A Poem by Walker Storz

Jesus Christ

My veins glow
moss-green,
luminescent, bulging

They have grown
with wills of
their own, fat
snakes
Writhing into the
world with the sickly
vigorous force of
Birth—

God has spoken
to me
He is staring
at me from
the light fixture
in the ceiling

His eye bores
into me.
It is worrying my
flesh, inscribing
red angry
circles.

I sat there in the
corner with
my wine bottle and
shaking, ecstatic
flesh

I have suffered for
you, father. But
God did not
care. He was absent,
and I was
talking to his shadow
splayed
across the world; in
electrical sockets and the
faces of strangers

It is my hope that
you, Jesus
Christ, pale king,
Fill me with fire, make my
heart gold,
my feet brass, my
tongue silver; that you
take
my weakness and
sanctify it, make it
burn

It is my great
hope that
you make my
hope worthy of
waiting, that you
make the world worthy of
itself

Walker Storz is a musician, artist, and writer living in Vermont. His work covers the themes of faith, suffering, and illness.

Image: Detail from Otto Lange, Der verlorene Sohn (“The Lost Son”), 1918. Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

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