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inferno 2

Posted on 19/08/2017 by Mark Prisco

The sign nailed to the front gate says

Welcome, all those who enter.

 

The ante-chamber’s lit by the pale eyes

of dead souls with no way out or

in: attendants with nothing to give

but themselves, which is nothing.

 

The library shelves the most extensive collection

of old scholars who trudge

the circular road of academia.

Their lungs are wracked with God knows

& thru the tight hole that exits the throat,

they discourse. For no reason.

 

The lounge is stuffed with men stuck

in armchairs; whole families

& televisions set on blasted adverts

& melodramas which are like

& nothing like their lives.

 

The kitchens are hot

with bad-tempered cocks,

domestics. There is no rest.

 

The stairs are crammed with guests

with no-one to talk to

& nothing to say. They came

& never left.

 

In the back room

lovers consider ultimate solitude

& boredom.

 

In the bedrooms lie a multitude

of couples who say nothing but know

it’s over.

 

Thru the bathroom windows

you can see the silhouettes

of lonesome men washing their hands

in the cold porcelain; feel

the blunt steel of razor blade.

 

In the garden at the back,

in the sheds, are high beams

lined for miles with necks

at the end of ropes

about to break, caught

in that moment.

 

& children

wandering the halls

don’t understand the silence.

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2 thoughts on “inferno 2”

  1. Mark Prisco Mark Prisco says:
    20/08/2017 at 8:03 pm

    thanks Dean. Had to look that up. I’m guessing you weren’t talking power tools, which in the wrong hands, however…
    Like Dante’s Hell, it has a sign on the gate, a sort of ante-chamber (for those rejected by both sides), plus the 9 parts (circles). So, i just had some fun with that

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  2. Dean English Dean English says:
    20/08/2017 at 11:25 am

    some Bosch-macabre stuff there; the freeze-frame of suicides particularly

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