When you’ve sacrificed
The Old Ones
And you’ve sacrificed
The Young
To the blankly staring idol
That you formed
From ash and dung;
When you’ve sacrificed
Your servants
And you’ve sacrificed
Your slaves
And you’ve sacrificed
Your ancestors
By digging up their graves;
When you’ve sacrificed
The shamans
And you’ve sacrificed
The witches
And offered up their
Powdered bones
In sacramental niches;
When you’ve sacrificed
Your livestock
And you’ve sacrificed
Your crop
And sacrificed your parents
With your scythe’s
Redemptive lop
And sacrificed
The animals
And sacrificed
Your pets
And sacrificed the usurers
Who held all
Of your debts,
And sacrificed
Your honour
And sacrificed
Your skill
For sacrifice, and
Sacrificed
The terminally ill,
And you’ve sacrificed
Your children
And you’ve sacrificed
Your friends
Til the blood flows
From the temple
Down to where the river bends
And you’ll sacrifice
The Nation
And you’ll sacrifice
The Earth
And sacrifice each
Living Thing that’s
Clinging to its girth
And you’ve sacrificed
All supplicants
With sacrificial
Rigour;
When you hear, below the
Ziggurat,
Someone begin to snigger
As you raise your
Onyx dagger
To sacrifice
Some more
And then you skid, arse
Over tit
In pools of puddled gore
And you flail in
Sanguine Slapstick
And you’re sliding
In the blood
Offered up in
Sacrifice
To the idol made of mud,
This blank-eyed, baked shit
Dolly, spawn
Of hobgoblin
And elf,
Then remember, you must
Never, ever
Sacrifice yourself.