Canon

A room full of saints, in the Spanish style,

Violent drama

From quiet to whisper loud.

They never meet your eyes.

Ashamed

Caught on canvas doing things.

Things they never did

All marked in heart's-blood

Sympathetic magic

From their heart to mine

A long line of carmine

Passing the eye, the mind, the word

Clawing at the under-soul

The heaving breathy bellows

With ten thousand flensing knives.

An image, a snapshot

In salvation history

Tarted up with royal Photoshop

Here a tear, there an attribute

Every artifact tilted

Every illumination falsified.

Ah, my love, let us be true to one another,

Said the forger to his brush.