I won’t give it up!

My pie in the sky absurdist wild imaginations

That just couldn’t happen

Not a hamster’s chance in hell

All unrealistic lunacy; fantastic, imbecile

And only the soft and stupid people need believe it

Nothing to shout about as practical hard-headed

The world’s a savage place

No room for wimpy stories

Christ hung up, dripping blood, his eyesight flooded, marred

By a tearing bleed a searing Crown of Thorns had ripped across his brow

When lately Pilate politicly had thrown him

To the leaders and the people, as their celebration gift

A sop and an excuse for non-proliferation

A comforter to quell impending violence

The crowds venting and angry – on a fingers’ edge

A sop which rocked not cradles, sung no lullabies

(Although its gladest woes have done so many, many times)

A world, by its foundations, taken, fully somersaulting

Into renewal, by one eschewed, of sweet, sweet manner

That Love which set the ducks up; and then mercy cried the river

Our best event is rescuing all history

To other than it had been otherwise

Had we Barabbas lifted on the tree instead,

And hanging miserably

Between the thieves; angry and unrepentant dying,

Cussed at details of soldiers, bantering bonhomie

Tumbling some ivory dice, their spears beside them laid

Till end of duty recess;

Following indolently somewhat routine tasks

With always a side lookout for loot that can be reived

But it was Christ who’d hung here, like a gutted calf

Dangling, as in old butchers’ shops of Saturdays

Carnal and brutal; savage; shock unnoted, just as eyes

Politely recognise meats hooked high-hanging and accept

The scandal of the business, outrage turned away from fact

Through lameness bleeds to tameness; mediocre, ordinary

(Although the KJV stays raising grandeur with huge valency -

But matters nothing currently.)

So lofty are we liable to condemn as fluff and lightweight

A sorry soppy tale that schools sad soppy sorry clowns

Not one small inkling measures up with hard reality

Another trivial narrative rivals for vanities

Shelved by his own and best success, his blessings yet reach through

The messed crusted deposits of his basement floor;

His power not known to proud Assyria, nor Egyptian bands

Whose fear impressed such horror on Isaiah, as they trod

Armed, immaculately shod, resplendent elegant violence,

Matchless encroaching war machines as lean as ravening packs

Of lionesses; fired, and tooled-up, to take worlds apart

Advance on Jerusalem intent to reap mayhem

Swords ready to spit Hebrew babes thrown high in air

Crush broken little ones with laughter - it’s a romp

And slice off women’s breasts, the tongues, and noses, of emaciate men

Ecstatic Bacchanal a grand remorseless celebration

Contemptuousness in arrogance destroyers on the lurk

Our lives more humane, our manners not now bent

On murder; prefer a gentleness; though once we butchers

Made revels perpetual, wars which blooded metal

But we were worsted early by a lowly Crucifixion

That shame became us

Into the mix in-drifted since a waft detritus

A fellowship of misdirect for preaching self-direction

Caress of proud assumed deflective self-sufficiency.

Still hangs, sustains however, all - on long acknowledgement

Of hanging high love’s victory

Him strung there who makes each of us our lives worth living

Ours is a simple case, we have foregone counting our blessings