Brazen towards discarded bones

you gave yourself to whips

lined with lead to beat the sacred

past your door and into the

streets of Rome.

 

Bone-gatherer, picking the hard

shards of martyrs

placing them in a bag,

a skin of sorts to create another

selfless self

 

Who would suffer the

torture of lead to lead a life

of bone-bagger

hard, brittle, chipped, split

like your faith?


Bony spiky shards of belief

to put God back together

once more

a sacred splinter at a time.