Not Hot Enough

Cremation's afoot

In a mortal's rite of passage

With the guilt and the soot

Only immortality can ravage

.

I watch through lead glass

The burning of flesh

Sublimating fed gas

To a soul's final crèche

.

Corpulent dispatch

Ashen crumbs fall to gravity

But the soul unattached

Flees a legacy's depravity

.

It panics in luminescence

Running from the fire

Suffers trapped evanescence

Incomplete in the pyre

.

Absolution fails, fruitless lavage

Leaving cindered memories that suffer alive

Rejecting any respite from life's cruel barrage

Retrieving the regrets that reveries revive

.

How much hotter does it need to be

To cleanse souls' sins that fear infinity?

How long should I burn it, to no longer see

An evil man's soul begging for clemency?

.

I look closely and, painfully, inspect the bearer

Of a remorseless face begging, baselessly, for mercy

I cannot unsee, vacantly, the eyes of the terror

Of a soul unprepared for atonement's eternity