Poem: "Sore Afraid"
This poem is from the December 3, 2013 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from the_vulture, baaing_tree, and Dreamwidth user Primeideal. It also fills the "vengeance" square in my 11-26-13 card for the Origfic Bingo fest. You can read about egregores online.
WARNING: This poem contains violence, mass destruction and casualties. It's not very flattering of religion, but well, consider it canon-typical violence if you've read the Bible.
Sore Afraid
It was their job to observe
the Earth and all upon it:
they were known as Watchers of old
and that was what they did.
When the sky cleared,
it was like as if a one-way mirror
had suddenly turned to plain glass,
showing what lay on the other side.
When the egregores came,
they fell upon the unsuspecting masses
like sheets and wheels of flame.
A great cloud of witnesses went up in smoke;
others were driven mad by the sight,
or had their eyes and ears boiled away
by the might of the angelic host.
Even the faithful were sore afraid.
This time there was no admonishment
to "fear not" and the angels
gave the mortals an abundance of terror.
This time there was no reason for the vengeance,
no explanation of what, if anything,
humanity had done wrong.
The righteous died alongside the wicked,
still begging for answers
from an army who had not been ordered
to give any answers at all.