Last Call at Golgotha by Jeff Callaway
by Jeff Callaway
Texas Outlaw Poet
Jerusalem’s sky still stinks of thunder.
Crosses cast shadows like busted spear shafts,
and I’m hunched over a clay cup,
a Roman centurion,
hands still raw from the hammer,
trying to drink away the weight of it.
This is the only tavern still open tonight.
Some barkeep keeps the wine flowing—
cheap, sour, thin as Pilate’s spine.
Doesn’t matter.
I’m not here for the taste.
I’m here to drown the echo.
Because every swallow drags me back to the hill.
The shriek of iron through bone.
The wood shaking under my mallet.
The snap of sinew when I nailed him up.
The crown of thorns biting his brow,
blood running into dust.
The scraping of splintered wood against raw skin,
the rope burning his wrists.
And his eyes—
God help me—
his eyes didn’t curse me.
Didn’t hate me.
Didn’t even fight.
They just looked through me
like I was the one nailed up there,
like my soul was already bleeding out.
I watched him stagger under the cross,
shoulders raw, knees cracking,
the scrape of his back against jagged wood.
The smell of blood and sweat and dust choking the air.
The women wailing, his mother clutching her chest,
her strength iron against the terror,
Mary’s eyes burning holes into the world
as she watched her son die slowly,
publicly, utterly.
John’s hand pressed to hers,
both trembling in a storm of grief
that no cup could wash away.
And I remember the stripping—
how we tore his robe from his back,
ripped cloth fused to dried blood,
the sound of flesh tearing like paper.
I remember the lash—
thirty-nine tongues of leather
singing his skin into ribbons.
I remember the smell—
copper and sweat and dung,
the stink of death marching before it arrived.
And over it all, his silence,
broken only by prayers.
The customers stumble in.
Thieves, gamblers, drunks—
Jerusalem’s midnight choir.
One’s rolling dice on the table,
laughing about the soldiers casting lots for a tunic
still warm with sweat.
Another raises a cup,
“To Caesar! To the next messiah! To nothing at all!”
Their voices rattle the rafters like chains.
But me?
I can’t wash the blood off my hands.
I drove nails through wrists that never lifted a sword.
I speared a side that poured water and wine.
I watched the sky go black at noon,
felt the earth lurch under my boots,
heard him choke out forgiveness like a toast
to the men who broke him.
I remember the way he cried,
the way his voice cracked under the weight of the world,
carrying every sin, every scream, every mocking word
on his shoulders.
He gave everything—every drop of blood, every gasp, every muscle torn—
and I stood there with hammer in hand,
and a part of me wanted to vomit,
and another part wanted to believe it wasn’t real.
And now every pour looks like blood.
Every cup is a wound that won’t close.
My tongue tastes of vinegar,
my teeth grind like stones in the tomb.
No wine is strong enough to burn him out of my head.
And I swear—
when he looked at me,
I felt stripped bare,
like he saw every filthy thing I’d ever done,
every cruelty I ever called duty,
every coin I pocketed,
every order I obeyed.
And he didn’t spit at me.
He didn’t condemn me.
He forgave me—
while I murdered him.
The thief at the corner table smirks—
“Hell’s just another barroom, brother,
only hotter,
and the drinks never end.”
But his buddy hushes him,
says he heard a man on the next cross
whisper, Remember me.
And the soldier in me wants to ask—
What if he was remembered?
What if paradise ain’t just a rumor
told by drunks at last call?
What if the one I pierced
is waiting there—
and me,
with this blood on my boots,
I’ll never cross the door?
The gambler shakes his cup,
bones clattering like skulls.
Snake eyes.
The drunks go quiet.
The whole room feels like it’s waiting on me
to announce the end of the world.
So the barkeep calls out—
“Last call!”
And it echoes through my skull like thunder.
Last call for the living and the damned,
last drink before the grave,
last breath before the trumpet blows.
They laugh, but it dies quick.
Because outside, the crosses are still standing,
and the echo of his voice won’t quit—
It is finished.
The tavern empties.
One by one, they stagger into the night.
I’m left alone with the silence,
a cup half-full,
and a truth I can’t swallow:
Surely—
surely—
this was the Son of God.
~ Jeff Callaway
TEXAS OUTLAW POET,
© 2025 Texas Outlaw Press
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