Sanitized Christ

Give me the sanitized christ
the hands clean christ
the Arian, pretty
not dirtied christ
who smells of clean baby beds
no crying he makes
and starry angels
the flannelgraph christ with his Roman nose
and the palms not showing

because the love
is too painful
the surgery necessary
by hands rough and soiled
is anesthesialess
and I cannot accept
the truth
be told
or swallow the elemental medicine down.

Carnage

"They eat each
other
here,"
I heard the whisper bouncing off
sterile walls,
the sacred walls of orthodoxy and
contempt, and I thought they meant
something like the Lord's Supper or
the Eucharist, if I weren't so better than they,
but that wouldn't be right
--not eat each other, that would be eat Him,
but I distinctly heard "each other,"
and I'm not even sure who whispered it, because no one was looking at me, it was just there, ready to be absorbed in the carpet going down the aisle.

Cannibalism
from Spanish Canibalis, name (as recorded by Christopher Columbus) of the allegedly cannibalistic Caribs of Cuba and Haiti.
Oral Sadism

Vultures feed on the dead,
but the God's children feed on the living.

I took my seat, ready to bend my knees
sure to become one of them
who craves soul, and blood,
and a bit of reputation.