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The Judas Scroll

The Judas Scroll

Sometimes the night is laden with
guilt. The nails curse me. The
mob applauds like children
scrambling for the safety of

their lies. Your eyes curse me,
follow me to hell, hold you to
a lie that never lets go. You,
out of the night, trapped and

free. A twin edged dream of
glory with twelve foundations,
always staying outside the
bones of life, preferring the

ghosts of things past.
Take this mystery, the body
and the blood, for ignorance.
The priests have prayed everything

away, hiding your face, your
Words, but not the keys. From
the heart of their denial, they
built walls, discarded your

brain and learned from riddles,
pure rules for the ages, yet
that didn’t save your
hands, your eyes. Nothing

will last but your heart.
Always after you slept, you
ignored the visions stalled near
the cluttered mornings. When

you were near these fragments
and heard the clap of history,
you heard it as different
sounds. No man could shake

these notions. A place without
end or beginning. Nor could
it avoid the dream that survived
from sleep, a ghost from the

cosmos calmly walking through
stone, soaring over our minds,
a true sadness blowing out
of the past. Sometimes

when you’re tired of this,
take your bones, gather
in the whim of gypsies and
throw different dice from

different hands. Take fate,
the planets, pure chance. A
new skin primarily. Change
everything. Take your luck

and mine. Change everything.
On firmer ground, you could
climb or sing, or follow the
raging wind. Yet here you

lie in an uncovered grave,
what riddle can we make of
that? Spend your heart, you can
replace that. Use your tongue

as a sword, Destroying what is
different in all of us. Spend your eyes.
Curse me once. Spend your dreams
and your songs. Run like the wind,

like the night. Hide from the beginning
and the end. This is the hell you said
we’d never see. Hide from the sound
of my voice, the sight of my eyes.

Forget the sheep. They will only
remember the riddles, Not your
laugh and your heart. But You
wouldn’t listen, and I could not

stop. The earth trembled in our hands.
History spun on a cross and fed on your
carcass. Yet, it did not free my soul.
Somehow you ended inside me. I

was you dying. My blood spilled
with your blood. My flesh rotted
with your flesh. Outside, snow
white mountains blackened the

 earth. Flowers died, deserted the
gardens, dissolved the rivers.
A brittle skeleton the ended
ignobly, vulgar and condemned.

Mark Conte, CCC, 1986

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