In the narrative of passion you know there is going to be some hurting in the hurtling towards heartbreak, like an ostrich egg being cracked over the bald pink pate of a Roman senator, the cracking shell unleashing its gooey innards, treacly entrails spilling onto a starched toga or the petroleum blue hue of a sharkskin suit, but taking the shirt off your back and letting them whip you into a landscape of welts, well that takes the biscuit, not that you could straighten up and eat a biscuit with a back like that, although you might raise an eyebrow, or two, heavenwards and ask the old man, what have I done to deserve this, this frenzy of savagery, this hungry and heartless wrist flicking in a diabolic dance choreographed by the demented Marquis de… de de de de… when the tears have faltered from deluge to dribble, you might look around and think, why not, everybody’s at it on the Via Dolorosa, the scourge passing from hand to hand depending on whose harbouring the hardware and who has the moolah, members of the congregation and a rabid desire to wreak destruction on anyone seen as an enemy of all that you stand for, no standing room for them, they must be reduced to a crawling wretch, crying for their mummy or a twisted tummy waiting for a truckload of flour to feed their aching, you have a right to defend yourself when all the angels have fled, though these guys don’t seem in a hurry, maybe they bought the wings in that pop-up store in Tel Aviv where civilisation-saving superhero suits are selling like hot cakes, you can have your latke and eat it too, though too many crooks spoil the broth with their birch stirring bloodthirstiness and we all know where it’ll end up: yep, crucifixion, a fiction whose frictions have fostered more flagellations than a bordello in Bethlehem.
Crawl away my friend and don’t look back, you know what’s coming