Judas Trees
Judas hanged himself, we’re told,
But from which tree in the potter’s field ?
Some say Elder, pagan and bold,
And some say Cercis bore his yield.
The Elder is likely the tale that’s old,
Though the Bible has the facts concealed.
Cercis may be a later rod,
So did logistics bring its birth ?
For the Elder presence is rather odd,
As a shrub which lack both height and girth –
So the one who kissed the face of god
Must sway just inches from the earth.
The True Cross
The Romans built their crosses
Out if any local wood –
Roughly sawn and bluntly joined,
They needn’t be too good.
Growing full of nail-holes
And bloodstained, as a rule,
When used and used again, until they rotted,
Then hacked-up for fuel.
If Jesus ever lived, if Jesus died
Upon those wooden piers,
Those planks would carry-on their work,
Outlasting him by years.
Some say cedar, some say cypress,
Relics for a coronation.
All are wrong – the Cross was built
From our imagination.
The Fig-Tree’s Revenge
Fruit was demanded, out of season,
Before the wasps had arrived.
A prophet cursed you, for no reason,
Except that he was denied.
Why so passive-aggressive that day ?
Why was he out to settle a score ?
Or did he just take your life away,
To be a metaphor ?
Was it power or wine made him drunk ?
Yet, after his magic tricks,
The Romans took your withered trunk
To make them a crucifix.
Grave Goods
The ancient Egyptians filled their tombs with stuff,
As a trust-fund for the afterlife –
Finest robes, spices and jewellery,
Not to mention a mummified wife !
But it wasn’t just the practice of royalty,
The need, it seems, is in the bone –
Even the oldest and simplest folks
Rarely buried their friends alone.
I rather think you would smile at the thought,
How you’re dressed in your finest suit –
As if you would need to impress St Peter
Or grease some angelic palms with your loot.
But then, it’s only symbolic stuff we’ve included,
Stuff you would never be without –
Family photos to show to Jesus,
While he takes a drag on your favourite snout.
Even the pins in your hip, I guess,
And the handles of your coffin, and the nails.
And the memories, of course, that are left within your mind,
For beguiling the cherubs with your tales.
Not that you believed in that, of course,
Nor we who lower you into the ground,
But it just feels right, to think you have them with you –
The same urge those archaeologists found.
Stubborn & Rebellious
In reply to Deuteronomy 21:18-21
I’ve always hated that verse –
To take a disobedient, wayward son,
A glutton and drunkard, and maybe something worse –
And to drag him to the elders, and call on ev’ryone
To muster at the gate of the town
To take up stones, and put him down.
But I recently heard a theory
That asks what parents would willing follow ?
After all, it costs them so dearly,
And any sense of piety must leave them hollow.
How extreme must their son appal
For such a code to be needed at all ?
Surely this was only spoken
To deal with the psychopaths among them ?,
The ones who threatened until they were broken,
The monsters and parasites dressed as young men.
How else could they protect their town
When a rabid dog was skulking around ?
But even setting the problem of evil aside,
Is this the best defence ?
Why must the Lord make the parents decide
When enough is enough ? It beggars all sense –
It’s just too cruel for anyone
To have to denounce their troubled son.
But honestly, I have my doubts,
That this is what is meant by it at all –
And if it is, it needs to spell it out,
Just why they’re thrust against the wall,
To stop the zealots stoning ev’ry child
By judging surliness as ‘running wild’.
Thank goodness we ignore such spite,
And wonder why we keep such books around.
For there’s a psychopath, alright,
But he’s not the frightened kid upon the ground –
Rather, he’s the one with crazy eyes
Who gladly casts the first stone from the skies.
Missing Keepsakes
“Upto 2000 artefacts are believed to have been stolen from the British Museum over the last ten years.”
– Curator’s Quarterly
Five-odd million artefacts,
Or maybe twice as many,
Filling dusty drawers and racks,
From Hull to Abergavenny.
Boxed-up, stacked-up, locked-up long,
With rusty coins and broken gems,
And set by law to house this throng,
Without the funds to open them.
