Blind Faith

To the Ugly Jesus at the PMA, 2008 (The Crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, Saint John the Evangelist, and Angels with Instruments of the Passion)

Bondage seems appealing
here among chain mail
and medieval artillery
but I feel some sort of guilt
when I notice you looming
across the hall.

You are ugly and shriveled,
hanging there lonely
with arms spread,
waiting for a woman
to rush and run her fingers along your rib cage
a hollow Sabbath dirge.

I walk past you each time eyes closed,
queasy from your sunken cheeks
and graying exterior that sags from
decades suspended by bloody palms.

In portraits,
you are warm and soft,
unmistakably made of light,
no man any lost child to fear
but here
you are humiliated
with an unknown artist's best cruel
and likely last joke.

I fight the inane apology that forms
on my prayer bitten lips,
but I have been less human and faithless since.