O Sodom, call me Gomorrah

watch everything

that I own and desire

now rained down

upon in holy hellfire.

I am the salt solidified,

turned black,

I am the woman that always

looks back.

hear curses through the rain

as I scream to be saved,

until buried in layers

of earth, unnamed.

I am the hands pounding

against the ark of wood,

I am bodies drowning,

thrashing in the flood.

feel a deep and rattling grey

seep through the door

as the first children of egypt

fall to the floor

I am a firstborn male child, now dead amidst ten plagues

I am the nile turned red, water

to blood cascades

smell the sulfur, taste the ashes

of my city taken

mothers chained and dragged away, children left forsaken

I am the seven nations

of the gold promised land,

I am milk and honey Canaan,

fallen where I stand.

see the spattered stain

of a woman, a whore

from lust-bent balcony

to the broken floor

I am the lurid Jezebel

thrown

I am the pavement of blood

and stone

stand in a garden of tears

and prayers

upon a lone hill

of sleeping figures

I am the twelve men denying, sleeping in innocent bliss

I am the man crying: "here he is",

with one betraying kiss.

listen to a crowd of voices

in rhythmic chanting cry

to the man thrown before them,

"crucify! crucify!"

I am the voices condemning

an innocent man

I am the blood sworn upon

each generation's hands.

do you feel the hopeless dark, staining and smothering?

do you hear the aching, waiting

cries of the suffering?

I am the utter darkness as it

begins to seep in.

I am a blackened heart,

a broken world,

I

am

sin.