Sometimes he’d say welcome Other times it exhaled without sound from his collapsing retinas But it made us happy all the same Because we knew he meant it Even if it was his job to mean it To bleed on wood And to observe us fucking And buying Or doing both Sometimes not knowing which Sometimes disappearing into meat And reappearing cleansed And full I wasn’t sure who nailed him up there But it was done with replicable corporate precision And without passion Suffering for the sake of necessity And some days I wanted to suffer like he did To accumulate enough to die in the comfort of my home To my favorite show And I wondered sometimes if there were other saviors Or if we were saviors to him As he bled out and examined receipts Mom said if we were lucky enough When we sinned or bought something on sale They’d sometimes drive a nail deeper Or flog him to climax And they weren’t that different