Vice, Venom

He sat down by the Apple tree
    perfecting his sorcery
And his thoughts brewed poisons
    as the world mowed and crumbled
    while he was plucking the seeds anew
He sought and sowed a thousand more thoughts and fought
    the Parrots and Donkeys in the Marketplace
His art cajoled them in the form of a Manuscript
They chewed his words and left no trace

He wandered with no sense of time
Though in fact he was on his way
    wondering what crime
    it was to endure and get by
    when the world neither rejects nor accepts
    the truth it was just a miserable Chance

He creased his brows, burned them to a tumult
He disappeared into the Midnight and Imagination;
    try as he might to grace himself a soul
    there were no piths but only its ghost

His magicks have become the dark,
    the cruel and the stark
They’ve sown to hate the virtue that was
    Crying Truth from the Blood
    and how he rules the lazy world in Untimely sighs

Saint Sebastian

You fought with a leap of faith
    and was almost blinded in your haste
    as you ran to fight your foretold fate—
    the saddest story—
and you would’ve won if it were not
    from the way he kept you in pursuit
    with a well-draped loincloth

And so he lifts his arms only to make you hiss
    and you bow down on your knees

He’s pinned down to the barks;
And you’re pirouetting into his willowy palms,
    rawer than you’d be willing to admit—

The tribe brought him as a sacrifice
    and the soldiers shot him to taste his blood
    (they are his champions and rivals)
And when the arrows fell off the ground
    He crushed everyone’s heart;
    and tonight, he will break yours, too