Christopher Hayes

Biography

Lecturer in Business and Management at the University of Central Lancs, have had many poems published in anthologies. Currently writing short stories.

Samples

Such a fawning gambit fails to attract enough attention to this common enough Clergy, fraught with writs and denials of the Ascension, and the “Virgin Birth” proclaims this exiled, rebel priest is merely the fractured vision of some desert madman at the feast; the decayed remains of a Holy Empire’s seat sets its hollow morality adrift and pegs the price of belief! The Cleric consents, and argues the finer points of sense, and wonders where his once steadfast faith went! Confess! Confess! The rubicund Priest, the frantic madman supports the Traitor, and gorges at the feast; Leans to his Lady, now beggars of his Lord, when his gayness is betrayed it pitches him silently overboard. The Canticle presides, and on a singular verse it rests, prepared to make a truce from idle, idiotic nonsense! A frigid priesthood, denied the firmer flesh Preys on scanty women, and buggers the Choirboy’s best- -a common Comedian, who sits and considers this vulgar, villainous state; no-one brave enough to admit to even the simplest mistake! His Orb of Office, and his juicy rhetoric Will damn this vain, inglorious and pedantic Cleric Whose first instinct gave rise to all this bullshit! Incense and Pearl proscribe everything that he holds dear; Images of saintly fanatics who have been dead for thousands of years. A Pestilence of hard and fast rituals, written such a long time ago (as near to God as can be, a man made, transparent imago) a form of words, an empty, meaningless catechism, a pointless exercise, a worthless paradigm. All around the world millions conform their obeisance, Render huge fortunes to a mindless maintenance, Pick at holy relics and a mountain of paraphernalia To reinforce a morbid set of dull beliefs and outright paranoia. An inquisition of raw cruelty transforms the individual, And swallows up instead the obscure with heartless rituals, Forgives on a whim, for whatever state you’re in, A few quid for absolution and the wages of sin! Through the steady stream of shackled professionals Stumbling sickly through a Mass of lame confessionals, They reveal nothing more than had already been said: Eldorado’s Gold, my friend, was merely Lead! The King! The King! The congregation demands a gift, A scented gallows, or merely a stout horsewhip. The keen blade of this second deliverance Should give this change a little more permanence; But to a man, as each face humbly passes by Grief already moulded, hands clasped in fervent prayer, Beneath their Habit of Chastity and Pure Light, A rare smile disguises the smell of rot inside. A sonorous bell heralds this rare disease: Wrapped in rotting bandages – unclean! unclean! The soft interest in all things pertaining to the above; The Sanitised Gates and the Anaesthetised Kingdom.

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