It's the first thing we did as a church
Good Friday
outdoors
Jodi said we shouldn't start on Easter
no right to celebrate life in the DTES
if we haven't tasted the death
so we did
twenty-one of us
made a pinecone cross
today was our fifth Good Friday
hardly any left from that first twenty-one
(where did they all go?)
welcoming other communities to join us
our biggest crowd ever
wandering the streets
drawing stares
it is right that we should be
in the park
Oppenheimer is Gethsemane
we listen to the betrayal
it is right that we should be
at community court
not at the provincial court
it was the
community
who wanted him dead
can't blame big shot judges
we all killed him
it is right that we should be
on stolen ground
contested space
he had no place of his own
it is right that we should be
in the alley
avoided all days but today
Judah points down at
the "needles with the poison still in them"
dumping ground
toilet of the people
the stink of it
death strips his dignity
death rules even him
at least for now
it is right to end on the beach
how excited we are to build
this instrument of execution
much bigger this time,
wood, not pinecones
kids balance on it
Jenny and Adria hammer in
some old, rusty nails
biking home afterward
past the women on the corner
whose bodies are for sale
I marvel at how
this place can still muster a Good Friday
on a beautiful sunny day
I grew up an easy-Easter girl
now I spend all year
in Good Friday
some days I think he's here
here among the poison needles
with the abandoned
with the betrayed
with the devil on his back
other days
he's dead