That Night, You Said To Matthew, "He Had Talked With Me"

Matthew, your limp-wrist sympathies you ought to shelve---

those words that promise blessedness to all the meek;

is that the kind of Kingdom's rights we came to seek?

Just as you are, I was one of the chosen Twelve:

the Master granted me, too, powers, and talked with me---

and did not much proclaim what I was truly like:

snake in the grass (that pagan's words), well posed to strike,

most often when I heard how His Words disagree

with what I think of craven Rome, politically,

and my conservative, constant, morality;

like when I dared appeal to common wisdom for

money, wasted on ointment, that could feed the poor.

He never wanted my comments in opposition.
Lady, if you dispute some rule that He has spoken,

stand firm, and do not let yourself be bent or broken;

but be possessive of your independent soul;

make your rights sure---for them you are responsible;

but have your say, and make your way, not part but full,

before you lose your Apostolic pedestal.

 

I seem to hear His words of me, Son of Perdition . . .

 

Now go, and put your sandals on your reeking feet;

I need no more of your self-righteous talk's conceit.

 

I need to toss these silver coins in one broad fling.

 

and then I need to find a place where I can swing . . .

 

Starward

[*/+/^]

Author's Notes/Comments: 

1 Corinthians 11:23; Matthew 5:5; Acts 1:6; Matthew 10:1, 2-42; Vergil, Eclogues, III; John 12:4-7 and 17:12; Matthew 27:5.

 

I chose Matthew as the addressee of Judas' rant, as a way to allude to, and honor, the late Matthew Shepard, brutally murdered for his orientation in 1998, not quite twenty-two years old.  Lines twenty-one and twenty-two also allude to shabby insults toward Matthew Shepard; and also show Judas's ignorance of the event in John 13:3-5.

 

In keeping with the model of Judas' personality, the seventh line shows his refusal to acknowledge Vergil as a poet; this is my fictive speculation.  In the fourteenth line, Judas insults Matthew; again in keeping with my chosen model of his personality.

 

The seventeenth line contains a wink to my acquaintances among the Rightsers.

 

I apologize for the shameless pun in the last line.  I just could not resist.

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