We are far out on the hills

Less holy than the diseased lamb,
whose shepherd has fled his flock,
our sanctuary squats behind the air we breathe,
beneath the faded curtain of its employer’s gate,
where, hidden by hoods, the heathens shirk:
their gate too, is always shut.
Shut.

Shut to us, who still believe,
that a fate so black, is black.

And sequestered in the burning pit,
does our Lord Pope weep and gnash his teeth with us?
Or light another fire
to purge the world of its sinners; the Jews and his ravaged nuns?
Witch, heretic, fiend.
He rules us, the dammed, from his throne of jewels.

And the plague of priests claw through our church’s walls,
they gnaw on our unblessed corpses,
refusing all,
except the daughters,
for they shalt not live to bear the innocence they’d see fall,

while outside their children choke and stain the glasses.
The gate is shut.