Two poems by Jeff Carter

Two poems
by Jeff Carter

A Satire (Isaiah 14: 4 – 21)

How did the tyrant die?
How did the tyrant die?
How did the tyrant die?
Not with a bang…

But Yahweh broke him down with furious blows
and now that the Right Reverend il Duce, der Fürer,
Generalissimo, Mr. President is gone
the whole world sings,
“Ding Dong! The tyrant ruler’s dead!”

The hinges of the sepulchral void swings open to receive you,
“Welcome friend, now you’re one of us.
Rest forever on your bed of maggots.”

Scion-of-the-Dawn, born to power, conqueror of nations
how is it that you’ve been brought so low?
you, who though that God
spoke to you as his messianic-force-to-be?
Now you’re nothing in the emptiness of null.

This was the man who shook the world? This worm?
He made a desert and called it “peace”
and kept his Guantanamo prisoners without charge.
But here he’s dumped with the heaps of
unnamed dead in an unmarked grave.

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The Corpses Crawl Upward From The Human Soup

The corpses crawl upward from the human soup
of bone, blood, and gristle and gore
the flag it waves, it falters and droops
as the mass of death heaves upward once more

indiscriminate slaughter, random death
as men fire blind through sulfurous smoke
the blasphemous shouts, and curses of the damned
as hundreds more fall at a single stroke

the stupid catastrophic waste
the damnable heresy
as we plunge our arms elbow deep into the muck
to pull up rifle and charge the hill once more

Author bio:

Jeff Carter is the pastor of a medium sized congregation in southern Minnesota; he is married and has two children (one of each). Some of his writings have been published in The Wittenburg Door (a religious satire magazine), and will soon be published in Twisted Tongue (a British horror magazine) and Fear and Trembling.