Hell

Threatened sanction to the undevout
Ancient furnace, fantasized torture-chamber
Player with obsession and relentless greed
Deranged, flaming, suffocating,
Fabled land of no-return:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I was foolishly raised to believe the god-fearing Christians.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, that’s quite the point; and I turn with a smirk.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: Please, God, take me back there, so as to escape this town; God, it has to be better than where I am now.
And having answered so, I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head chanting so proud to have escaped the golden predictability of heaven’s gates.
Proud to have escaped, running wild in the fires.
Fierce as Satan,
Changing,
Growing,
Bleeding,
Seething,
Under the earth,
Dryly wasting away, bored as sin,
Wickedly charming, experimenting with irresistibility,
Laughing at the light of day and
Brooding in the dark, proud to be at ease with flame.