Allison in Fairfax, Virginia #61 (Violence)

I shot him twice in the chest. He slumped to the floor. I laid my head on his chest and my hair soaked up his savage blood.

Gale in Rome, Georgia #44 (Violence)

My ex boyfriend used to hit animals with his car on purpose. One day he was driving me to work at Pizza Hut and he hit this puppy who wandered out into the road. I thought about just getting out of the car and walking to work but I didn't because I was always afraid of him. (Pony Bones)

Edward in Rome, Georgia #28 (Violence)

Here's a beatitude for you: when I was 7 I strangled a little girl in my neighborhood just to see what killing somebody felt like. Never got caught and never lost a minute's sleep over it. Never felt God's love and never went looking for it. (Pony Bones)

Sandra in Rome, Georgia #19 (Violence)

His wound was as large as a star. Every time he coughed, a river of blood would strangle him. I drove him as fast as I could on the highway at night. He never took his eyes off the red blinking lights from the radio tower. (Pony Bones)

Karen in Rome, Georgia #16 (Violence)

I walked to the gas station across the road from the shelter to get a pack of smokes. The cashier looked at me funny. Yeah, that's right bitch; he beat the shit out of me again and now my face is all fucked up. You ain't gonna win any fucking beauty prizes yourself, with or without two black eyes. (Pony Bones)

Rupert in Munich, Germany #11 (Violence)

I set a fire in my bedroom last night and those flames rose to swallow our home. My mother and baby sister died in the blaze. Dad asked me why I did it and instead of answering him I looked out the window at the leafless, gnarled branches of a dead tree bathed in moonlight. (C Lavender

Eduardo in Rosario, Argentina #8 (Violence)

That scumbag my sister married beat her for the last time yesterday evening. She came over bruised and bloody; clothes torn. My nephew and niece were with her. I comforted her afflicted heart, laid them to rest in my bed and found him staggering out of some rough little bar. I picked up a large, jagged rock from the street, ran up to him and started smashing his fucking face in; by the time they pulled me off of him his face was mangled and unrecognizable. God, there's some kind of deep wickedness and a sense of something that's been lost and won't ever be found on this earth.

Jeannie in Pocotella, Idaho #4 (Violence)

How do we kill this world in ourselves? My husband is upstairs, shot through the throat with a revolver and my boy is drowned in the bathtub. I'm sitting in the driveway with the car running and the snow pouring from the white winter sky thinking hard about the pathless road to God. Salvation. (Mark Johnson)

Micah in Summit, KY #3 (Violence)

Aint never had a fuckin hard day in your life, have ye? Never been beaten like a dog and had your face ground down in the gravel till you beg for the kind of mercy that doesn't exist in this broken world. I sure as fuck have and I thank the Allmighty for ever beatin I ever got; beat all tha sentiment and worldliness and hope out of me. My stepdaddy used ta beat me every day jus for exercise and that brutality jus became a part of my life. I kindly wondered if God might come and fill all tha ugly spaces inside me but he jus never did, now I'm out there somewheres in the cold night hurtin someone like I've been hurt. (Harry Cloud)

Arch Deacon

Even when man is asleep there's dogs howling in the night, so a wicked, restless spirit finds voice. I'm awake when they cry out and I recognize my own. I dreamed last night that wasps was crawling on my heart and my heart was laying on an old wooden table. There was me, Ted, Shel and Horseshoe out by Blackfoot Lake and I was daring em' to stare in the water and see what kind of sumbitches they were. Night was coming and I could feel that darkness in my heart. Horseshoe is staring into the lake. I pick up a big rock from the shore and smash him over the head with it. Ted and Shel act like they was birthed for murdering; I could smell blood on their breath, even past the smell of Bourbon and the atrocity that reeked of rotting apples being devoured by starving mouths. They held Horseshoe's head under that freezing, dark Kentucky lake until his frantic legs stopped kicking. I felt like cutting his spine out of his back cause I'd never seen one and never held one in my hands. Instead I walked his heavy body into the lake like he was being baptized and watched it sink slow like it was holding on to this world. I told Ted and Shel to get on home and waited on the shore for God to come down from Heaven and punish me. I saw him in the half light of early morning before the moon hid behind a cloud. He looked at me cross and then walked off into the forest. There I was on the shore all alone with no God to hurt me like I wanted to be hurt.

The conquering army

I was still and silent. I felt his force, tasted the metallic coldness of his rifle in my mouth. My vomit came in violent waves, blood and bile. His heavy breathing and sweat were pathetic, tears were streaming down my face as I understood the mindless banality of wickedness. I pitied the young soldier plagued with the errors of the conquering army. All they've won is the earth saturated with a cosmic sense of loss and their own infirm, transient bodies. When I was younger I knew God was alive because I sensed him in the changing of the seasons and the regeneration of barren seed. Now I experience Him even more directly in the violence of the young soldier and the transcendence of his brutality.

Mutter Museum--Philadelphia, PA

The Mutter Museum, a medical museum in Philly that is dedicated to physical abnormalities, curiosities and death elicits an admixture of awe, empathy and a profound sense of the often profane nature of physiological functions. Browsing through the photography depicting the human animal with remarkable deformities, the embalmed and distorted fetuses, the bones disfigured by gun shots, syphilis, pathogens or general misfortune I found myself deeply moved and marveling at the handiwork of the penumbral shaping hands. The lack of supposed moral acumen in the natural kingdom and it's startling purity is further evidence that the laws of man are meaningless and his godless civilization will mercifully crumble and vanish.