Love on the Streets: Selected and New Poems

The Stations of the Cross

• 41 the Stations of the cross Jesus is a frail sorrowing girl. Her 12-foot hands are too large, they must be carried by another. They lift, as she walks, her pink-floral, old-lace gown and patchwork quilt that keeps the cold out. Around her neck is tied a man’s orange-plaid tie and from her waist 2 flashlights, a can of pork and beans, spoon and fork, a plate with her face on it clanging and banging as she walks Jesus is a hobo, a junk man a blackbottom coffee pot hangs between his legs, it is difficult to walk with baggies of water hanging off your wrists, your huge head, your extra pair of socks drying on your violin, your bow of broken twigs and old string, Jesus is the Bride of Spring she wears a new tuxedo over her soiled wedding gown and her old shoes follow yearningly the Giant Fish of a Cross wafting through the room wagging its big head in the rafters and he falls trying to carry it, a tree that keeps turning into a woman on his back who cries will he rise? Jesus is a small trembling boy who must have help to carry it, Jesus is standing before his Mother, he sets the table, he will make her coffee. His body is growing tiny wings and Veronica a famous star, so wealthy, so beautiful wipes the Lake from his face and he gives it up into her hands, falling as the women cry and will he rise? and will he rise? and will he rise? Jesus is • 42 stripped of his garments, he is after all a bony old woman nailed to the Fish whose scales cut her thin skin, whose penis is broken twigs and old string whose soft belly stretches and moans for you, my mind she is crying is trying to tell it to follow a 12-foot stuffed puppet with blood and the lame tied to its waist who prays at my feet who drums their tin cans and will she rise? and will she rise? and will she rise? am I born to die? to lay my body down and lose? I can hear many confusing conversations between the stained glass fragments of my body floating East and West and North and South and my legs which are pushing down through the clouds, this Evil Ceiling and many women are here beholding from afar my raggedy tragedy singing and did I rise? and I did rise? and did I rise? —Good Friday, 3–4 p.m., April 8, 1977, Albion, California, for The Bread and Puppet Theater, Plainfield, Vermont, 1974 ...