Of Beasts and Men

Avaunt ye soldiers decked in death,
be gone with ghastly shibboleth.
Retract your taloned fingertips
from rifts you ripped in manuscripts.
Retreat you feinds where chaos waits,
your hallowed shriek reverberates.
Just bite your tongue, enjoy the taste,
ignore thy grinning hatchet-face.

Let blood enslave the devil's eyes
and drip where cinders cauterize,
the crimson ink engraving hate
where blackened pages crepitate.
Unholy poets penning poems,
emotionless in monochromes
and 'mid those lines of blasphemy,
the tortured cackle absently.

Lone echoes search forgotton homes,
the bones that built their catacombs
where aging photos shed disguise
exposing truths the soul denies
and somewhere 'mid those stoic lips
a tremble strokes their lonely quips,
a passing memoir's glancing blow
escaping 'midst the undertow.

An iris peers through atrament,
the twitching ghost of malcontent.
A product born where sins amass
and broken men succumb at last.
The remnant beasts of darker shores
we've criticized in ancient lore.
A solemn child, born of man
when timeless fires claim the damned.