Apocalyptic Voices

These sabbaths stacked in locked backrooms
now tumble down from heaven’s shelves
and clatter stars about. In fact,
A third of golden stars go black,
A third of terra’s leaves go brown,
A third of every clan bleeds white
to clot the rivers red and thick
and globular with toads who croak
out time and times and half again a time.

Scream, horned altar, to the River Guards
that they confine and bind their currents
for a swarm now freed.
Prophet, number not the horde.

And altar, call the Paraclete
so He who now constrains steps back.
Permissions now are granted;
vermin lust for men
and men all lust to die
as solar spasms dry
their favorite sores.

Just cringe, you whores, and don’t you try to run.
Permissions now are granted;
The fugitive world is felled
and dragged into the city square
where He who’s never known her sin
now stoops to choose five stones.

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Master, teach us alchemies of doom;
How did the fig tree wither
in

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Why won’t you speak with me? Do you not know
my name and how I grip your nape in fangs?
How I can free you or illuminate my ball
with you as torch upon an elevated cross?

The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord;
He turns it like a mountain turns the river.

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but now the swords are not asleep in sheaths
and companies of angels throng the stage
and just won’t leave.

how long, how long, the dead intone,

Are you a king? Do you not understand I have the power to release you and the power to let you go?

Children have come to the brink of birth
but no-one has strength to bring them forth.

Hear the words of Sennacherib
which mock the Living God.

Because you raged against me
I’ll put my hook in your nose
and my bit in your mouth
and will turn you back.

Set your house in order
for you shall not recover.

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And who is like our Beast?
Dead wounded by a cobalt blade
yet patter and legerdemain remain
and how he speaks.

And claws the world to add up integers beneath,
because the Lord had said no census counts.

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I will not sleep in towns so weighed by God.
I’ll fly into the country, leave my pots
on stones and let the mortgage grow unpruned.
Please pray that it not be in winter,
please pray that I not be with child.

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…an eerie repetition of His gabbatha
but now the swords are not asleep in sheaths
and companies of angels throng the stage and won’t…