THE JOY OF SATAN

I am an inhabitant of Hell

and a keeper of Hell

I am the refurbisher of Hell

and its first and last most

colorful servant,

enemy of all that lies above.

I watch the accumulation

of plans that lead to nothing,

and I laugh.  Here in the depths

things take longer to move,

and they stick, while the way

of the surface is ephemeral.

The beauty of Hell starts

with space: it turns out

that Heaven collects the multitudes,

while Hell has few takers.

These red depths are for

architects whose designs

are unwelcome in the thin air

of a febrile empire.

Our fire is deep, but our roads

are cool and clear.

There is no alcohol in Hell,

only grave tasks.

Pedantry is annihilated.

Inversion must bloom or die.

The new country is here in the dark

and my dick is in it.

Long ravines of supernatural wine

penetrating clay without words.

Moving over a quiet planet,

sinuous throughout receding fire.

I scoop your form from a rock

and carry you between

these sweet slow gashes in the earth,

their winding presence riding

in the blood we mix with radiant cells.

Tied around a slowly dying star,

the dark materials of consciousness

look for an increasing contest.

A feather finds a feather

and begins to write.

I suffer lapse after lapse.

I put on the charming mask,

but it always cracks.

Darkness pools in me

and tries to compete with death.

The raging seas are tied

in a daisy chain

around my raging dance.

I invite the lumpen toads,

the fluidly curvaceous doves,

to fill the bleachers of bones

and cheer for my flowery devouring.

Bombs that are muffled in me

explode elsewhere.  Ruins of gold

decay on my refracting table.

I will never be peacefully inhabited.

My dreams are the dreams of slaves

who never accepted their fate.

You have made me an immovable nothing.

You have made me an immovable emptiness

and yet you fall into me

like one who needs to be drowned.

The instability of yes

and the numbing no

congealing schizophrenic soul.

Kingdoms opened at a touch

closed down within invaded afternoons

leaving me in clouds of crumpled brown leather

fighting for the eyes that led me here

to find the stamp on a dragon's tail

swishing over gorgeous fortresses

turning air to pink reactive water

joining infant smiles to a sky beseeching spine

as the lightning picks grape from vine.

In a mossy cabin in a lunar beam

I will drink the rainwater

from a metal sleeve

my veins will be prepared

for the purpose of a thousand warring shadows

to chip away the master plan

and leave me with a sacred fragment

smitten with lips of clay,

and a tongue beyond description

offices abandoned in high cubes of glass

glinting with the parchments of the past

from a green ditch I see the signal

of a disintegrating signature

blowing smoke rings from the void

its cursive scars had torched

all reflecting blues from Satan's porch.

Black soil pours the marrow's bone

into exploding green

and the wings that sting.

Stained water filling up

the cups of frozen hands.

Smoke scrawling in tiny tendrils

that do not expand,

the beauty of abnormal behavior.

Light in labyrinthine channels

swelling like the jelly of the fruit

that gives endless dreams.

Vines have carried my bones away

evaporated eyes float out to misty eternity

sand of burnt flesh licking a globe of glass.

While symphonies crawl into match boxes

and the claws of cats walk water

in serene pink tubs,

I sit on a cartoon couch

that swallows me up with tongues.

Crystal teeth send sparks and splinters

over the machines whose gears they chew

bodies filling up with conscious glue.