any man as good as the next has asked about hell. because men
with plague doctor beaks and seven-tailed whips found a way to mould wood
into metal, extend the head of the cross into a sword, one that they wash
in holy water.
and back when the wells spread plague, they’d pour the blood of the men
into goblets, and fill their moats with ancient hippies and their odd black cats.
if one used their bodies as a bridge to plant new seed, they’d find italy,
and one man’s tier-list of sins, complete with suitable remedy.
yet if you turn time in some non-linear direction, you find an in-between
that people have whispered about, spreading like some nefarious disease
to those who feel as if their pleas are stuck between eternities.
a good friend once told me that hell was cold,
it was a strange phrasing of the vaccination that they keep forcing
down my throat just after back-to-school shopping,
they said my body
wouldn’t lie in holy ground, but i will bare my teeth and tell you that my body
is holy ground, and your mind is not.
neither is mine.
you can tell me whatever you want, but half of me is lying in painful transcendence,
my spirit lies beyond such institutional contradiction & corruption, but my mind itches
for something to prove, for a speck of reality to hold onto.
they say sex is a taste of heaven. in such case, what stops us from tasting hell, too?
and what stops our tongues from begging for more? what stops our own sensuality
from stirring the pot until we cannot taste what we are eating?
sometimes, i wonder what the devil puts in hellfire to keep it burning so long, so strong,
and when my mind decides to lunge for lucifer, i see withered, moulding hope falling like a scab
from the nape of my neck, lumber. unremarkable until it is gone.
falling into youthful demon hands, being turned to ash like it is nothing. human hope keeps falling
through those doors, and the devil has long since learned it is an entourage for the souls he seeks.
i like to think my hope was savoured for a fraction of a second longer than everyone else’s.
because it was the artefact hailed by mental crusades, battles won on balconies and lost in beds, yet what made it sweeter was the knowledge that there was more.
too much is never enough.
sweaty fists pulled themselves from the haunted hospital piano sometime in a blurry may,
to cling onto whatever was left of her hope. the cross gazed at her expectantly, but she mirrored its stare
asking when Jesus would return with the sword to slay her open and end her suffering at last.
if the witch-hunters wouldn’t draw her blood, she would do it on her own terms.
the altar stood in front of her, a wooden priest, yet her childish fingers clung to her hope, even as she knew she was suffocating the tiny creature, homesick for hell
where the rest of its brethren went, but she wouldn’t let go that easily.
her hope was the last thing she had in her hand,
fourteen cards stripped away hour by hour, and bile covering the betting-table. a whispered promise of love, being carried away on the wind which it came.
a six month interlude carried towards nothing new, except a more conventionalised recluse.
yet she said
that she hoped in herself until she realised her mind was another pathway to hell, good intentions
or such slander
it takes a village to raise a kid
and fourteen years to raise a noose.
at some point even the demons are looking for a therapist for their youth.
because i climbed mountains to let my hope go, and it still tries to fight its flight, yet i push it away. i’m still in the arms of the angels, even as my feet strike stone.
there is a pleasure knowing i can still feel. my pain lies within heavens archives, and i need no man to lie with/in debt to fill my pleasures.
my body is still holy ground. even if ragged shadows still leech upon my hope, breed on my brainstem, and bread is held somewhere my scrawny arms cannot reach. even if half my fire has fallen to hell, even if i am named a blasphemy, my blood still flows holy.
my extremities have been numb ever since the fourteenth, and the medieval priests tsk their teeth as i scream, but my skin, tattooed without ink, is still holy. my tongue and teeth, begging for another place to be, are still holy… to a pair of eyes higher than humanity.
i am holy enough to hold tiny prophecies, and holy so that hope works my stomach. perhaps my mind is another version of hell
but if it burns my hope
at least the flames shall warm me up.