Mariners at Perdition’s lighthouse,
with bludgeoning smog raised
from slumber, to yet more grinding hours.
Discord's in the deep,
immiscible holy oil,
a glass of tar to a drowning man.
Welding soul and iron, the shipyards
will make arsenic eaters of us all;
Swallowing blight to bear its burden.
Broken mariners, building
arks from whale’s rusted ribs,
stolen ores from slaves a world away.

As pretty as syphilis; there’s no vindicating this.

They, the crucified, on ferrous beams,
Rivets pounding into arthritic palms,
and a thousand years of cruel, ringed fingers,
grasping in earnest at saline rags.
O, Morningstar! Sing in dissonance,
To lightning coils at the beacon’s head;

As infants to scale the peaks of refuse
to scrape the last threads of life,
the pitiful dregs of flesh that cling
to bones cast off from Zion.
O, Morningstar! Sing in dissonance,
A verse for an onerous dawn,
An aria in an oppressive key,
atonal ringing in their sodden void,

They see the lecherous twilight, that,
daily, caresses the sanctimonious,
the voluptuous paunch of the pious
who gorge on doubt and faltering faith,
who sell their extortions as sins forgiven,
and crack every bone for the marrow.

To elucidate the thought of industriarchs,
and to set their gears a-churning,

Innumerous days spent
dredging the catarrh
from the larynx of the Clyde;
the strings of its voicebox
bind Hephaestus by his hair.
Club-foot cripple,
caught in cacophonies a-pounding,
crucified on ferrous beams
with rivets in his palms.

Spines under lock,
Binding the aberrant and the orthodox,
Spiral staircase, sickly pale,
As pretty as syphilis;
There’s no vindicating this.
Give me strength!
Give me strength!