BEN
having just returned from
a workshop on ethics
in the innermost
circle of Hell
hot foot, exhilarated,
ready to go
and being
back with
that wisdom am
kind of
a man
on a
mission
can
safely say
to all
gathered here
this torchlight parade
we got it
all wrong
got the logic all wrong
it is not that they
are to be punished
because they are bad
but that
they are bad
because they
are to be
punished
this confirming
the promulgations
of big bad Ben
of the tribe of Ben
a man, or should we say entity,
divine in his devilry
demonic
in his divinity
nothing sulphurous
no toxic poison gas
pouring out of his nostrils
this not
the kind of evil
you would expect to
proclaim itself
and yet
it does
and yet it
does
reveals itself to the world
from the pretty low-key heart
of his tacky execution chamber
unlikeliest avatar of
noneless than
the Devil himself
priding himself on
a golden achievement:
supreme infiltration
a stand up guy
slipping the noose
around
necks himself
***
the game given away
but we
don’t give
a shit because
mentally zombied
nobody told us (nothing
ever
gets told us)
but we are
way more than
half dead already
clap
when we
are told to
hiss
when that evil we have
been warned about, are
forever getting
warned about
every bit and every byte
thrown into the fray to
have us
believe it
is here
warbling its way
into our words, taking
charge of
inflexions, determining
our speech patterns
spewing out
monstrosities
in
some alien
tongue
except
it isn’t
except
it is
some demented
creole of
our own
idiolect of
insanity
and there
that word, in all
its hushed extremity
easy
to parse, let
slip through
your fingers
fall
fester beneath
the floorboards, build
its own underworld
evolve, pledge allegiance,
pride itself
(and, Oh, how
it will pride itself)
or the
ability to puppet
marionette from behind
the screen
light
trapped in its prism
final prison
poems 2 die for 