They lurked,
in lurid shadows, hurt,
angry inflamed
by evil righteousness
steeped in self
then drunk like
Dr Jekyll’s elixir.

The music,
light and beauteous
favor become sound
drifted, threaded
in and out and around to
remind them,
tantalize them,
sadly to torture them
with the dreary ugliness
of their inner bed o nails.

“Kill!  Destroy them!
Our Lord demands it!”
they shrieked
imagining they were
christian soldiers following
a wrathful righteous
incensed king returned.
But they didn’t know
they had stapled
His Wondrous Face
onto the caustic and rotten
golem of their own design,
they couldn’t see through
the veils of fear

That the Joyous One
was swirling, dancing,
and laughing with
gracious glance in the midst
of those lost, those abandoned,
those wounded…
…those forever finally found
and running free.