Wrath of Your God

I am a conscript in the host of the Pharaoh.
I am a child of Canaan.
I am a slave in Gomorrah.
And I have felt the wrath of your god.

Content to tend my fields in the turning of the sun
and the flooding of the Nile’s everspring
I was taken to watch over the slave nation of my king,
watch them toil with brick and mortar until their lost son came out of the desert;
and then saw their god bring low my people without mercy.
In mourning we commanded them to depart
but in vengeance pursued
and died when the waters of the treasonous sea came crashing about us.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.

A child, I played among the cedars of my home on the mountain
and ate from the wealth of my inheritance.
My father was summoned to arms against a marauding people
and fought them at Jericho and Ai and Lachish;
aaw our brother’s walls fall before the feet and the swords of a nation of slaves,
returned to my mother no flesh but the brace from his wrist.
Then unto us they came,
ordered by a deity without name to kill our every lamb and child,
to slaughter for the promise of paradise.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.

Burdened and beset, my life burning hell.
I have been imprisoned the entirety of my years in groveling bondage.
I have been raped each night until I bleed unceasingly and no man will touch me.
Beaten and whipped so that I lay in the street for days,
crawling to hide each night from the languid pillagers.
And this day a foreign man came and all left me to demand his new flesh.
In the early morning I saw him flee the city without backward glance
and behind him came a firestorm to consume this wretched place.
Yes, I have felt the wrath of your god.

I am Dresden, Verdun and Nanjing
I am the whore and the fetus
And I have felt the wrath of your god