Lenten

The man with the psychedelic smears

and the tattered tears

in fragments of a robe,

I have come to pay him servitude

upon tranquility.

His word healing

my blood smattered hurts

nailed to the wall

and lying in pieces on the temple floor.

Tiny tiny pieces as they fall...

I am learning to fail

and fall

forward,

placing my blood-bought blows

upon his crown.

My foul apparitional image

distorts

and asserts itself

in reflected glass

unwilling

and unable

to see the prisms.

I climb the steps

toward Lenten.

One heartbeat closer

to the journey.