The Man at the Gallows

Originally published in the online Foliate Oak Magazine in early 2008, and reprinted in The Best of Foliate Oak 2007-2008, this poem was my first sold piece. Written my senior year of high school, it would have appeared in the school literary magazine, but the program was cancelled before publication could proceed. No longer available online, here is "The Man at the Gallows."

The Man at the Gallows

　

At 5:00 they took him to the gallows

Shackled by the world

Iron constraints kept his soul in check

Soon the executioner would slip the

Rope around his neck

　

I watched from the sidelines

From the bloodthirsty crowds

The drums began their death rattle

Tears came but I bribed them into hiding

But it was a constant, downhill battle

　

Proud and tall he marched through the crowd

Cobalt eyes gleaming defiant strong

They forced him through the seas of hate

Hands bound tight behind his back

His head remained unbowed in the face of fate

　

His mother and his sister wept for him

His lover wept as well

I did not weep for him until he found my eyes

Then the tears came and stung like glass

And I bit my lip to stifle my cries

　

They took an inferno's hour

To make everything just right for

The pull and the drop into the skeletal crack

And before they would give him peace they

Carved 500 scarlet stripes into his back

　

Not a single cry did he utter

Not a sound of pain passed his lips

He clenched his teeth and searched the human mass

His eyes found mine and saw the truth

That even such agonies as these shall pass

　

At 6:00 they hauled him up onto the gallows

Shackled by the world

Hellish manacles kept his soul in check

As that monster slipped the thirteenth knot and the

Hangman's noose around his neck

　

He stood there trembling but standing proud

No tears…

No pleading…

Just his quiet strength

The blood dripping steadily down his ravaged back

And from the cuts on his face, mingling with dirt

　

He found my eyes again in the crowd

Gentle comfort and a promise sweet

That if God and the Fates allowed

We two again in Heaven would meet

　

Then the hangman pulled

And the platform dropped

　

That skeletal crack as his neck broke would echo like a gunshot in my head forever.