The Song of the Lord of the Gallows

The Song of the Lord of the Gallows

Must love be as fragile as those anemones which drank the blood of Adonis when he was castrated and slain?

     Is love just a hallucination perceived by the fainting soul?

     Are we no more than shadowgraphs of the earth’s secret fears? Should we be ashamed of the pain that stiffens our necks, as we watch the Shadow growing ever bolder in his domination, down there on the ground?

      What shall the next century’s domestic violence professionals have to say, concerning the persecutions which have been committed in the name of morality? If we cannot learn to love without crushing, what can be the object of any moral code?

      As I hang from the gibbet, my Moral Majority coat gets ragged. The crows are pecking at it in order to get to the breadcrumbs which were in the pockets all along, even when I was eating my 700 Club Passover meal. But why am I hanging from the gibbet? Do you really believe that when I broke through that wall it was really to get rid of the breadcrumbs?

      Mary Magdalene has gotten the better of me. She’s made me see, when I condemned her style of loving, I left the rose on the vine and filled my pockets with what were only the thorns. I look down from the gibbet and see a fox, who waits for the rotting gallows rope to break.

      “I am the one who got you dishonorably discharged from the Salvation Army,” laughs the pretty little red fox. “Don’t you realize why I had to prosecute you, on the grounds of “Giving Information to the Enemy?”

The Hearth of Love's Fiery Furnace

When I was bitten by the fox whose heart was a butterfly, I was changed to a bull, who ran through the fields without reason. I had already been driven to madness by fear of the guillotine, when I encountered your picadores. Maddened by the arrows in my shoulders, I continued to pursue you. When you stepped away, and then drove the moment of truth into my heart, my desire was only inflamed.

♱♱I sought to gore the Lady, but the sword was already embedded in my heart. There is only one enchantment in nature that can reduce a man to being such a fool.♱♱It may have been my blood which was shed when Adonis was castrated and slain – but love may not be as fragile as those anemones which grew upon the hill of sacrifice. It is not love which is fragile, but we.

♱♱We still have not understood, it has been our cruelty to each other which has brought on the Last Judgement. We are only spared the pain of the fire, because love has seduced us to believe this burning ground is Paradise.

♱♱And so we shall look down upon the Reality Theatre, where Beast and Harlot burn each other at the stake. If only they could manage to forgive each other, the world might continue until another day.

While the world burns in the Last Judgement it deserves, we temper each other’s souls on the hearth of Love’s fiery furnace. We, who were more proud than any in the face of our Creator, are the only ones who know the dark secret for which we must expiate.

♱♱And so, in order to expiate for the pride which causes us to question our Creator, we are condemned to live.