MESSIAH

There was once a town in which only one man was homeless.
Being unique, he began to think of himself
as the savior of mankind, but he often doubted his powers.
He slept his nights in a pile of cabbages
behind a local supermarket.
One night he woke up covered in rotting leaves and heard
a human groaning in the air. He went out to find its flesh.
And presently he found himself
on a street where there was no traffic.
On both sides of the street, stretching
as far as he could see in either direction,
were crucified people, nailed to the telephone poles.
Their groans of exhaustion and agony
were the underbelly of the humming air,
and their blood ran on the pavement, fingering
its way into cracks. He stopped to look at them
one by one, trying to look into their eyes,
but they seemed not to comprehend his presence.
And he spat on the feet of the crucified,
watching his saliva run into the lips of the wounds
on their feet, so that, if a road crew should ever
come along and take them down,
they would be able to walk again.
And half-asleep in pain-shock under
streetlights that looked like spacecraft,
the crucified began to sing,
and terrified their savior with their song.