They cried with one voice as they ran
toward me.
"Wait, oh, wait, for by your dress
you seem
a voyager from our own tainted country."
Ah! what wounds, some new, some old,
branded upon their bodies! Even now
the pain of it in memory turns me cold.
The Inferno
“Membranes in countless layers, gathered
like phyllo dough, thick and thin
layers touching—separate, together—
the men in death—the deaths in men.”
* * *
“Prepared to swoon into the It
on the operating table, I laugh,
having been out for a minute
they say was an hour and a half.”
“A young man, I dreamed of You—
your mirror-ball lidless eyes,
your smile a gash of scar tissue.
I saw Nothing in Its disguises.”
“You say you believe in He Who forgets
you said you don’t believe in God?
Is that it, then, your big secret?
Faith is not faith, if not flawed?”
“Whose pale beast charges the air,
amazing birds, churning ashes,
driving the roar of motherless despair,
urged by a whip made of eyelashes?”
“I’m like an old hissing swan,
with half its upper beak torn,
flapping up and down the lawn,
lunging in vain at scattered corn.”
“He asked of me complete surrender.
I was not to reveal or suppress
myself. I was only to wonder
what other men would not express.”
* * *
“For return of the boy, we danced
in the mask with only one eye;
through its mouth, I glimpsed
bloody hands and pale blue sky.”
“Seated, screened, I absolve sins
with whispered sentences of penance.
I kneel like them and He begins
with unseen mumbling, then silence.”
“They’ve dispensed with the crucifix!
Now we’ve a risen Christ and cross!
Instead of the Trinity, let’s have six,
and God the Pope, already the boss!”
“We sit cross-legged on a flower—
ankles rubbing up and down my back.
We measure our ecstasies by the hour,
her white flesh slowly turning black.”
“I sit by the bed, comfort the dying,
or their survivors, know what to say
to those who profess, find myself lying
to the bitter one gone astray.”
“A coin on my unconfessed tongue,
the host wouldn’t melt, tasted
of nails, blood coughed from the lung.
So, sacraments can be wasted.”
“When the person in my eye turns
away, the breaths gather round—
exhaled fumes from light that burns
the air clean of sight and sound.”
* * *
“Preacher tells me, ‘Believe in Hell,
where devils chew on dead men!’
Why doesn’t he bother to tell
me what angels do with men in Heaven?”
“Off the battlements, the bodies tossed
into the river Styx. Some float,
some sink, but all are lost.
None find Charon before they bloat.”
“In Dante, silly demons, afraid
of the living who pass Hell’s gate,
believe they see Death unmade
when He has only decided, ‘later.’”
“If I must drink this cup of Lethe,
remember what I’ve asked Your Son,
Lord—to have His death ensure me
life, to live in recollection.”
“Wouldn’t we, forsaken, die in Hell?”
Even spirit couldn’t brook such horror.
So, the truth will be the final evil;
after, we’ll know nothing more.”
“The house, they said, burned quickly.
His family of five did not awaken.
Now there’s a new house, I see,
which their spirits have forsaken.”
“Given the promise ever since birth
of a personal God with white beard,
outside time, I’ll walk the earth
by roads old Dante nicely tiered.”
* * *
“The devil, I think, might have sinned,
thinking, ‘I’m better than my brothers,’
but not when he fought what was ordained—
one son to be the equal of the Father.”
“As angels, meant to be, not think,
we don’t go where not told to go.
No wonder some prefer Hell’s stink.
No smell at all to Old So-And-So-And-So.”
“Parvati, hand poised, the flection
of her hip sweet, if not demure,
arouses her Lord Siva’s erection,
proving gods divine, if not pure.”
“I dream the Angel of Death’s love,
the warm embrace of her plush arms,
her wing’s beat lifting me above
the cold brain’s vaporous charms.”
“Two of her hands hold weapons of war,
a third a skull of blood to her lips.
What does she hold in number four?
Her hidden hand is what we worship.”
“’That which is spirit becomes real
when body and heart reflect the inner
conflict of the soul,’ says Gabriel.
‘Think!’ shouts the Original Sinner.”
“Angels saw the essential elements
in pattern, connections objectified
in simplicity, but not what it meant
when I smiled every time I lied.”
* * *
“Adroitly, starling’s reedy piping
interprets the dazzle its splashing
in rainwater gives wing—wing,
spray, flash, wind clashing.”
“The surf churns. Pocked with fossils
once life, now petrified, mineral,
gray limestone looses its cells
upon the sand—final, sempiternal.”
“The bee, fly, gnat, katydid,
populating the weeds among
The fences, feed the toad, who rids
us of pests with stuck-out tongue.”
“The lamb spit blood and died,
yet untouched by the lion’s claw.
I knelt between them and cried
for strength—found it in his jaw.”
“Fish at the bottom of the sea, bleak
with their emission of pale light,
each ignorant of his shadow, seek
darkness the way we seek insight.”
“Answer. On both sides of a lightning
bolt, blue beneath a red cloud,
lips smile, poised to sing.
The sound? Answer! Sweet or loud?”
