St. Huncke

St. Huncke

Christ was hung
between the thieves
and forgave them
amid the blaze and fly buzz
of Golgatha, maybe
he finally reckoned
that thievery is nothing
if not a borrowing
of glory, the grand barter
that’s truly
the only real commerce
of this planet.

Think of the nobility
of stealing a typewriter,
it’s metal mouth and teeth,
its heaviness (archaic now
in the way all things
will come to be),

the power of words,
the font of creation
hefted just for cash.

Oh how it must have felt
to take on the burden
and be free of it in the same day,

the act of fencing,
a sacrament,
the act of borrowing,
a poetry
all its own.