Rose Petals in a Dark Room
I walk in a mastery of the night and light
my money changers walk behind me
they are fools like clowns in a shadow of sin,
they're busy as bees as drunken lovers,
Sodom and Gomorrah before the salt pillar falls.
In a shadow of red rose pedals
drunken lovers walk changing Greek and Roman
currency to Jewish or Tyrian money --
they are fools, all fools, at what they do.
Everyone's life is a conflict.
They are my lovers and my sinners
I can't sleep at night without them
by my bed or the sea of Galilee.
Fish in cloth nets are my friends and my converts.
I pray in my garden alone; while all the rest
who love beside me sleep behind their innocence.
The rose is a tender thorn compared to my arrest.
and soon crucifixion.
It is here the morning and the night come together,
where the sea and the land part;
where the building crumbles
and I trust not myself to them.
I am but a poet of the ministry,
rose petals in a dark room fall.
Everyone's life is a conflict.
But mine is mastery of light and night
and I walk behind the footsteps of no one.
-2007-