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Literature Text
The Haruspex
A purple satin sleeve
dips into the blood
of a kitten
freshly gutted.
The haruspex arranges
the viscera according
to ritual.
The beating of small
hearts
muted in shadow by
bars of cages
Tiny eyes bear
mute witness to the
carnage of the seer.
It is for the good
of the Church
that this blood is spent
that the soulless
are martyred.
The prognostic priest
moves with deranged harmony
through gore-imbued
reefs of nightmare
lisping litanies of divination.
The uncaged, uncertain
uneducated sacrifices
bleat, bleat rosaries
throughout the night
in anticipation of
magniloquent speculations.
They are too like
sheep to sense
the similarity between
self and entrail-less cats.
The signs speak of
untimely death
destruction
an apt climax
for divination by demons.
We've been taken
with faith
from Galilee to Gehenna
by religion and the
hauteur of the haruspex.
A purple satin sleeve
dips into the blood
of a kitten
freshly gutted.
The haruspex arranges
the viscera according
to ritual.
The beating of small
hearts
muted in shadow by
bars of cages
Tiny eyes bear
mute witness to the
carnage of the seer.
It is for the good
of the Church
that this blood is spent
that the soulless
are martyred.
The prognostic priest
moves with deranged harmony
through gore-imbued
reefs of nightmare
lisping litanies of divination.
The uncaged, uncertain
uneducated sacrifices
bleat, bleat rosaries
throughout the night
in anticipation of
magniloquent speculations.
They are too like
sheep to sense
the similarity between
self and entrail-less cats.
The signs speak of
untimely death
destruction
an apt climax
for divination by demons.
We've been taken
with faith
from Galilee to Gehenna
by religion and the
hauteur of the haruspex.
Suggested Collections
Another poem I wrote in college (dated around 1985).
This was written in response to my own philosophical question; why does religion involve so much sacrifice? Why is suffering such a part of worship? Is it supposed to be this way, or do we feel that suffering and self-abuse gives us a pedestal from which to look down upon others?
This was written in response to my own philosophical question; why does religion involve so much sacrifice? Why is suffering such a part of worship? Is it supposed to be this way, or do we feel that suffering and self-abuse gives us a pedestal from which to look down upon others?
© 2009 - 2024 Decarabia69
Comments54
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The question you posed those many years ago in college reminds me of a similar one suggested by Hunter S. Thompson in the book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, when there is a narratorial description of then-President Richard Nixon giving a televised speech about the Vietnam War, but that all that the narrator could discern from it was the word sacrifice, a word that would echoe continually throughout the speech.