We Rise To Stand Fixed On Our Knees

We Rise To Stand Fixed On Our Knees

(Original Sin In All Its Sound And Fury)

By Bocephus Jackson, The Hemlock Bard, ©2026 Bocephus Jackson. All Rights Reserved

“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” – Leo Tolstoy

Act One

In the restless theater of outrage,

The deepest scars that are carried,

By trusted people who should allay,

With front-row seats to a soul to bury.

An actor frets and struts with defiance,

His dialogue is a lamenting soliloquy,

Trauma taught the body compliance,

With earnest breaths of humility.

As original sin in all its sound and fury,

Spotlighting the hour upon the stage,

He rose, still fixed upon his knees,

To God in prayer to suppress the rage.

Where a nave tripped upon the stage,

The saints hushed beneath the lights,

My spirit reeled in the clerical cage,

Bowing to sin robed in a holy rite.

“To be or not to be existentially asked,

As the performance draws one’s leer,

Who are we when freed from masks,

As the dichotomy warrants the fear?”

Act Two

“My Lord, what has become of thee?

In these damning benighted hours,

My God, why have you forsaken me?

Show yourself, you apathetic coward!”

Where stature rises out of surrender,

As empires swelled, then fell in ardor,

As a recurring history, one remembers,

Where the devil takes its due in barter.

“A pound of this, and a little of that,

You’ll give where it serves your desire,

A contract to keep your world intact,

As we yearn and burn upon the pyre.”

“Gone rainy afternoons reading poetry,

Romanticizing a pursuit of knowledge,

It all gives way in light of day to devilry,

Virtue is vice when it is acknowledged.”

While the choir breathed my name,

Whether collective guilt was a grace,

As the sermon addressed the shame,

And then the mask took my sinful face.

Act Three

But this confrontation of artistic ideals,

Succumbs to wrath and worldly vices,

As he pursues evidence that will reveal,

The immortal soul within that invites it.

As many jesters prance and dance,

Lies no psalms in a confessional booth,

The tension in a public performance,

Amid the tempest of our private truth.

As the altar music became the cue,

The curtain rose in a sacred prayer,

Where I played the man I once knew,

And found my mortal ruin there.

The audience then becomes betrayers,

As their validation is preconditioned,

To the art and artistry of the player,

As nothing more than acted attrition.

Within a church community, we submit,

If life is a grand theater that we cling,

Do your job and not as you like it,

As this is all much ado about nothing.

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle

Author’s Reflection

“The heart is deceitful above all things.” – Jeremiah 17:9

This one hits different with full intention. By utilizing the language of performance, it critiques performance as a metatheatrical work, questioning whether the masks genuinely come off. By contrasting the stage, thesis, and theological language, they violently collide as a Leering Tempest.

This is the central conceit of the piece: when the storms come, who are we, what are we when stripped of convention? So in short, I owe Shakey baby, a lobster dinner and a fine bottle of red for the seven… eight allusions? It will be fine, I’ll let him double up on the crab puffs.

As always, I thank you for your time and kind consideration. Back to work! Now pass me the butter. Right then –

Alas, Horatio, I knew you were a fellow of infinite jest, but taking the last cheddar biscuit…

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” – William Shakespeare

©2026 Bocephus Jackson. All Rights Reserved