That pagan circlet, resting precariously on stringy black locks, was a grotesque thing, suggestive of singularly malevolent intent. The still-beating hearts, woven into the damnable crown with fleshy cords of unrecognizable entrails, pulsed their strained violet veins, spurting an aberrant black ichor with each excruciating contraction. The still-blinking eyes rolled around in their bloody caverns, taking the opulence of glittering jewels--at least in any sane king’s gilded wreath--and malforming their visage into something infinitely more sinister. The pupils fluctuated in...

So paint my soul,
like canvas or glass,
that Love may be beautiful
when she comes to pass.

Fill the barren orchard
with ripened, sweet desire.
Fell the foreign beasts
hiding loveless in the briar.

Lure me from the black
with a voice akin to lust.
Lift me from the sea,
free of frost and freezing rust.

Doff the silken strays,
and forge life from broken parts.
Sift through the molten mayhem
sewing shards of shattered hearts.

Meld the pieces...