“Snow falls upon the living side
of death, the dead stays dry
and temperate. God called. I died
cold and wet, not knowing why.”
* * *
“If anything has the capacity to exist,
although it doesn’t, there must be
something. Thus, what is, mist
or dust, is mere alternativity.”
“Light transmits the tree to the eyes,
is seen unseen, God’s mind,
but is not the tree. The mind lies.
Light comes between, God’s blind.”
“Vaguely certain kites are flown
between the wind’s unseen wings,
I fly across my father’s lawn,
thinking, wind . . . kite . . . not string.”
“Our euphemism for death is change—
what was is no more because
of tendencies in things to rearrange.
Thus we interpret immutable laws.”
“The circle’s path turns progressive,
but ends where it began. Illusion,
too, the triangle’s third successive
span. The spiral unbinds confusion.”
“If forces seek a lower level,
perhaps we are collapsed remains
of a universe devoid of evil,
waiting to collapse again.”
“The speed of an object’s flight
times its time’s velocity
is always equal to the speed of light:
space, time, light and gravity
“are products of Creation no greater
than consciousness, the fifth dimension.
Time may stop, but sooner or later,
I’ll see the sequel to oblivion.”
“What did he see, the man who looked
and understood seeing was to act,
not simply a reacting to? Crooked
in a placid pool, God became a fact.”
* * *
“Nothing is far to God, unless
you count the vacuum of my faith,
which is uncertain and can’t guess,
won’t move closer fearing death.”
“When, once again, all became clear,
and I knew myself, my increase
and diminishment, something nearer
said: ‘Do not look for peace.’”
“I nod, head grown heavy in my palm.
The lion yawns. The Word has covered
my eyelids with its black balm.
‘What,’ says lion, ‘have you discovered?”
* * *
“On my belly sits some kind
Of man, scratching his chin, uncertain,
I seem to think, about the blind
horse nosing my bed-curtain.”
“If God be for us, who against
His will, man or nation,
dares to threaten our defense—
our church, our congregation?”
“I stood at the top of the stairs,
looking down for the longest time,
then I fell. I felt—it scares
me still—like the victim of a crime.”
“Some thought me innocent of reality,
touting a god who wouldn’t turn
his people’s thirst for brutality
against his enemy—but they learned.”
“‘I don’t believe in Mortal Sin,’
I said. The priest: ‘Of course,
no act is unpreconditioned,
but you are evil at its source.’”
“I’ve lived here for thirty years.
I eat and pray, knit and sleep.
At night, I blink back the tears.
Everything I have I bought cheap.”
“Newly confirmed, fervent, awake,
I clutched the missal in my hands.
I said a prayer for my soul’s sake
and cursed the devil in my glans.”
“The nuns taught me to say Hail Mary’s
as a child, to ensure a good marriage.
I hope that quaint guarantee carries
some indulgence for my miscarriage.”
“I’m a lonely woman, sick and weak.
The paper boy is only thirteen,
but he responds to the little peek
I give him. He says I’m ‘keen’.”
“I took the crozier from the Bishop’s hand,
swinging Saint Michael and the Dragon
to set a miter on his Eminence’s head and
martyred him. ‘Again,’ he said, ‘Again!’”
“A god my cock. Big as a hose.
Almost all hole. Harder than rock.
Go where the twitchy butt goes.
Snuff what it wants. Give a fuck.”
“A nice boy, couldn’t make decisions—
he wanted peace in the house. He said,
‘God loves all men, and all religions.’
He left the Church. My son is dead.”
“I know He is only a god of what seems,
never of what is. I lead my flock
in rising, self-abasing screams.
At least it keeps them off the crack.”
“Perfectly sober, I drove with my thumb,
holding a Manhattan in my lap,
felt the road crumble, the car jump,
thinking, I’ll draw my own road map.”
“Armageddon was in Nineteen Seventy-five.
The flag and evolution are Satan’s tools.
Because it’s ‘Eighty-nine and we’re alive,
the humanist politicians think us fools.”
“Whom shall I give my small fortune?
The symphony and the art museum
provide less eternal recognition
than carvings on one’s mausoleum.”
“All the things that men forget,
I remember yet. Call me Sid,
who hid in Suzie’s hairnet
‘cause Daddy did it with his kid.”
“I had eaten, and become immortal,
so I ate another white tab.
My eye exploded. Infinity’s portal
soon closed up and formed a scab.”
“My whore held a Bible by her cunt
as she kneeled swaying above me.
I said, ‘I have sinned!’ in front
of millions. Oh, how they love me.”
“Last year I harvested the hay,
left the bound rolls in the field.
Resting here, I sense their decay.
Why does the ground go untilled?”
“Not know what covetous meant,
when in everything I had what
most would not even think to want,
I showed men what not to covet.”
“That day the snow came down like moths,
and it was May. I watched a squirrel
nibbling its perch—a twig tossed
by the wind—ignoring spring’s deferral.”
“He made us like him, not Him,
teaching us to blink, not think.
One could follow Him, or them.
I too drank the cyanide drink.”
