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Dante In The Laundromat Journeys Further Into Hell Beginning With Two Lines From The Book
At some false semblance in the twilight gloom
that from this terror you may free yourself
posthaste, gracelessly cast out, the closing
hour now come, caught in 'spin cycle' after
'hard rinse, ' an entire bottle of fabric softener
cannot unstiffen mythic threads,
the ancient weaves fray,
displace, are 'undone, so many'
beneath the winnowing rotors
that beat, beat with hope,
slosh, wash all sins away.
Yet gathers the dirt,
there's more sin ahead
heady in floral scents.
After midnight, beneath
bright florescence I read
Dante, his Inferno, of Hell's
seven rungs, my last quarter
gone, and clothes, two baskets
still to dry.
The guide book sums:
'Level 2
You have come to a place mute of all light,
where the wind bellows as the sea does in a
tempest. This is the realm where the lustful
spend eternity. Here, sinners are blown around
endlessly by the unforgiving winds of unquenchable
desire as punishment for their transgressions.
The infernal hurricane that never rests hurtles
the spirits onward in its rapine, whirling them
round, and smiting, it molests them. You have
betrayed reason at the behest of your appetite
for pleasure, and so here you are doomed to remain.
Cleopatra and Helen of Troy
are two that share in your fate.' **
Not bad company
but no quarter to pay
for Virgil's rude company
here, now, grizzled,
uncensored keeper of
the Seven Stories of Suds.
The lousy dryer tears
my shirts, cycles for
only 7 minutes as is
the seven rungs a quarter,
just one quarter more,
one thinks, prays, hopes,
seeking upon the dirty
tiles beneath metal
folding chairs for 'just
one more' to stay warm
enough before venturing
further, slog through
Level Two with damp
laundry, a sleety night
in cold Manhattan,
a view of distant
bridges busy with light,
motion,
the spanned river,
dark, spins toward
the deeper East;
a Star there was
once a great matter,
one of the better
nights of the world
it is believed.
Closing hour.
Virgil tightly keeps
to the time, lights
die of sudden death,
glass door solid
with blackness locked,
metal gate rattles
its chain, slams shut,
and the sidewalk shakes,
a cigarette lit,
he bolts away
(perhaps knowing
a better route) .
I am plunged
without advantage
of guiding light
into darkness,
abject, lifting
wet clothes upon
my back cursing
all clothes, the need
of them, calling in
the empty street for
'a break from woven
bondage, for return
to infantile nakedness
unspoiled but for
first shock of lumped
beingness spilling
into redundant mangers,
the maulings to come
not yet at the door
but foretold of old
in some night sky
of the world.'
I haul forth then,
outspoken
but not unburdened,
but called out,
but cast out,
shed needles on
walks' edge thin,
tree limbs naked
but for tinsel cling,
shades of a Bethlehem
Star, stretched,
wrinkled, blowing
to gutter, sticking
to shoe,
the heavy human round,
spin cycle,
night slowly unwinds.
I descend,
pass time till dawn,
hung laundry strung
out dries over chairs,
towel racks;
in dim basement room I
turn another page, red handed.
To companions in Fate I
read another passage to keep,
or return us, on track,
O Virgil,
in this long night where we wait in flagrante.***
I have broken my back lifting
all these my loves up to heaven.
**Quoted from this website:
http: //www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information .html
***Latin: in blazing offense. A legal term meaning
'caught in the act, ' 'red-handed.' Also is sometimes
used colloquially as a euphemism for someone being
caught in the act of sexual intercourse
poem
by
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