Maranatha
Jehovah Rapha
Raah
Nissi
Shammah

I saw the sky pour scarlet lines
Like etchings on crooked palms
Outlining a pair of tattered wings wearing a tin crown
Flapping violently with the grain
It spoke nothing
Held thunderclaps in each its hands
and war beneath its hooves
Greeted eagerly by backdoors
and whispered secrets
It kept glass eyed hatred in television sets, cupboard drawers, and by street corner signs
Where people offer their safety hand over fist
While clutching each other's fingers
shaped into shadows that look like coffins
In the dusks last lantern light

I saw the bellies of women filled with flames
Stamped out by silver hooves
Before as much as a cry could escape from their lips
They cough the smoke from their flattened stomachs
Kiss with sooted lips and give charcoal filled grins

I watched plowshares bend like tired backs over bronze earth
Scattering silver sparks like seed over unyielding ground
that took the sweat from men’s brows
and drank joyfully the blood of their hands
Mapping red thread roots over the copper loam
That sprouted the muzzles of wolves with mortar mouths and pestle teeth snatching
the speech of angel tongued children;
They spoke in the language of God

And after I surveyed all that had been done
I tried to shut out my anger with a match stick mouth
But my black cauldron mind boils over with the striking sound of sulfur
Righteous indignation turns to holy ghost heaviness
that escapes like a free falling hammer from my chest

That makes me cry out

Maranatha
Jehovah Rapha
Raah
Nissi
Shammah

Oh come swiftly for this nation that burns its candle at both ends
It arrogantly believes that time runs straight
a bullwhip they control for their own benefit
Not knowing that they are merely a neighboring spoke beside destruction
on age’s wheel

Lobo eyed children
ones that carry stones in their left hand while greeting friends with their right
Lash your splintered bones in the shape of a crucifix
Make sure to listen to the sounds of the marrow scraping against marrow
Let it be a tuning fork whose pitch cracks your ribs
Let your blood flow forth
Make your heart burst like wineskins

For horsemen come
Horsemen take
No crimson mark above your door will save your kin
No forefathers face will lead to your escape
What you hear tearing through your stepping stone thrones of glass and steel
that sounds like the wind through a keyhole
Is
DEATH
undiluted
by the snake skin palms of man
These are surely the last days

The prophets fill the streets
Playing dirges for covered ears and dancing feet
Babylon falls like a millstone into the sea
But
To a lamb even a dragon must bow its knee