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I plant my cross where the hangman stands,

built empires with blistered hands,

but the dark-skinned beasts I yoked from dust and chains.

Don’t speak to me of sin  I’ve dined with it,

branded it, bred it, baptized it beneath the gallows.

The lash is sacred, the shackle holy.

I wear righteousness like a cloak of flame.

Their tongues? Heathen noise.

Their gods? Carved jokes.

I silenced both with fire and steel.

The tree became my altar.

The swinging body, my sermon.

Crows were my congregation.

Each twitch, each final gasp

a psalm of power, a hallelujah of control.

And when they looked to the sky for mercy,

I told them God was busy

busy blessing my rifles,

busy sanctifying my bullets,

too busy smiling down on my clean, white hands.

I took their land and called it inheritance.

I took their labor and called it order.

All in His name.

All by divine right.

All with a smile and a scripture in my mouth.

Their cries are echoes now,

but I still hear them in the silence

and I smirk.

For the silence means I won.