For the King of Nothing Left
       

There's this version of Hell I learned as a kid,
where the condemned are at this great feast,
but they're starving, because all their forks are too long
to reach their mouths, which means they'd have
to cooperate, to feed each other, only they're too selfish.
It's Hell One, the Hell of Fools. We like thinking
of this Hell, because we know, whoever we are,
we're not that selfish. Here, mostly, once someone
is starving, really getting down into it, and if
they'd have these super long forks (and the options
of throwing oneself on the food or pushing people off
cliffs for the food are off the table), they'd do
a pretty good job of cooperating. It's transactional.
Hell Two starts with the fed who want to remain fed,
to be the best fed, the promise of always being fed.
It's how walls work. Wall around the garden.
Wall around this blank page, this open field,
which protects Hell Three, the one of other people,
and it's a conceptual thing, a conceptual Hell,
the one we tell people to go to, adopting the face
of a transaction, where a vote for and a vote against
is the same, when neither of them affect you.
"Yes," you could say, "exactly," and then move on
to whatever you were already doing, chewing tinfoil
or socks, as examples bedevil or put feet to Next Hell,
nodding along Hell, the fashionable Hell, Hell Four,
maybe, or Joke Hell, where it's not about lapse,
or Hell, even. "If only there had been signs," we say,
surrounded by signs. "Then I'd know what to do."

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Copyright © 2020 John Gallaher All rights reserved
from Brand New Spacesuit
BOA Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission