ISIS (An Imprecatory Prayer) *

I have written, on previous occasions, that the headlines sometimes lure me from light verse to respond to wrong using the best weapon I have: Words. If you came to my site looking for something pleasing, perhaps you will find it following this post. I have decided, when appropriate, to comment on current events. When people stay silent, we permit darkness to overwhelm us. The words that follow represent my cry, as a voice in the wilderness. I am nothing but a broken reed. But if I silence the one voice I have, then I grant evil men permission to terrorize me. And perhaps you. If the following words disturb you...I have done my job.
~ James


O, my God
What outrageous
Vile creatures
Man can become
Sinking into the mire
Of perverse imagination
And petulance
Deferring their guilt
As religion.

Killers
Bred and educated
In the dark art of murder
They conceive plots
To chill the planet
With their schemes
Of ingenious
Creative
Numerous ways
To steal life
From exhalation
Proclaiming any name
But Allah.

Forgive them not
O, Lord.
Remember
Their wickedness.
Prosecute their
Evil vanity
Fierce agenda
Reprehensible theology
Condemn them
To the furnace of your anger
And let not the world
Remember again
Their sordid name.
Bring their mothers to wail
And dash their children against stones.
Let their widows wail loudly
And beat their breast
In ceaseless grief.
Remove every vestige
Of their presence
And blow the sands clean
Of their footprints
As though they never walked
Among us.
Let their own dung
Serve as their monument
And let no tounge
Ever again
Pronounce their name.

Let all who are complicit
Be discovered
And let their souls
Be marred in Your zealous
Judgment
In the darkest recesses
Of eternity.

Let it be so
O, my God.


* This imprecatory prayer flows from my wrathful heart upon learning ISIS burned alive the captive Jordanian pilot, then, when dead and charred, encased his death cage in sand and cement. A military response is not enough (but it’s a good beginning). Let a righteous God require the blood drawn by their hand.