Name Withheld

Who are these men?

Pious and yet wicked,

Timid but merciless,

Everything acted in the
shoddy method of small
town stages, unpracticed
and somehow more galling
for their own poor preparation,

These unwholesome admixtures
of ill-gotten gain and the
wielded hammer of misplaced
faith,

These figures, no more real
than scarecrows, men stuffed
to the brimming with dead
things gone rank and awful
and their breath that heat
and stench of putrefaction,

These grinning, imbecile heads
beamed nightly into our houses
to mock and posture, to sicken
us after our evening meals,

And it is an empty gesture to
say unkind words of these men,
but that is, at least, a sin they
rarely seek to punish, though
who can say who occupies their
secret jails, their mass graves,
their nations of exile far removed,

And these are more reasons for
this hatred we blight ourselves with,
souls groaning under the weight of
our own impotent rage, the sky
painted permanent midnight in
a land we once held close as blood
but now hardly recognize.