anathema

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By Haiden DeShong

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You can hack away a cauterized arm

Watch the string sever and cut out the pain;

The diffident pallor of outcast charm

Fades into chaos, but who takes the blame?

 

They call you abrasive, man of no name

A creature slighted with conviction, how

is it you came to be? Cowed by your shame,

young one you must grow; without doubt yet with

sorrow, your tattered psychodrama shows.

 

Merciful beauty, oh what do you know?

Of pain and salvation, the dismembered

and broke. We all lay to waste the deities

 

of old. Bury the sacred and let the

damned know that the blood of the ancient lives

in our bones.