Behold in silence and awe, the great Agnathan, From glassy sea, slithers onto newborne soil, Eyes nine in rows twain, along slimy span, Shudders, heaves in the muck to herald turmoil. O’ that ye were strangled at sorry birth, That ye would not witness his fell effete, To witness sunlight, then find death’s greet, And all trace of ye banished from green Earth. Glory! Glory the sainted circle of teeth! Naiads give praise the foul symbiosis! Give him alms and bestow the blood-soak’d, stolen wreath! Exalt him in obscene radiances! In fear, worship the parasite god, For he strikes ye with dread Inv’sible Hand, Manifests destiny on blood-bought land, And covers in gold, a damned ego flawed. O’ tremble! For he laughs at men’s vain plans, Gleans wages and labor from their sorry toil, Sells thiev’d honey, to spit on the common man. And to us go our doom, with all that is moral. Let all flesh weep and mourn in ash and sand, O’ tremble! For now violence is worship, And the holy wine, the blood of wrists slit. Streams sing with saintly corpses in wasteland. From wretched womb to the lonely grave expire, The Lamprey bid us go to unending fire. ______________________________________________ [I am a biological abomination. I live in a world that wasn’t made for me, existing in a cultural, biomechanical engine whose fingers slip suzerain – tips connected to threads of misconceptions and senseless hate. The gears of the mother churn, despising heavy pigment, despising anything other than a white, arbitrary standard. Vain hallelujahs. As if, anything other than immediate praise of glorified economic chains and cages that only get longer and bigger with no significant progress.] “I am not a person. I am a fetish. I am a disease carrier.” We did not choose the color of our skin, the shape of our eyes. This world is the product of a failed, holy abortion – left a wheezing, gasping cocaine fetus, writhing and squirming in a cosmic concrete alley, pushed out into a diseased and groaning Earth, kicked over with shit by a white, animal God inconvenienced by human filth. Animal snarls, grunts. Screeches from a deformed mouth, made only to cry in agony and pain until its last breath. Arms twitch in aberrant rhythms. Body convulses. A nearly stillborn child, conceived in waste and shit. Twisted and sick hails to a flag from a royal priesthood, intent on realizing delusions of grandeur – reclaiming visions of greatness remembered from days past, which in truth never existed. An arthritic invisible hand built on the backs of Black people and violence. People of the spectacle, you declare the praises of a God made in your own image. You are not righteousness, you are not justice. [You are not some bastion of the last shred of moral decency]. You are [a miserable waste,] a sad excuse of human life who deserves to be crushed underneath my heel. Parasitic mouths latch on to laboring skin, little hells created by little leeches – gods who forge their own golden chains as they dig lavish graves. You sick, fucking leech. [You fill the void that is your sad, pathetic livelihood with cotton theological fantasies. One day, you’ll find yourself tossed to the lions’ den and your right wing God will not save you. Your children will grow up mindless, empty, and hollow – bitter copies of your image, knowing nothing but ignorance and hatred. Vain hallelujahs, empty hosannas, you sing: “Do not hold against us the sins of past generations! May your mercy come quickly to meet us, For we carry thy special blessing and mark, So we, thy chosen people and the sheep of thy pasture, Will give thanks to Thee forever; To all generations we will tell of Your blessings.”] Incestuous, pedophilic politicians and corrupt religious leaders clothed in holy raiment, enthroned on the praises of their constituents. Infecting anything good in me with a darkened plague. You are white as snow, like the hoods you wear, and your hands are stained red. Tombs painted bright white. I will find you. You are not safe. You are not fucking safe. Bullet wounds, like wounds of God. Nine millimeter rounds and batons like spears to the side. Pressured water a sour wine. I want to go Home. Body of Christ, broken for nothing – [two sorry antidepressants to barely keep me together, to exist in a place that despises me.] Blood of Christ, kitchen bleach. I’m drowning. [I am no stranger to misery. The hands of a system not made for people of color, clenched in seething fists, pulling my hair leaving a bloody scalp, abuse me until I’m black and blue.] Every day I find myself awake is [a boulder I’m struggling to roll up a hill,] crushing my bones and any will to live. A system that crushes the soul[, any sort of will to live]. I long for death to come take me[, that my flesh would rot and feed worms]. Death come take me. God, weren’t you a brown man? Didn’t your skin look like mine? Didn’t you suffer like we did? Don’t you see us? Where are you?