Hair Shirt - Topic 4 - Last Chance Idol

[fourth_horseman]

Here are the sores
Where the hair shirt has rubbed me raw
Flesh abraded between bone and hide
Weeping as though grieved
But what of the horse
This pale integument
Worn inside out
Smells of the dead mare

One of my brothers
Tightens the wrought cilices
Into the meat of his thights
Until the metal bites
Another wields the crop
Flaying free the blades of his shoulders
And the third fasts
Delirious with hunger

Mortification and sanctification
But there is no regeneration
We are the sin
Punishing the body
For the trespass of the mind