Should I exalt the ruler-straightened silence,
the cracking fall of temples as they cave?
Praise God who robbed me, beat me into violence,
give thanks for charnel stench, the rot I crave?
Collapse in dust, beneath this crushing lonely,
psalming with screams upon His barbed-hook line,
within a city frozen, lifeless and holy,
where watchful zealots perch on nothing’s spine.
Then only dread the slow decay while breathing,
when votive flames in cathedrals gutter out,
and stained-glass roses bleed their embers, seething—
the saints crawl forth, their scorched limbs twist about.
They twine their fingers tight into my sinew,
the living bells gaze down the drowning ledge,
a step, a slip, and I shall fall within you—
peace or a coffin’s marble past the edge.
For what could wait that’s crueler, more horrendous?
I call your name, but you have gone too far.
“Gloria in excelsis” rings pretentious—
a clapper’s lash, a tongue that splits to scar.
Each nightfall strikes me down in dream’s derision,
half-dead I sprawl across the kneeling floor;
“memento vitae” whisper in collision—
head-first in God’s cold pincers evermore.