From Heaven Saint Sebastian Relives his Martyrdom Through Art, and Reconsiders his Position on Homosexuality.

Strapped unto a withered trunk
And stripped of shirt or simple vest
Mere scrap of cloth does shield my junk
From the arrows of this holy test.

A junk concel’d and yet laid bare
As rods of fury rape my form
Penetration from out th’ air
A Tableaux to again perform.

As now, ‘moungst angels, I do soar
The loom of time moves swiftly and numb
And yet my death enact once more
In paints, as some delirium.

My body plundered by artist’s fancy
My death make sick and so obscene
Perversions fit for necromancy
Violation hard and mean.

For I am twisted to an icon
From leather bonds no chance to free
Could any else, perhaps St John
Become so figure of sodomy?

Betwixt the impact of the shafts
That transgress’d th’ barrier of my skin
I mused upon mere mortal crafts
And man’s propensity to Sin

And yet, my Lord, with each incision
That pinned me further to the bark
I felt that in my death some excision
Reduc’d my life to just one mark

And though fettered by the flukes of arrows
And perforated with many holes
A thought that chilled to me to the marrow
An aperture Beelzebub controls.

That one gate, that by heaven split
From which issues the bread of life
Is worth more to me than twenty tits
Or coitus with my homely wife.

I change my tune to adoration
On contemplation of the bum
Now I require some embrocation
For an act that leaves me sore, and numb.

The angels now join in application
Sodomical among the clouds
Acquiescence to temptation
Overthrow the loincloth shrouds!

And laid upon some astral bier
I see my Lord; ‘tis Christ at last!
There is no pain of arrows here
But betwixt his gateway, my spear is cast.

‘tis a prodigious man’s erection
That causes earthly statues weep
At thoughts of such a resurrection.
I am no Longinus, yet still reach deep.