The Fire Bell

Someone should put a rope around his neck
next time he's on a ladder, just
kick it out.

This is what the devil really looks like
not some pointy-eared,
hairless, smiling

pitchfork-holding
flamed engulfed Power, but
this tiny unhappy man

with shifty eyes.
He places the bell touching my wall
so it will clang but not ring.

Active, he
takes advantage of opportunity
to exercise his pathetic misanthropy.

We all know the song:
"If I had my way
"I would tear this "building down"

and so would I
sanction Amalek - root and branch,
run for mayor, get elected

set up a hook in Nathan Phillip Square,
impale the litterers.
I'd take the vote away from women too!

Somewhere out there a house painter
is leaving paint on panes of glass on purpose.
Somewhere out there

some poet saying "Jehovah" sent her
to tell us "El Shaddai" rejects
"the stiff-necked"

for rejecting Jesus.
In the afterlife,
so many editors

of small literary magazines
will burn in her quarries crammed
with flaming rejection slips,

hewing monuments and new tablets,
their whole bodies so many pitched thumbs
throbbing after the hammer strikes the bell.


© Dan Goorevitch, 2003