Naming The Chiefs of Sinners
A Prologue
Perverted Loves.
Pride
Rising like smoke to choke
The saint who breathes it deep
Enough to death, and on whose breath
Can the taint of guilt be guised
As wormwood tongue that sweetly lies.
Arrogance
A fortress built with ornate glass,
The Cathedral of the Lords themselves.
A liturgy of light spills through in all
Its misconstrued colors, only for a shattering
To issue forth the scattering of tinted truth.
Theft
Like a meal with foul ingredients
Of noble grass, the stubborn
Ass eats his fill. And when comes
The plague, the guilty draig will
Point his talon at the ass and blame it.
Disobedience
Like a weed between the cracks,
Taxing brittle stone and grout of
Gold, and on the road is trodden down
By the people of the town who’d
Not behold the weed and frown.
Hatred
A sword too hot for sinner’s hands,
A smoking gun with burning plans,
A guilty heart cannot escape
The weight of burning hate, which
Smokes for another’s inconvenient life.
Decietfulness
A ghost of wayward truths flaunts
His way with words and haunts
The unsure ear with threat of death
Or death, and calls it good
With a growing, wide, wide smile.
Excessive Loves.
Drunkenness
Babbling like a beaded brook,
Bumbling, fumbling, fading, forsook.
Swirling sea in silty sump
The drinker drinks the sirens song
‘Till all goes wrong and stones grow soft;
The drinker drowns himself within,
The drunkard drowns himself in sin.
Murder
As the drunkard tips his glass
Knocking back another round,
His mind, too bound to think,
The killer gulps it all the same
But violence is his drink.
Lust
Passion hot like itching rot
High above the rest, is not
Lust but love, warped and twisted
Like a towel wrung dry of living water.
Gluttony
Eat and eat and eat the things
Our hearts desire most. Entreat
The self, a little sweet, a little
Meat and drink for an easy day’s feat.
Deficient Loves.
Sloth
Sitting sated by too little,
Beating heart is growing brittle,
“Joy,” says he, “is best tomorrow.”
God and faith thus left for sorrow.
Despair
Soon follows slothful fellows,
Grinding hollow hearts to bellowing,
Harrowing cries of defeat
Before he gets up to his feet,
Before he gets up from his seat.
Virtue Pleading.
Hope
Like a spinning spool of rope
Fibrous and fraying, loose at the end
‘Till it is taught and, at the rotting knot,
Snaps off the spool with a rattle
Like the babbling fool mocking, “nope,
I do not need that thread of hope.”
And yet he cries, “Tell me why
I sigh and ache, this pain is great—
This sin, this immense weight I wear
I cannot bear to hope the rope
Will hold me too. Lord, let it tie
My heart and deeds and sling them
To the sea and feed them to the free
Fishes of the darkening depths.
Tie my soul to you, oh Lord!
Be my spinning spool of clung-to hope.”