Why crucifixion?

WHY CRUCIFIXION?

Why is it important to hang on a tree?

Why crucifixion, and not an axe blow, or head cut off above

Why a spread-eagled suspended long drawn out demonstration of love

Helpless, skewered for all to see?

Why agony prolonged?

Why pain on  a rack?

Stretching sinews, dismembered back?

Why was crucifixion the price for me?

Why was death dying slowly up there on a tree?

Love  is expended

Love is spilt

Love is given, bleeding there on a  stilt

Love is suspended, and says nothing more

It hangs on a cross, just breathing before

It waits for something, I dare not watch

Yet it is for me that it is breathing, to  predictable ends

What happens in this limbo, as his body bends?

He for me bleeding, me for Him unseeing

Can I just stand untouched

Will I come under the flood

Or stand far away from his blood?

What does it seek, this waiting skewered spectre of death

Why does it breathe and not just give up the ghost?

Why does it see mother and friend and young son?

Why does it speak language and blood all in one?

What is to be gained with this slow passing scream

Why not just die, so I can forget I have seen?

There is something mystical in this long drawn out death

That wait for eternity opening, suspended in time

Entrance and hallways, vistas unseen

Guarded by this man skewered on a cross beam

What is this secret? What does it mean?

Can I too follow and climb up his cross?

Put my spear in his side, to verify my loss?

Can I hold out my hands, helpless like His,

Though his put the world together, and knitted my marrow

Yet held out wide open, spread-eagled in sorrow?

What happens in the wait, this wait for friend death?

When can I give up and say it is done?

How long does that take, till the setting of the sun?

What happens to others, the thief at His side?

Companion in pain, eternal bride?

Damnation destroyed, yet, hells awning maw

Fuming and swallowing, belching great roar

Mocking and deriding, wine sated sour

Why does he not answer? Why does he not defend?

Why let lies flourish like gnats

From a cross these may just may not merit reply

May be they can just distill into a sigh.

Maybe it was for me to see

That death long drawn out has horrors no more

Maybe it was that I could now live free

Because He died, for me, on a tree