The Letter of the Law

An Abecedarian by Tom King

(c) 2012

1. At the
2. Beginning
3. Cold fangs and teeth
4. Death the punishment
5. Every sin's consequence.
6. Fight or flight should you rebel
7. Gods of stone arose, whose priests claimed
8. Heavy-handed blood sacrifices
9. Incantations, homage to holy men
10. Jibber, mutter and perpetuate a fraud
11. Kings privilege upheld by crude ritual.
12. Laws of love, forgotten since creation could set free.
13. Men and women bound, with chains of stone and gold and silver.
14. None remembering the law each carries writ upon the soul.
15. On every heart formed in every womb that bore a son or daughter.
16. Proof enough, the signature of the Law Giver waiting love's waking
17. Quickened at the mountain, carved first in stone, then in blood and bone and sinew,
18. Risen again a living law, every man, woman and child the law breathing.
19. Still and small transforming from the inside out and not with brute force from outside in.
20. The law from which springs life and peace and hope was always there, waiting patiently for us
21. Until we found it, or it found us , transformed us, not into what it wanted us to be but
22. Verily into what we are without the baggage of the laws meant to oppress and enslave.
23. We are servants of a law that sets us free, that we may be beautiful, kind, patient, wise and good.
24. X-ing out the laws that bind us in the darkness, restoring the indwelling law we know already. 
25. Yet still we are creation's children, though for a time we had forgotten the blessings of the ancient law.
26. Ziggurats, temples, pyramids, blood altars, steles and graven stone, the corpses of old lies by love defeated.

* Author's note: Wrote this as part of a poetry class I taught online. We were studying abecedarian forms where you begin each line or stanza with a different letter of the alphabet - like an acrostic, but a bit harder thanks to the Q, X and Z. Try one, it's great poetical exercise.  - Tom