Christ’s chains pay homage to his hollow hardship.
Breathing brimstone and sulfur unto their laps.
A gnarled knuckle ending in a curved claw strips
skin from bone ‘til their souls seize, and they collapse.

Come the eve they howl their harebrained hearsay.
Licked by forgotten bone and beasts’ bloodstained whips.
As Joan stares down Judas, before her horns flay
Him down to splintered, shadowy mangled wisps.

Muscles contort, mutilated in a mound
their guts greasing the hall’s cracked nooks and crannies.
When out from the back came the man who was crowned
Lord of the Flies, and beneath his gaze life flees.

With barren fingernails he scraped the stone wall
cold unblinking eyes searching for his next prey,
until they rested on the disciple, Paul.
A sad huddled mass that fervently prays.

He spat a cruel cackle and readied his blade,
As Paul feebly raises his fists, burdened by chains
and whispered, “In lord’s name may I please be saved.”
Yet alas, in a mere moment he was slain .