I bled on a pivotal stretch
   Like a clockwork Christ
   Bears sore stigmata, bored
  
   And as I threw Job, I drove
   Myself to a martyred wretch
   To see if I drew pity
   Or pretty litanies from the Lord
  
   So the plot sickened
   With the coming of days
   Ill millennia thickened
   With the claret I sprayed
   And though they saw red
   I left a dirty white stain
   A splintered knot in the grain
   On Eden's martial aid
  
   So glad for the madness
  
   I walked the walls naked to the moon
   In Sodom and Babylon
   And through rich whores and corridors
   Of the Vatican
   I led a sordid Borgia on
  
   I read the Urilia text
   So that mortals wormed
   As livebait for the dead
  
   And as I broke hope, I choked
   Another Pope with manna peel
   Dictation to DeSade
   In the dark entrails of the Bastille
   And as He wrote, I smote
   A royal blow to the heads of France
   And in the sheen of guillotines
   I saw others, fallen, dance
  
   I was an incurable
   Necromantic old fool
   A phagadaena that crawled
   Drooling over the past
   A rabid wolf in a shawl
   A razor's edge to the rule
   That the stars overall
   Were never destined to last
  
   So glad for the madness
  
   I furnaced dreams, a poet, foe of sleep
   Turning sermons with the smell
   On Witchfinder fingers
   Where bad memories lingered
   Burning, as when Dante
   Was freed to map Hell
  
   I sired schemes and the means
   To catch sight of the seams
   And the vagaries inbetween...
  
   And midst the lips and the curls
   Of this cunt of a world
   In glimpses I would see
   A nymph with eyes for me
  
   Eyes of fire that set all life aflame
   Lights that surpassed art
   In sight, that no intense device of pain
   Could prise their secrets from my heart
  
   I knew not Her name
   Though her kiss was the same
   Without a whisper of shame
   As either Virtue or Sin's
   And pressed to Her curve
   I felt my destiny swerve
   From damnation reserved
   To a permanent grin...
  
   So glad for the madness