I. Judas Iscariot

I shall defend Mary Magdalene
of Galilee, sister of Lazarus,
the thirteenth apostle—a woman
whose heart belonged wholly to Jesus.
They never slept as man and wife;
they were as one. They walked the garden
mornings, then shared their bread at night.
They spoke with the same voice—tender,
without pretension. As time passed,
I grew sullen, like a neglected child
who daily prayed his parents would lavish
their attention on him. I conspired
to break their bond—to have her in the end.
I found thirty reasons to kill my friend.

Thus did my treachery lead him from bliss
to Golgotha, where Mary wept for days.
Had I foreseen the pain one single kiss
would bring upon his head, my faith
in him would have renewed my soul,
averting my fate under the bough.
I was driven mad by my betrayal,
while Mary, in her constant grief, avowed
to live upon the desert floor.
She spent her final days crawling in sand,
waiting for a sign from God to spring forth
from the ground—a burning bush, a ram
in a thicket—alas, nothing was there
but the arid wind passing through her hair.

II. Cassius Longinus

You call it penance, say it moved through hair
like ash in wind, but nothing durable stays there;
sorrow moves like blood—once loosed, a ram
drawn back from sacrifice, it still goes forth,
as pilgrims smooth its story down to sand
till vestments brush it smooth to temple floor—
the marble chills, the body disavowed
and sanctified by our betrayal.
A body leans the way a laden bough
bends toward fracture; so inclines the soul.
Call it discipline, or even faith—
no steel is clean that enters with a kiss.
What dries in stone outlives the heat of days;
the marble shines—we dare not call it bliss.

You held him close, a blade to a friend—
edge to rib, listening for the end.
You said a serpent and the dark conspired;
the tree leaned low, its blossoms lavish
as a wound split wide; no guiltless child
looked up by accident while morning passed.
Your neck below the branch was raw, yet tender,
and bore the noon until it bowed to night.
You chose this bower, still, as if the garden
was a covenant, as though a rib could make a wife;
as though your kiss was not the knife that Jesus
wielded first—you saw the woman
keening at the feet of Lazarus:
Eden and Gethsemane bound you to Magdalene.

III. Marcus Brutus

There is no threshold left beyond the end
What enters circulation answers as betrayal
A book stays open, emptied of its faith
All speech arrives already short of breath
A name persists, reduced at last to woman
A man reduced to nothing but a kiss