Black candles Made from slaughtered infants’ fat Grace the points of a pentagram Writ large in virgins’ blood; They light-up occult inscriptions And the twisted face That mouths their sounds In the eldritch exclamations Of spells that had lain dead For who knows how many years ‘Til this purposeless & empty fool Had flailed about & struck upon An evil path to tread In a spate of catastrophic luck; He cast about & struck upon The dark & narrow way … Read on…
Fear & shivers wrack my frame Every year about this time, When dour thoughts afflict my mind, And heart, and so my gentle rhyme. Most everything is dying here, For fall has come to close the year. Summer diversions & summer-time games Distract us until summer’s gone, When all feel older, for we see Another winter’s coming on. And fruits of life are taken in Which came of purity or sin. this time of harvest, and of death, Presents reminders … Read on…
We are the pattern-seers, the dream-chasers. We see castles in clouds and omens in our tea. Why not? Imagine a primitive human, mistaking a shrub for a leopard—he might detour to avoid it, be inconvenienced, and live to have children. But what of one mistaking a leopard for a shrub? He is food. So it was the pattern-seers who made the next generation and the next. The need for patterns and meaning sank into our bones, became a hunger, deep … Read on…
Or Sally-Port For Slaughter? The Cold War was over And gates for peace swung wide, Counter to things innate, — Bursts of religious hate, — That now well-up inside To produce fresh slaughter.
I’ve worked as a letter-carrier for many years, and had just started a new delivery route at the Post Office. I was going through the usual learning curve. It’s not easy remembering 400-600 new names, not to mention which houses have dogs, which customers will constantly complain, and which ones will want to visit with me all day, telling me about their lives. As I was delivering to one particular house, I noticed a religious tract hanging on the mailbox. … Read on…
As I photograph the Schleicher County Courthouse in Eldorado, a voice behind me says, “Nice building, huh? It’s the same kind of limestone that the polygamists used for their temple.” Surprised, I turn to see a man maybe in his late forties, five feet away but coming closer, and I ask him, “Have you been to the compound, or talked to anyone there?” The sunshine is intense as we study each other, standing on the tended lawn. I squint but … Read on…
FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs likely succeeded his father Rulon T. Jeffs in 2002; this information is disputed, and Warren recently claimed that he was not the true prophet, but rather had been deceived by evil powers into believing this heresy. The Eldorado Success newspaper, however, has tracked both the development of the YFZ compound and the power struggle within the FLDS, and offers the view that Warren fought off challengers to assume his father’s preeminent position. Dying of natural causes … Read on…
The temple of the Yearning for Zion (YFZ) compound gleams, pure and white, in the sunshine of West Texas. I pull over on the side of Rudd Road, a bumpy asphalt strip that divides ranch land and homes, some as simple as singlewide trailers where laundry hangs on clotheslines beneath which pass young goats and other small livestock. In late April, mesquite and cedar trees are greening, and yellow flowers bloom beside the growing, sprouting prairie grass. This rolling land … Read on…