SATAN

Satan came to Earth after an absence of several thousand years, and found himself a famous scapegoat. Confronted by suspicious mankind, He noted that their gods had not served them particularly well. "I see that the rumors are true: no wickedness of mine in Hell could ever compare with the princes of religion here. And since my kingdom then cannot serve its ultimate function, I have abandoned my forces to their wiles and resigned myself to a term of fresh experiment on Earth." And mankind, having tired from so many millennia of torment under their deities, was surprised to find that he seemed a most reasonable man, and much like themselves. "I will play God" he now proclaimed, "but if you tire of my reign, thou art welcome to try and dethrone me, as I would enjoy the struggle; and I like you when you are in a revolutionary mood, and willing to suffer." Mankind, restless and skeptical, contemplated this when he further proclaimed: "I see that your numbers are diminishing; that you are ruled by the old and the corrupt, they that practice the white arts, the arts of false holiness; and yet their reign has wearied you, as much as it has wearied them; neither can overthrow the other. And so this is my covenant to you: I am going to remove all your control mechanisms. I am going to show you how to unleash chaos in your women, and from them how to renew it in yourselves." And mankind, though stunned and bereft of all religion, seemed fascinated by these ideas. "You will build altars, but the shape and meaning of them is all left up to you. One warning I give you only: above all, I desire to be entertained, and to remain entertained. I understand that the reign of the Gods has left you dull and commonplace, so I will be patient with you at first: but thou must entertain me, and entertain me well. I trust you will." And the masses, unsure of what to do, went about in search of fresh costumes.

In the beginning, the image was with God. And the image was of the feminine: and the feminine was life. The Word, Logos, was given to man that he might use it to pay proper tribute to the feminine. But man made an idol of this tool, and prostrated himself before the Word: he gave it all his worship, and the feminine, neglected by action in favor of speech, began to wither up. The man noticed her weakness, and invited her to lay down beside him and join him in worshipping the Word. "It will give us strength" he said. "It will show us the way" he said. And although Eros had her doubts, she was now too weak to resist the rhetorical temptation. She lay down beside him, not touching, just side by side in the dust. And the name of this story is the death of the west.

They cut me in half

and stuffed me full of scripture.

They put me in a mailbox

with my dick sticking out of my mouth.

I came out of a dumpster

in a greasy tuxedo.

My tongue was in my pants

and the national disease

had inked its way into my skin

beneath the tousled glamour.

I was a prophylactic hammer

and the walls that came down

mostly came down on me.

They startled me with monotony

and I put them to sleep with flight.

Pillars cloaked with kudzu

tell the tale of things left alone

become more beautiful.

A lizard rests on leaves

enwrapped on stone,

I like his eyes.

I like precisely his inhumanity,

his blank impersonal caution

and indifferent inquisitiveness.

Stay there, little one, I'm not

coming to capture you

or put you in a jar.

I just want to watch the beauty

of something alive

that does not care about human beings.

I'm down here with the scum of the earth

where I belong.  There is time yet

to eclipse your world of lies,

by working in darkness.

New demons to trump old gods,

topple rotting regimes.

Rise in the sand like a panther.

Recreate the sun, only to die

under its invigorated blaze.

Try to break the lunar circuit,

get a refracted spleen.

Persist without reason.

Yield to nothing.

Clotted metals from destroyed planets,

gathering to shine in unruly hair

and make bloody ball bearings,

flowing over surprised flesh

and stealing tender organs

from this wounded labyrinth

of racing blood,

clouds pooling in wounded space

to form celestial escapees

against the limits of milk and its math,

thrashing at the darkened witless membrane,

making the intelligence of love

ripple under bombs like water.

I remember the failure of space,

a trickster prancing down a beam of fate

the costume of the goddess

trashed by bleeding cities

shining in seductive fragments

walking halls that I don't know

to appear here in the courtyard

of the frozen aristocracy

aligned with topaz eyes

from only lunar skies

and the silver lawns

of sleeping pawns

in the lines of a lunatic's palm.

The carnival of darkness

abides in beds of rich violet,

rears up with many heads

and unseen limbs,

doll's eyes vomiting soil

with a milk of metallic hue,

and I sit at my desk roofless

in a tar-caked wasteland,

waiting to see those among the dead

who would fall with me

back into this world

and rip its vain belltowers down.

Softly I refuse the dead,

put up on shelves

new parcels for the living

who have empty hands.