reduced to just mangled dangling flesh

Do not wonder how long the hours must have felt
      or what that kind of torture does to a person's psyche
      what he had been reduced to as he rasped his final breath

Be sure to avoid such topics
      they are not for polite company
      they grate against comfortable suburban piety
      they are not the Spiritual Experience™ you seek

Be sure to look away, or you may find
the answers you came with are wholly insufficient

Your sermons and expositions and certainties
feel hollow and trifling when confronted
with a pain that isn't poetry.

When this is what happens to the body of Christ
you might start to think it inappropriate 
that we use the same phrase for a social club 
that prays and sings and eats and carries on
with barely a thought for the crucified ones

You may suddenly realize this divine fire
you're clinging to is more frightening and mysterious
than checking the boxes of a catechismic formula

You must not ask who could endure such suffering
or you might find out just how many
     people have been screaming 

     if you'd only had ears to hear.


Be sure to look away from the cross
      or you may find Christ looks back at you

      and you might see all the others, too.