If Only Lepers Wore Masks John Wilcox Do you think the bats got COVID from the gloryholes in seedy Asian gay bars? Or perhaps it was the bat(h) houses that their damned souls frequented… In any event, since it was their lack of piety and immorality which caused such a parlour of disease and rot Why should we extend our holy hands? Relegate them to the ringing of the bell Jesus is out of the office Out on holiday Visiting his family in hell This pestilence that pervades in perpetuity from a foreigner Turning rancid the soil and all that walks upon it Cleansing the incumbent’s responsibility The spilled milk is always the child's fault Lord we should be grateful for these tears Instead we rush to wipe them away Time stands still only during its own wake Invectives aimed at false gods One missive for each step of the grieving process Reanimation is not optional my love Who cares about the rest of the world when one is burying theirs Petrarch's lamentations over his corpse bride an attack on circumstance wrapped in failures 27