As/Is







6.19.2015


Ode: To Satan

Let it not be said that his rhetoric drifts
   out of focus on Earth for a casual minute—
nor that just retribution is not terribly swift
    for those who disrespect his intimate business;
as the new mother, tethered away from her child,
      deliberately eats what she doesn’t want
           to mortify dread that she might be other
      then a perfect Satan’s gofer, starving and wild—
          infanticide-schemes, inverted taunts,
              floorboards arranged to make room for another.

Pentagrams engraved on truth, justice-seats,
    masks woven tightly of paint mixed in flesh,
abattoirs filled with poison-dwarf sweets,
     histories out of nothingness, made mesh.
What are they scripting? For who, for what?
    That all the false idols, set in a line, might dance
       tangled, backwards, to all that they dread?
How is he drifting? He’s straight, he’s shut
     against any spook holds a  heavenly chance
         of imposing their visions, or raising the dead.

You’re a ruddy old Big Man Downstairs, you,
   fibs so jejune I can’t hear but to laugh—
and your buttons are pinned upon somebody who
    mistook all the fame, and the fortunate path.
Why governments swoon before truth is clear—
    you set the bar too high, and low at once,
       no innocent victim can face all the dumbness—
why all of these souls from downstairs, not here,
     can’t say a lick out of being a dunce,
       define for the ages what being a bum is.