Blame the politicians,
Blame the thieves,
Blame management as lax –
But never blame the public who believes
In paying less of tax.
But no-one ever thanks us for
The treasures we preserve,
That otherwise get lost to war,
Or buried in the earth.
Plenty on the left have sneered
At colonial comeuppance
While others on the right have cheered
At wokeness not worth tuppence.
And both have kicked the workers
Who are overworked and underpaid,
Because we’re just the lurkers
In the basement, in the way.
They never cared before,
Enough to fund the work they left to spoil –
And still they will not thank us for
Our centuries of toil.
It’s others source the objects,
We just clean, and log, and save –
And that takes funds, and takes respect,
And a culture well-behaved.
Thousand-Year Stare
They sculpted each immortal bust
As patient as the coming rust –
And when our steel has turned to dust,
They’ll still be standing here.
They’re made from prehistoric shells,
Once crushed in subterranic Hells,
Then thrust back up on mantel swells,
For millions of years.
Their flinty eyes have seen it all,
Our mighty kingdoms rise and fall,
From city states to urban sprawl,
For long as time allows.
These statues gaze their stoic stares,
Untroubled by our fleeting cares,
Just waiting for erosion’s airs
To smooth their stony brows.
1 AD
Hush, my little Yeshua,
So newly born, you are.
Hush, and I shall tell you
What is happening afar.
The Romans, under General Tiberius,
Strike North,
Campaigning through Germania,
In endless back-and-forth.
The Cartigena theatre has opened,
Hosting plays –
Full of tragedy and farce,
To while away the days.
They sculpt the finest statues,
And they write down history,
And measure circles and the Earth
To learn philosophy.
And out beyond their furthest outposts,
Other kingdoms rise,
From India to Polynesia,
Far beyond our eyes –
In China, a new emperor is crowned,
Just eight years old.
The Mayans build their pyramids,
The Incans mine their gold.
A thousand gods are worshipped,
From the Arctic to the Cape,
Where coelacanth and kangaroo
Rub shoulders with the ape.
I tell you this, sweet Yeshua,
Incase you cannot go.
There’s so much human life out there
Of which you’ll never know.
A more accurate but less pithy title would be 10001 HE.
Brick for Brick
I grew up with castles and churches and manors,
Their architecture feels like home –
While Indian temples and Chinese pagodas
Were glorious aliens in stone.
It all made sense that Kublai Khan
Had not one dome in his Pleasure Dome
But when I saw the Great Ming Wall,
It all felt too familiar –
It looked like something the Romans might have built,
Had they reached this far
Rounded arches, crenellations, arrow loops –
All quite bizarre.
The only telltale signs were in the watchtowers,
And their roofs –
Simple saddelbacks, slightly concave,
They were hard-hill-hatted booths.
Not like the four-square hips of the Romans –
Projections providing proofs.
Except…on many of the towers we see,
These structures are robbed away.
And we’re left with familiarity
That’s out-of-place, astray.
Was it built-up piecemeal, really ?
At this point, who can say ?
From what I can see in images, the watchtowers had roofs that were a mix of hard-hill and hanging-hill, the difference being that the latter had slightly overhanging eaves as in the image below.
To be clear, saddleback roofs (aka gable roofs) were not unknown to Romans, but not I think used atop their watchtowers.
Pre-Decimal
Roman numerals –
They’re so bloody useless !
Their continued presence
Is really excuse-less.
Clocks are okay,
Cos we know by position,
But years shouldn’t need such
Subtract and addition.
Just how could the Romans
Be quite so bloody-well thick ?,
With numbers unwieldy
For simple arithmetic.
Don’t put them on buildings,
Or credits in movies –
You’re being a snob
Who wants to ‘improve’ me.
Well, maybe with sequels,
But stop after III –
They get so confusing
With eye before vee.
Just how could the Romans
Be quite so damn-well unwise ?,
With numbers whose value
Is so unrelated to size.
Rhyming Couplets 