Surveying the Suburban Night
Mark 5:1-13

I'm speeding down the highway and the radar is on red.
I am beyond the law.
I got the high beams on and nothing's hid.
Tracking like a nocturnal comet
through the industrial firmament,
All is quiet / windows tinted with lead.

Suspended in time and space,
this ice cold womb generates
vibrations that numb the mind,
and the gravitrons
drip down --
stream down --
swarm the brain like killer bees.

The automobile headlights gleam
like the souls of their passengers
and join together in a river of metal and light
that flows uphill --

A river held together by powerful Forces,
forces that drive
like Legions of pigs stampeding into the sea
in so many metal tombs.

by TJ Richter

© March 1986 Theodore J. Richter

The Bible

King James Version

Mark 5:1-13

1: And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.

2: And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,

3: Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:

4: Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.

5: And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.

6: But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him,

7: And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.

8: For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.

9: And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.

10: And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.

11: Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.

12: And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.

13: And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.