Napo 4/3/24: Scorches

 Here's the poem prompt for today.

My wife said "I didn't realize it, but car fires scorch the road for a long time." She pointed at a blackened bit of road. "Hell fire scorches longer," I said. We arrived to our destination in silence. 

The devil is always playing tricks of fire. Out here, inside too. We told the fire inspector so, and he just stared. "You folks aren't from around here, are you?" We definitely were not. We definitely were playing what folks like to call "insider baseball." I know nothing about a cutter or a slider, but I know something of the devil himself. I know that sulfurous tinge in the space where nose and throat meet, the tickle in the back of your knowledge box. I know that the water regularly looks like an oil spill caught fire on top of it, and I know, sure as Hell's born, what it looks like coming out of the tap. I have swallowed it down my heathen esophagus, felt the acids of my sinning stomach gurgle up in protest, in praise song? 

The destination served small hot dogs wrapped in bacon. Chocolate fondue was allegedly present as well. Perhaps we deserved this, these Earthen pleasures. My wife, seeming to read my thoughts smiled and said "This is just temporary." 

She was right. Everything eventually stops, mercifully. 

Proverbs and Regular Verbs

Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t.

Observe:

His meticulous use of pitchfork.

His sagacious methodology of flame.

His adroit frolicking from foot to foot, revelry in the authority of his wiles.

My rib cage has known his blows.

Grown intimate and familiar with his scourge movements.

The joy in meting out his edicts, his rewards, his punishments.

An unholy trinity.

I am familiar with these methods.

I know the hum of his torture,

The counter-harmonies of his manipulations,

The melody of the misery he causes me.

Sharp, perspective slaps.

I sing it as a funeral dirge each day. Echoing off the Canyons of Hell’s Mountain Ranges.

His is an artisan’s work.

Bespoken in mass-produced quantities.

Precious in its value, not in its availability.

And, Business is booming.

You might console me.

Say, The pitchfork to the knee

Is an impersonal thing.

You might try to say: This devil, flourishes aside,

Is one that has invited you

To break bread

And bones.

To build 

Community

Then dismantle it.

Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of another?

What new strings will be pulled to create a new song to scream to no one, but all will here?

You suggest:

He is a known quantity in the eternal misery of this place.

I advise you

To come on down here,

And experience it with your own skin.

Be flayed, listen to more nu-metal, get the whole package.

You might find yourself wondering:

Does the devil make a damn bit a difference?

Im not a gambling man anymore, but I think you too will be,

Just like the rest of us,

A fiend,

Clamoring For a new devil’s whims.

After all, we’ve got all the time in the world

And I think we all deserve a change around here, anyway.

You will too.