October 27: "Hell," Iambic Damnation, Clouds and Stars

I suppose we all have different versions of Hell, because each person harbors a different of punishment.  For example, I can't think of a better way to spend a couple hours than reading a collection of poetry.  For someone else, those 120 minutes would seem like an eternity of iambic damnation.

Billy Collins has his own ideas about damnation . . . 

Hell

by: Billy Collins

I have a feeling that it is much worse
than shopping for a mattress at a mall,

of greater duration without question,
and there is no random pitchforking here,
no licking flames to fear,
only this cavernous store with its maze of bedding.

Yet wandering past the jovial kings,
the more sensible queens,
and the cheerless singles
no scarlet sheet will ever cover,

I am thinking of a passage from the Inferno,
which I could fully bring to mind
and recite in English or even Italian

if the salesman who has been following us--
a crumpled pack of Newports
visible in the pocket of his short sleeve shirt--
would stop insisting for a moment
that we test this one, then this softer one,

which we do by lying down side by side,
arms rigid, figures on a tomb,
powerless to imagine what it would be like

to sleep or love this way
under the punishing rows of fluorescent lights,
which Dante might have included
had he been able to lie on his back between us here today.

Dante starts his descent into the Inferno with these lines:

Midway upon the journey of our life

I found myself within a forest dark,

For the straightforward pathway had been lost.

I am a little past midway on my journey of life, and I frequently feel lost within a forest dark.  Of course, the poet Virgil doesn't make house calls anymore, so I don't have a spirit guide to bring me back to the straight and narrow path.  I just have to keep keep stumbling along until I find my way.

With my wife's emergency surgery on Friday, I have found myself completely exhausted these last couple of days.  All I want to do is grab a pillow and blanket, put an old movie on Netflix, and go to sleep.  I have been able to take one or two naps, but not enough to feel completely restored.

If you're wondering what my version of Hell would look like, you probably can make some educated guesses.  Certainly, it involves sleep deprivation.  Adam Sandler movies 24/7.  Liver and onions for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  The Felon in Chief as President of the United States.  And a distinct lack of poetry (or only poetry written by the Felon in Chief).

I went for a walk this evening after I led an online poetry workshop.  The theme of the workshop was monsters, so we wrote about Bigfoot and Dracula and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.  On my stroll around the block afterward, I felt those monsters pacing me in the dark.  (It didn't help that my neighbors are fully Halloweened up with lights and inflatables and skeletons.)  

But the heavens above Saint Marty were gauzy with clouds and stars.