As surely as I stand before you

I am also quite vacant. 

I feel so empty inside,

like a man whose entrails

have spilled to the floor.  

Where there was a once beating heart

there is now only a hole. 

Where once there were lungs 

to breathe the air of freedom,

now there are only cavities. 

Breath is stolen away. 

Life has long since ebbed from me.  

My body is hung on display,

cast over the wall as a sign and a wonder. 

Where my eyes once were,

there are now only abandoned sockets. 

The crows have eaten their fill.  

My blasphemous tongue droops

from an opened mouth,

swollen and decaying,

pecked at and hanging.  

My feet dangle below

covered in blood,

now dried and caked.  

My arms are stretched out

in blatant mockery. 

I am a spectacle

for those passers-by,

a warning to those 

whose hearts are wanting and wayward.

This is the reward 

of the wicked and the wretched. 

This is the portion of the damned.  

There is no redemption here.

All hope is lost. 

There is no salvation.

There is only death and decay. 

The noose around my neck

suspends my lifeless body.  

My flesh will be food for the dogs,

my bones left to be bleached by the sun.  

They will have no grave

and no place of burial.  

There will be no remembrance 

of the man that I was.  

There will be only dust,

and that carried away by the winds.