(Crucifixion)

i dreamt of scattered ore, rough and dusty, chipped and worn, torn cold out of the hot belly of the earth.

wooden wagons with rusted wheels pushed by men or pulled by oxen deeper through an open vein, like medical syringes filled with heavy metal saline drip, and fragments of an auburn plague.

i dreamt of half a silver disk, a waning gibbous, tied to dried black cherry branches (or was it pine) with cotton twine, driven through that very tree, swing by swing, to free it from its tangled roots—

and how that very tree began to fall so spectacularly. forty feet of hundred years, grown in rings like still lake ripples. Some thick and healthy, some thin and frail.

I dreamt of how yet other men would take the ore, now pilled in mountains, and throw it in a glowing furnace, stripping the inert waste flesh to liberate the chips of steel, pouring them together to congeal, and shape—

and how, again, yet other men would take the tree, dissect its flesh with long toothed saws, longways mostly, trimming wideways just to clip the edges. extracting out the organs from it:

Lungs, spleen, ribcage, femur, and the beating heart.

All of this i dreamt, but last I dreamt of how that congealed steel was shaped to form a hungry spear and slammed again, again to pierce Life Itself to that amputated rib of ravaged earth.