More Blood, Not Less
America needs more blood, not less
We’re all distressed from violence and war
and scores of rampages by the obsessed
All the killing and the spilling, oh my God!
It seems to be headed toward Gog and Magog,
where the blood rises to the horses’ bridles
and fills the boots of the horses’ riders
But still we need more blood not less
Not like the river Nile where it ran red a mile
Or the ruby-stained altars in Jerusalem
Life’s flow drained, yet it was never enough
Earth thirsts for more blood not less,
but not
like the butchery when Romans abused and trampled the Jews
or when it froze in Leningrad streets and church pews
or the most worst battles earth ever had,
when the Mongols purged the population of Baghdad
Or the Nazis’ two million at Stalingrad
Warsaw Uprising and Waterloo
World Wars One and Two
Yes, the world needs more blood, not less.
Not like Gettysburg, where boots sank down
in the blood of 50,000 that oozed from the ground.
From Operation Barbarossa’s losses back to
to Via Dolorosa’s three lone crosses
Yes! That’s the blood the whole of humanity and history needs
Where one man bleeds. In silence it flows down
from his feet, his side, his thorny crown
Just a thimbleful and we tremble till we see
that it was enough absolution, the sanguine solution, for the guilt-ridden world:
From the primal garden wedding to final Armageddon,
from Eden to the end:
that’s the only blood that matters
that which spattered over weeping widows, Pharisees
and Caesar’s centurions, the mockers, and the curious
the blood that went into the Holiest of All
and covered the mercy seat and sprinkled the walls
brought humanity back from the fall.
They pierced, yes, speared the Son who came up from Egypt
where blood once smeared and stained the lintels and door jams
from slain but innocent, perfect little lambs,
yet the firstborn son of every bloodless home was damned.
They needed more blood, not less.
And there was Abel (the first victim of slaughter and gore)
His blood cried out from the ground for more
creating the Avenger and the art of war.
No, the carnage would never stop
not till it got even to heaven’s door and heaven’s Son Himself:
The Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world!
Friends, even still, it’s not less blood spilled we need, it’s more!
So, let the signs in Ferguson read,
Let the banners in Chicago decree,
Shout it out from the housetops of Baltimore
America needs, not less blood, but more
More blood to lift the stain from Columbine
to sift out the pain in South Carolina
More scarlet spread for Charlotte’s dead
More flowing from Emmanuel’s veins
A rushing fountain gushing up, cascading out onto us all
Only blood can wash us, and sweep away
the anger and rage from history’s every page
Know this! Only that crimson fluid
can reverse the curse – undo it –
unravel the injustices of the gavel,
pick the wounds clean of the dust, dirt, and gravel.
There is power of that blood is in it’s virtue, not in how much
and Mary was told that a sword would pierce her soul
A cold blade that chased the innocent babe at Herod’s command
and assailed infants
as mothers wailed and wept and afterwards never slept –
Mary’s child would live, and another day, bleed.
More blood, not less, is what the whole world needs!
More of His saving fullness see
More of His love who died for me!
Yes, blood will wash America one way or the other
Let’s take His blood and not our brother’s.
The blood began to run in Jerusalem long ago
A woman clutching her son to her breast
red, dripping down his head to his chest
as it soaked through crushed flesh and bone and skin
then flushed through the dark of the soul and sin
as it rushed in a flood through heaven’s curtain, then
spread on the altar, there forever glazed
beneath the wings of seraphim and the astonished gaze
of heaven’s host –
and in its mystical powerful ways
still cleanses us today by the Holy Ghost.
Yes, yes, yes!
We need more blood, not less.
2016jlh
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