Crowned in Retaliation - Vitriol

Strung high are the martyrs

Oh, how their crippled feet, they steal the sun

Their cause, noble, it’s worthy

So I gift them a death on their cross

I paint them in His tongue’s fire —

Breathe deeply of their fleeing spirits

Who billow from silenced mouths

The smoke from flesh that coils in service of the serpent who bore them

— while their lake takes in familiar babes

Their children, they breathe her heavy air

Blue as the face that cloaks them, lost as the water’s mercy

They will know only her frigid arms

Delicate stones denied rest

Limp, in the heavy breast of her depth

I watched from across a freshly conquered sea as he placed a crown of

retaliation upon the head of your country

There were holes burned against a smoldering curtain —

They resembled cathedrals and homes

Shelter and worship cut from the fire of the sky

(What a marvel! What a righteous blaze!. . .)

— and into their absence did its people collapse

(.. . to witness a culture’s story fold into the gravity of its own erasure.)