PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

We woke to hear the sound of wailing tears,

of Neaniskos' mother and her friends.

(And, after all, he was her only son.)

A Roman officer, driving his team

and chariot just at the dawn's first light,

spotted the body where we had hung it;

and drawing near, thought that he might be still

alive.  Of course he was not:  such was our

efficiency.  The Roman placed the corpse

upon his chariot and walked beside

the horses, leading them, slowly, toward Nain,

where he, himself, had planned to come that day.

The battered visage was too terrible

to look at; an extensive bruising had

purpled, and now began to blacken.  Soon

the rottening of his flesh would release

a ghastly stench upon the town.  As his

mother wailed and wailed, a bier was obtained,

along with a clean shroud to cover him

so that the ugliness of what he had

deserved should not offend those who must mourn

the loss of him.  Quite understandable---

a mother's sorrow for her deceased son;

who was a queer, a pervert, a pansy;

but none of that could make him less her son.

And she, already widowed, now bereft

of Neaniskos must live out the years

remaining to her utterly alone,

except for her neighbors and friends in Nain.

Of course, that is a plaintive tragedy,

but Neaniskos sin against the ways

of normal men and women brought about

his death and his own mother's terrible

bereavement.  All of Nain offered sincere

condolences to her:  even from that

stern Roman officer now visiting;

whose wielded sword had brought much death

upon the enemies of the Roman

people---whose chattel property we were,

servants to their empire and profit schemes.

But this one, who had laid our victim on

his chariot and brought him back to Nain,

did not display the boisterous haughtiness

of Roman conquest and its arrogance

that we, all those like me, had learned to hate

with righteous anger that seethed to restore

the God-given greatness to our homeland.

The Roman made strange remark:  he said---

"I have heard good news from a friend with whom

"I have long served, and into whose hands I

"would trust my very life.  He has told me

"that, now, a mighty prophet ministers

"in Israel, and speaks words of new life,

"new joy, and new hope in this troubled world;

"and that he may be on hs way to Nain."

That unimaginable hypocrite:

to say this world is troubled---all of its

troubles have been brought upon it by Rome.

God hates Rome, and the mincing queers who prance

through back alleys, and inns of ill repute;

the bloody hypocrite, and his damned words.