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 know 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 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, for 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