Purgatory

[RiverNotch]

On the punctuation: this doesn't sound like anything done in the newer traditions, so I'm just going to assume you didn't punctuate this right because you forgot. That is, all of this isn't one sentence.

I step onto a ferry, looking towards a horizon of white,
and the brilliant radiance sets the night alight.
But suddenly, a list of names is read out: The added colon is just my currently typical style. This could also be an exclamation point, a period, a semicolon, or the especially classic em-dash, all which denote (or connote, but in poetry, it's starting to seem to me, there is only denotation) very different things. In fact, leaving this without such an end also denotes something too: either you're a modern writer, a forgetful writer, or a non-native writer.
my name is called, and I am thrashed about,
hit on the head, and thrown overboard
by none other than Christ, Our Lord. Why the capitals on "hit", "my", and "by"? I suppose "my" could be so capitalized if you decided your identity was so important, but since you didn't capitalize "and" in the second line, I'm supposing editorial mistake? But on which one/s? I hear that the capitalization of lines is an editorial convention and nothing more, and with the advent of better printing systems, it's one being done away with now, to make the poems easier reads, but I suppose you could have done that to make your poem feel, I don't know, older: but really, it's up to you, as long as you're sure what you think it communicates it does communicate.

-So to make a long story short, I am trying to describe the catholic view of the journey from earth to heaven. Those with undaunted souls take the ferry across, those with unconfessed venial sins are instead thrown overboard by Christ and forced to swim across the sea of purgatory to heaven. I don't know. It sounded like a good idea for a poem. I'm not quite done, and was just looking for some feedback. Thanks!
General point: I assume that that Catholic view of the journey from earth to heaven is a metaphor for something more tangible -- regardless of my rather Gnostic views on the metaphysics of our common faith, I'm pretty sure your view of purgatory in actuality is more in line with Dante's Purgatorio than, well, that. So I do think it's rather weird that your poem is essentially a very slight expansion on that one metaphor, rather than a novel elaboration (that is, you took that one metaphor, and added your own views and your own ideas and your own feelings onto it) or an elaborate parallel (that is, you took that one idea, and made an entirely different metaphor of your own based on it) on its whole idea. That, I think, is why most folks here, myself, seem to think this is a rather ignoble piece of work -- you didn't really make anything new, or if you don't believe in that newness crap, then you didn't make it feel new.