The Gates of Hell
Footsteps on suburban
concrete. Picture saddle-
shoes, fifties waists, bee hive
hairdo's.
But this could be anytime
anywhere.
Even death gets tired
of sharing limelight
with misery,
and pretending
she's someone
who she's not.
A boy and his friends
listen at the top of stairs
as his mother and the woman
at the door exchange wilts.
Sad looks, soft sighs
and tempered tapping
of feet and clucking
of tongues like sticky, pink
worms. "How could this
have happened to John?"
"Cars and the people in them
are becoming increasingly
dangerous."
The boys creep
from the stairwell.
Lying on their backs,
on the floor,
spread out like a three
pronged halo,
they wonder,
What is it like
to be dead?
A man parks his car
on the street.
-Let's call him "John".
Remembering his keys
in the door
he returns for them,
past the traffic light.
Two girls get out
of his car. Sexy stepping
with smite-me sneers, they jeer
and toss
his keys.
They wield his chrome
pearl with a long nose
and give it bullet teeth.
He runs
to a traffic cop
who turns to face him,
long robes and a black
hole mouth he screams,
"Repent, repent!"
The man multiplies
onto building tops,
vacant windows of street cars
every seat
in every row.
From the ceiling
of the sky,
"Repent" he bleats.
"Forgive me!" John yearns
to cry. But in truth,
knows not why.
He can't remember
his own mind.
Life
like a beautiful,
blank,
T.V. screen.