Ive seen Church

Ive watched Church

a performance piece across a creek from one of Californias original Spanish Missions

the drama starred a young man and a very handsome young woman sitting beside him                                                                            

and beside them the entirety of her family as the womans mother served a sumptuous picnic lunch to her husband

her daughter   her other children    the young man

then herself lastly

the whole while she preached  preened her daughter to a womans happy role in the Church                                                                                                                                        

she set a practised illustrious example

little sises keen to their elder sibling

                                                                       

                                                                         but watching I saw something else

I saw The Father The Son The Holy Ghost

baiting their hooks with the flesh of young women baptized in a brass cistern of blessed water

I watched earlier solemn ceremonies

womens feet washed in tinfolded basins 

  

who then bent to bathe the feet of others

I gnawed at the bit

I was anxious for the main course

the fullbodied baptisms 

                                          the nine yards of line  sinker    the sharpened barbed hook

the young man naked  his testicles hanging

her familys hands holding him fast  he didnt fight

they extracted his solemn vow to take her as his wife under Christian Love and Law and the threat of castration

they were browncolored and somber and the young man in his dark eyes I saw was convinced

I was convinced

                            The Father The Son The Holy Ghost arent fools

or to be fucked with 

   

1958,  Friday,  14  8. 15

0045,  Day-between-Two-Ts,  19  8. 15