Demian Farnworth

That painting could destroy someone's faith, but I,
I sing erotic praises of Christ.

Each hand, gigantic and arthritic,
fingers, crooked,
easily misconstrued as misanthropic;
seized, strangled and stiffened.
All limbs twisted out of joints.
Each hand separated
by the distance of his dead body.

Thorns like wasps inflamed his body,
with its discolored, lubricious hue,
encircle his exhausted apish head,
a swarming hive.

I shiver standing here
looking at the skinny Christ.
A brittle swaddling band yellowed
coils like a crawling flower
or curling cat.
It crackles and disintegrates below
his effeminate hips, exposing
a navel and hairless torso.

Down withered thighs
to his deranged, aborted feet,
the man is perfected.
Trembling, his mother,
with her small mouth opened,
falls into the arms of soft John.
The whore, swooning,
begs.
And John the Baptist, spectral,
Alone and fearful,
says "It is fitting
that he increase and I diminish."