The day Reason was guillotined

in the kingdom known as my mind,

his head flung into the murky sea of oblivion, 

Cruelty became my god.

He has made me invincible, fortifying my soul

against sense and my heart against tenderness.

Judgment was exiled, and with an iron fist

he crushed my eyes so I lost sight of love.

But how he made my blood boil! How he

whipped my soul into such a pure, raging ecstasy!

The sheer pleasure of cruelty, where all the world

seems so ripe and ready to give way

Under my unrelenting hands! The sweet sensation

of flesh crushing under flesh; the shivering of an upper lip;

the burst of tears and a bloodied mouth like fireworks, accompanied

by the high violin climax of a scream…

But what I revel in most of all is a kind of precious pearl

sitting amongst its battered, rotting shell; the treasure

that my god most desires is the single, silent moment,

indiscernible, indescribable, unmistakable, of the breaking

of a heart. When the squirming, cramping red mass

bursts open under a torrent of arrows sent forth by my words;

when tear-drenched eyes give off that most pitiful,

helpless light of loss that simply says “Why?” These moments

send me into such a state of wonder and delight

that I drop down to my knees and break my skull

upon Cruelty’s marble temple floor in supplication

to my god.

The unwiring of sinews, the pleading tears, the tears…

… are my own.