Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited,
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Has willed and meted me the tears I've shed,
I clench my fist and shake it at the sky

And at the vengeful God who hammers me,
Delivering the blows that break my brain;
The God who finds his deepest ecstasy
In violencing my life with blinding pain;

Who laughs and says, "Thou suffering thing, declare
If thou hast understanding: Who hath laid
The measures of the earth's foundations?  Where
O where wast thou, O man, whenas I made
The cloud the garment of the sea?  How dare
Thou, foolish man, thy maker to upbraid?"

Quhat doe yowe call a king that's first and sixt?
Yow call him Gods appointed King; King James;
The King of Ireland, Scotland, and England, mixt;
The King of riuers Shannon, Tay, and Thames.
God saue the King, the faithfull King who claimes
For Christ the King the Ingliche written word
And lifts the name aboue all other names
VVho is the Lord of euery other lord.
The King of kings, the word that's als a sword
Diuiding soule from spirite as flesh from bone,
Hath made himselfe with James of one accord
And plac'd the monarch James upon his throne.
The booke of James by God is avthoriz'd
And hath no neede to euer be reviz'd.

Sixty-six chapters and sixty-six books
(please, Catholic brothers – no ***** looks)
were needed for God to make known His plan:
the gift of salvation and future of Man.

Yet sometimes it seems rather cryptically stated;
poor Israel must wait and will wait (as they’ve waited).

Isaiah took sixty-six chapters to tell it;
for two-thousand years has the Church tried to sell it –
must Christ and his teaching thus languish in mystery,
waiting offstage in the wings of His history?
(Wings of the cherubim, angels, and vultures
now beat down upon us, uniting our cultures
while tech surges up in a dizzy parabola
micro in management, global in formula…)

Sixty-six chapters to say it in Greek
(Aramaic – or Latin;  whatever they speak)
while the somnolent audience scrolls on their screens
in apocalypse trance over zombie machines.
The scrolls are unopened, the parchment still sealed
the slot-machine handle refuses to yield;
as the sixes line up towards the threshold of seven
the virgins sleep late in the Kingdom of Heaven.