Gethsemane

I have built a high stone fence
around your anti-Eden. That garden
holds no flowers, is without breezes.
I can't breathe with you there.

Yes, this old world comes to abattoir,
but I will shun your nightmare arboretum.
The gloom that hangs there strangles me.
I require instead a trancing air.

Others like your stark design,
the formal lay-out running through
old sin and coming blood.
Still others sneak in like thieves
crawling through a warping gate,
hoping you are God but not
that God who dammed Hell with acids.

Though I'm free-form like a lunatic,
I'll not be so wanton with my senses.
If you spoke of peace and love,
you also glared with righteous sword.

Yes, I pass by time to time
and spy you brooding in the briars.
Everything is so damn ethical with you!
Where's the goddamn artist in you?

My God, why hast thou forsaken me?
And left me strange outside this fence?

The atoms blinking in my brain
build gardens up from different soil.
Flowers sprout in pastel shades
and smile forever in the mystic,
soft drizzling rain.

I know I'll die perplexed, unsaved.
I know you meant well robed in ethos.
But I'm for beauty and have saved
many flowers for my sarcophagus.