The Burning Of Trevor Paul Sprague

This Poem is based on an actual murder that occurred in Bangor Maine in 2006.

                                                            ******

 “Burned body ID'd as man from Lubec”
The headlines announce and then add in the subhead:
“Trevor Sprague 34 had record of crimminal sexual
      behavior” which of course could mean just
      about anything from he really did rape a little
      girl that he dragged from a playgound to he
      dated an underage girl though if you stop and
      think it certainly did not mean a real and violent
      rape of a little child for in that case he would
      not have been sleeping under the bridge where
      his hired killers found him – not in this society
      where even a non-violent and mutually desired
      contact will get you 20 years easily unless you
      are a women but whatever it meant the criminal
      sexual behavior is not the sum of the man.
He was not just anybody.
He was not just “a man.”
He was Trever Paul Sprague.
To himself he was like you or I –
He was all he had,
He was the same sort of particular unrepeatable absolute
      as anyone else and like all such particular absolutes
      he was all he had ever been through time from his
      first crying at being cast out of the paradise of his
      mother's womb to his being cast of this hell into
      which he was thrown.
He was all he had.
He was Trevor Paul Sprague.

The newspaper never said anything about hired killers.
There are many ways of hiring killers.
His body was found burning under a bridge.
He had a problem with drugs.
He was a sex offender.
He was homeless.
He was from Lubec.
He was a sex offender.
I repeat in case you missed it the first or second time
      around: “He was a sex offender” – which
      makes it all right – sort of – though naturally
      we hope he was not one of those who really
      did only what you or your friends have dreamed
      about.
Surely this is not about mastabatory fantasies of the
      politically correct or perhaps it is.
Perhaps Trevor Paul Sprague was burned in the name
      of such a fantasy.
Perhaps those fantasies were all placed on his head so
      that they could be driven into the wilderness
      and we could have our own collective inwardness
      cleansed by the purifying fire.
But of course I don't know this.
It was not in the newpaper.
Many things were not in the newspaper.
Where are his mother and father?
Did anyone love him when he was little?
What did he dream of being?
Whatever it was it was not being a sex offender sleeping
      under a bridge and then burning as an offering
      to a strange and Aztec-like god.
No he did not dream of that.
Did he have brothers and sisters?
How did they feel about this?
Did he believe in any force or process of redemption
      by whatever name that might be revelent to
      the inscrutable suffering of his life?
Or did he believe in that most terrible thought atrocity of all –
      that he was
           in the hands
                 of an angry god
                     and would burn
                          forever in Hell –
Surely no angel would be waiting for him though it was
      obvious that what he needed above all was to be
      rocked in loving arms and that beneath the debris
      of this wrecked life there was someone younger
      still – a long ways from from 34 – who could
      say yes to being held by a lover who could see
      further than those who killed him for violating
      their narrow and crippling laws of love.
Let us examine our justice.
It was said that he made overtures of love to a teenage
      boy.
That goes in one scale.
The Christian society in which he lived murdered him
      and left his body burning under a bridge.
That goes on the other scale.
Are we so far from the centers of our souls that we
      truly cannot see which scale falls and which rises?
Did Trevor Paul Sprague – Jesus-like – want to
      forgive his tormentors?
Perhaps he felt they needed no forgiveness.
Or perhaps he had taken society’s fear and hatred
      of his love of boys so deeply into himself
      that he felt he deserved to be burned.
What did he feel when the sun rose on the Penobscot
      river on the morning of his execution?
I am sure I don't know.
It is hard to judge any experience from the outside.
Perhaps little exstasies evoked by the morning sun
      glittering on the surface of the river punctuated
      his life.
Or perhaps not.

The great interpretive stories are repeated and repeated
Over and again –
      their redundancy justified by the clarification they
      bring to this confusion of tiny moments
      that is our lives.
So who gentle Christian
In this repetition
Is the angry mob?
Who is Pilot who did know what he was doing
      and washed his hands?
Who the soldiers who drove the nails into the
      living flesh –
And Who is Jesus?
In my desire for revenge against the righteous
      perpetrators of this heinous crime I do
      not ask for fire either in this world or the next –
Only that some day they will see what they have done.