I bled on a pivotal stretch

Like a clockwork Christ

Bears sore stigmata, bored

And as I threw Job, I drove

Myself to a martyred wretch

To see if I drew pity

Or pretty litanies from the Lord

So the plot sickened

With the coming of days

Ill millennia thickened

With the claret I sprayed

And though they saw red

I left a dirty white stain

A splintered knot in the grain

On Eden’s marital aid

So glad for the madness

I walked the walls naked to the moon

In Sodom and Babylon

And through rich whores and corridors

Of the Vatican

I led a sordid Borgia on

I read the Urilia text

So that mortals wormed

As livebait for the dead

And as I broke hope, I choked

Another Pope with manna peel

Dictating to DeSade

In the dark entrails of the Bastille

And as He wrote, I smote

A royal blow to the heads of France

And in the sheen of guillotines

I saw others, fallen, dance

I was an incurable

Necromantic old fool

A phagadaena that crawled

Drooling over the past

A rabid wolf in a shawl

A razor’s edge to the rule

That the stars overall

Were never destined to last

So glad for the madness

I furnaced dreams, a poet, foe of sleep

Turning sermons with the smell

On Witchfinder fingers

Where bad memories lingered

Burning, as when Dante

Was freed to map Hell

I sired schemes and the means

To catch sight of the seams

And the vagaries inbetween...

And midst the lips and the curls

Of this cunt of a world

In glimpses I would see

A nymph with eyes for me

Eyes of fire that set all life aflame

Lights that surpassed art

In sight , that no intense device of pain

Could prise their secrets from my heart

I knew not Her name

Though her kiss was the same

Without a whisper of shame

As either Virtue or Sin’s

And pressed to Her Curve

I felt my destiny swerve

From damnation reserved

To a permanent grin...

So glad for the madness