Death of a Soul

By Nicholas Lewis

The bell tolls! The bell tolls! The bell tolls!

At death row, eternity’s pew; unravel heaven’s scrolls.

Calling forth my corpse from beyond the grassy knoll.

Rot and decay’s eternal stench, hell’s incense.

And Uriel’s light surveys my innard’s blackish bloom,

tracing its parasitic, ravenous path, hence.

When set fire before birth, fleeing before loosed from womb.

That mortal wound working its immortal poison – Sin!

Death’s budding embryo, prophecy of a future tomb.

And hear?! Heaven’s jury declares a verdict now in.

Guilty! Judgement spies blood on conscience’s seat,

But the flesh gnashes, gnaws, fights, strains.

And tones, high to low; shouts to murmurs, entreating to treat.

And shouting back in tempest, roaring above a holy din, evading.

Spiting gentle pleas; spatting at treaties of retreat.

All hell’s cymbals clanging; conviction’s music fading.

Striking ear drums; screaming at pierced marrow, bone.

Deaf to thy voice and melody persuading.

But ghostly Scribe points to writ word in stone.

No clamor, no roar to silence ink-born truth;

but the itching hand and dagger left to save the throne.

Alas! Eyeless beholder and bloodied ear! Conjured to soothe.

Behold oblivion’s cure!

Gone silent has the Spirit sleuth.

The crying and pleading ending premature.

Infant righteousness - stillborn. No open casket.

In darkness lays, only maggots left endure.

No light left to shine on paths to Damascus.

Anonymous soul buried; feast to the infernal worm.

Men now walking past us,

Us—once a creature—now a germ,

washed away in judgement flood.

Lain before His blazing eye, here I squirm.

And forgiveness everlasting from afar—an eternal flow of blood;

but me, thy wrath that pricks and sucks my veins, sands shifting to ninth hour.

Knees bend and tongue confess, this vessel of wrath now devoured.

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Nicholas Lewis resides in the Ozarks of Missouri with his wife Courtney and their three children. He has served in campus ministry at the Missouri S&T before becoming a healthcare chaplain for a local hospital and hospice agency. He also serves as a part-time minister at Mosaic Church, where he regularly preaches and counsels. He is originally a graduate of Boyce College. Nicholas enjoys film criticism, reading theology and speculative fiction, drinking coffee, and playing dinosaurs with his young kids.