The plague descends
Blistering d**h oozing from every pore of the body, inexorable
Rancind pustules disgorge their black and foul effluence
Reeking of malady and vile decay
Everyone is susceptible, the great leveller
Rich and poor suffering as one in disease
The afflicted run delirious through the streets, coughing blood
Marked with copious bruising
Scores of sores, legions of lesions
Bodies laid unceremoniously in piles, too numerous to bury
What is the cause of this tragedy, this cataclysmic kairotic point?
God? The perpetual recourse of the parochially ignorant
Enemy of progress
The flaws of society forever overlooked
Irrationality and panic leads to the rise of the flagellants
Obdurate brethrens of the cross with angelic approbation
Commanding you purge your sins with excoriation of thine own flesh
Marching from town to town, gathering more proselytes
To spread the lies and multitude of lacerations
The immigrant populations erroneously scapegoated
Brutal persecutions follow
Schismatists burned at the stake
Reputations smeared, along with their bloody carca**es
In fact the missionaries increase infection rates where they travel
Oblivious couriers of pestilence
d**h by sermon
Terror follows in their footsteps
Maniacal processions with pathetic hymns of penitence
Eventually they will be in turn labeled heretics, a cruel irony
Surrounding by mortality, the populace descends into anarchy
Debauchery without restraint, the bonds of society are loosened
Gorging on what supplies remain in gluttonous intoxicated feasts
Frenzied orgies in celebration of survival in the grim dance of d**h
In the aftermath of the pandemic, those remaining question the helpless church
And their god of omni-potence, superstition and orthodoxy
They who provide no reasoned answers
Or solutions to the suffering and hardship
Now, with half of the clerics fallen, society is free to advance
Science prevails
The disease acting like the biblical flood
Cleansing us of false belief