For Paul Brookes’ challenge. The paintings are Glory to the Newborn King by Marcel Herms and Moonrise by Terry Chipp.

The Evangelists

They come with a message, they say,
and it might be peace, might be war,
all depends on how you take it
or not.

So many of them know what’s best
for everyone else,
some with their faces hidden,
some bloated and swollen over the glittery screens.

They know,
they have ways,
blunt as the muzzle of an assault rifle
or populist prose,

subtle as subliminal advertising.
They drown us in their poisonous diktats,
the swell powerful and dispassionate
as the flood of a moonlit ocean.