Editor’s note: In the tradition of early British and American journalists who composed news poems that were printed rapidly and sold on streets for a penny, John Piper has composed a news poem inspired by ISIS militants teaching young boys their terrorist ways.

Winsome Decapitation

We have a lull in the beheadings now. Perhaps the blood soaked hands are showing how To slit the soft side of the neck, so boys Of ten or twelve, with knives, can keep their poise, In case the bony vertebra remains Too tough for little hands. At least the veins And arteries will all be severed, should The lad need help from this dark fatherhood.

Or is it that the blood still flows, but we Have had enough, and do not want to see The head of one more Western satan roll. Not now, at least, until the Super Bowl.

Or possibly—though we may doubt—advice Has reached the builders of this paradise, That teaching little boys to sever heads, And boasting of such fathering, soon shreds The hope that any noble men await, Or pray, or crave your gory Caliphate.