The Third Church of Christ Psychopath

In the Third Church of Christ Psychopath
no ruined mothers may pray for dust. Occasionally
unelected Elders order random executions of executives
that priests on weekdays covertly choose as saints.
And large-scale whippings often ensue on traditional
Nights of Holy Disaffection. Such nights being wholly charged
with miraculous bouts of ritual boasting from the grave.
On Tuesdays, steel crosses are recycled in each parish
for the conversions of the famished poor, whom we adore
as divine atrocious food, all gristle and lice. And obese
flagellants repose on the designated benches, staring at
a prostrate sea, their incandescent robes signifying still
neglected island martyrs, stalwarts of the recent purges,
for whom most pray for dunkings in the Hermeneutic
Lake of Blood. And idealistic Wednesday pogroms
in season still flourish, where, through the provinces,
bishops in shabby wigs ride pigs through the streets,
stopping only to piss on the lewd exiles of the Faith.
Everyone takes time to share god’s lesson of venomous
absence with the sad pathetic Council of the Damned.
And all the while, itinerant priests continue calling on tall
houses in the city, lecturing insomniac Magistrates
and Councillors on the indecency of science
and the amnesty of lies.

First published in New Writing 8, edited by Tibor Fischer and Lawrence Norfolk (Vintage, 1999)