Outside, barbed wire drips rain.
Inside, in a gray corridor
water trickles across the ceiling like a vein.
The condemned shuffles,
head down, manacled. From birth
he walked in the light of his father,
with the shadow of his father’s fathers;
Now, he walks past cells of solitary light.
The chamber awaits…

Bound upon the anti-throne
his arms are splayed, bare.
A tattoo of barbed wire twists
along his upper arm.
Lower is a portrait of his son,
a vein bulging across its forehead like a snake.
The spiral tube is drawn.
The death seed drips.
The lights flash off.