Wandering the candlelit tunnels of my mind one lonesome wintry night,
I saw the ceremonial execution of a nomadic martyred mystic –
I heard a sullen crow’s repulsive caws oozing and trickling through the dense humid air like congealed blood through a sponge,
Or like a tortured rat through an impossible maze –
The creaking wooden floorboards bitterly groaning underfoot,
And the hangman’s dangling noose insidiously swinging from side to side,
Like a nightmarish pendulum of pain and decay –
The crowd’s eerie whispers hissing and slithering into my aching ears,
Their eye’s cruel glare of malice blinding in the dawn fog,
And the church bell’s booming clang and tong solemnly announcing daybreak –
I saw savagely slumped corpses piled high upon one another to rot,
A festering banquet for the clusters of grievous buzzing flies,
And beads of feverish sweat cascading down his trembling dirty forehead –
The rattling horse drawn carriages screeching to a halt with the crack of a whip,
And the sun’s scorching rays beating down through the bleak-grey overcast skies –
The executioner’s blood-spattered iron boots stomping and scuffing the weathered floorboards,
Like hailstones crashing on a flaky tin roof,
And the young king’s sinister smile sitting smugly upon his evil childish face –
The rope’s scraggly blend of coarse fabric burning and tearing his skin,
As it wraps around his neck like a deadly coiled python constricting its prey –
I saw the lever’s fatal snap shattering his senses,
Like the sonic boom of a broken sound barrier or the cataclysmic bursting of a vast concrete damn,
And the polluted city smog choking and burning his fiery throat like poison gas –
The traumatized children frantically clutching hideous rag dolls,
Their tender minds warped and deranged irretrievably into the squalid streets of catatonic insanity,
And the leering old hags hurling vicious hisses and horrid insults at his naked vulnerable soul,
Like drenching a holy crystalline diamond in caskets of ugly mud –
The cobblestone courtyard splattered with filth and faeces,
Drowning the delicate wildflowers below in layers of sodden muck,
And the sad mule’s feeble pose of resignation so forlorn and humbling,
Even angels weep to look upon its saintly surrender to fate –
I heard the cries of Christlike shrouded monks in isolation cells weeping and wailing for their martyred brother’s salvation,
The dusty dank cathedral walls echoing their sacred monastic chants and hallowed prayers,
Like a wolf’s harrowing howl in a great deep valley of willow trees –
The vultures perched patiently upon rusty cannons and crumbling castle walls and looming defence towers,
All utterly useless within this veil of mysterious godly mist –
I saw his excruciatingly slow descent down through death and into eternity,
The dissonantly jangling shackles cutting into his sore bony ankles,
And the regal knight’s pristine chainmail armour glimmering sardonically,
Within the grey gloom of October and winter’s dark brooding colour pallet –
The billowing County flag clumsily flailing in the breathless air,
Like a drunken ogre staggering into a pigsty at night to collapse and cry,
And the priest’s solemnly murmured prayers so hushed and reverent,
Amidst the harsh swirling scene of mortal terror and wretched wrath and sinful destruction –
The blazing bonfire’s flashing flames licking and bludgeoning nearby bystanders with tongues of molten ash,
And the grim reaper’s grotesque grip slowly tightening around his frail skeleton,
As a flock of soaring white doves idly glide far above this whirlwind scene of horror,
Somehow blessing his sordid passing with a strange holy grace –
And finally,
I saw his neck’s gruesome crunching crack,
His bulging eyes popping out of their sockets like bullets from a gun,
No longer windows to his soul nor portals to his divine spirit,
But lifeless glassy orbs of inanimate flesh,
Spasming and squirming in the mud –
Poem by Stamos Mardou