I Am Judas, the Son of God

The general idea of the poem below was inspired by a short story by that master of the genre, Jose Luis Borges, that I read earlier today. A few of the thematic ideas may have been influenced by my long-ago reading of Gore Vidal's snarky "Live from Golgatha."

Anyway, here goes:

I Am Judas, Son of God

I was born, I saw, and I fell;

The last part due to mythmakers

Who rejected my message.

My name is Judas, Son of God.

The lies against my name are many.

Some thought I was demon-seized

And sold the man named Jesus

For 30 pieces of silver.

Others said I was his cosmic twin,

Judas Didymus Thomas,

Later denigrated to move the focus

To the one and only.

While other yet called me Ahriman

To his Ormazd –

The dark side of a dualistic dyad.

And others still called me choiceless,

Fated to act a role,

A necessary pawn in a cosmic play.

All are wrong.

Rather –

I was the One, the Monogenitus.

I was the Son of God, the Word made flesh.

Am I jealous of the Nazarene?

But of course. I am the Word made flesh

With human emotions – emotions no less dark

Than my father Yahweh had against Sodom

And against the Amalekites, and against Edom.

This is what it meant to have been

God Incarnate.

But gods become human

Can lose their moorings.

I did not empty myself

Contra that prince of liars, Saul of Tarsus.

I was god, right to hold on to my equality.

I proclaimed the Kingdom

And had followers

But revolutionaries are often fickle.

And so the emissaries of Caesar’s gods

Seized the One, the Malakh Yahweh.

And put me to death.

And fickle rebels washed their hands

Of my name, my fame, my fate.

They crowned Jesus,

Distorted my message,

And hid him in safety,

Until a doddering old man

Had his life resculpted

By a failed Pharisee.

Jealous?

I was the Son of God.

But now I’m dead.

I would settle for raging in vain

Rather than being dead,

Unable to rage at all.