I know it's bad form to comment on my own poetry, but this poem needs help...HELP!
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“To run over better waters the little vessel of my genius now hoists her sails, as she leaves behind her a sea so cruel.”
—Dante, from Purgatorio, Canto I, line 1
In Hell,
the blisters on your skin
are trivial, he says.
They will b – r – e – a – k ——
o o z e—
and eventually,
heal.
But discourse with the devil,
he laments,
is so cruel and rich
in paradox.
He rasps to me,
the sound falling from his calloused throat,
that the stream of sin is incessant—
it saturates,
its heat does not alleviate,
but stings.
We are so embittered,
he cries,
that roiling seas have come
to feel like home.
The waters will not allay themselves,
Judas and Cassius and Brutus
will not be abandoned
in the mouths of their respective demons,
but they will find some company
in our repression of salvation.
To calm the raging precipitation,
there must first be
a slow movement
towards deliverance.
