By Roger Cowin

Call me Judas, a noose for a necktie,

dangling from my tree of woe,

I have wandered alone in the wilderness.

forty years and forty months.

son of the dead millennium.

I have offered prayers with forked tongue,

cast the first stone and took delight

spitting in my neighbor’s eye.

I have been the seducer

and the seduced,

beguiled and betrayed.

I am the perfection of imperfection,

and know what it is to be despised.

But when I climb down

from my suicide tree,

I will carry its burden no more.

Then what shall I do?  What shall I become?

I have looked into an insect’s eye,

seen the multifarious faces of God,

and all the stars surround me

as I surround and encompass them.

I am no mere meat puppet

staggering along a crooked road,

but one inoculated with the singular

anima of creation,

the caretaker of my own fate.

Call me Judas, for I have earned the name,

but know that I am also

Lazarus, newly risen.