NO GOOD FRIDAY FOR US ?

No Good Friday for us?

Not one clean sheet to write on.

My scavenged rags – odorous and mildewed.

I write for myself and the dregs:

the putrefying humanity; for I am of their number,

 though they take not to me.

We are the outcastes, the scum who do not belong,

not even to each other.

We have no title, stand under no claim,

for we have no standing: the offscouring of humanity,

the offal of cheapest flesh.

Despised by all, for we have lost all:

goods, friends, repute and culture.

The poor look at us and laugh,

the rich look and see nothing.

even the dogs disdain a bark.

We are brought low; our sins have found us out,

and we are cursed, marked out for living death.

Only total death is our relief, and it is long in coming,

till we bear the torture of our disgrace.

We crave for torturers,

those heartless, unthinking, holy and righteous ones,

steeped in sanctity, who know the good

and tell us we are evil.

We long for them to make us face us our sin,

tear us apart, spit on us, cover us with their holy offal,

for by that token we are saved from nothingness,

awarded recognition and targeted as things.

Saints die, and their death is deemed an event of honour,

looked ahead to, as they stood in the corridor of time,

anticipating the eternity of glory.

We worship them not,

for no sanction was granted us to do so.

But where is our death?

Oh, but death is too great an honour.

Death denied, we are in hell already:

bereft of sunlight, darkness our drink,

the husks of pigs a meal too sumptuous;

for we are lower than pigs and rats,

sicklied through by blackest plague.

Is there no Good Friday for us? Oh, but

Good Friday is for sinner-turned-saints,

which we are not, and cannot be,

for we are lower than sinners,

and nothing may descend further than our nothingness.

The mistake of creation, the uncouth freaks

that were not intended, with no place amid

the myriad galaxies, unloved of every heart,

the ugly laughing stock of beauteous angels.

No Good Friday for us?

Be there no man or beast or dead wood sliver

or grain of sand to breathe with us our darkness,

to share our despicable state, or taste

the shame of our condition and, sharing, spread

their disgrace like a mantle over ours,

and ours be gathered unto theirs?

Be there no one to stoop so low

and be one of us,

to give us a Good Friday without

a right of our presuming?

Be there no one? No one at all?

Oh, my nothingness, my utter, utter emptiness!

Only by a deeper emptiness can mine redeeméd be .

Be there such nothingness, Oh, another emptiness,

the Totally Other Emptiness... to fill mine?  

Did I hear a voice say: “I am He”?

                                                          

                                                                 - Mervyn Carapiet