Cross-dressing Lucifer shows the way,
wolfhound padding his depilated flank.
Cloven hooves shoehorned into fuck-me pumps,
amused as recognition flares in pinprick eyes.
The painting epicenters the forbidden room,
canvas solid with beak-mouthed devils,
hammering upon the faces, gap-toothed and wild-eyed,
of insomniac bachelorettes.
Above the artist’s clumsy autograph
an uncertain androgyne sits
with the slump-shouldered posture
of someone deeply depressed,
eyes fixed on the piano pedals,
the page-turner not much help,
drooling idiot half bird, half frog.
Apprentice to phantasm: searching
beneath his waistband
for some dignity, returning empty-handed
in his hour of need.
Smoke issues from under lifted skirts,
a woman’s head completes its rotation
within the bowl of her high collar.
Clear signs that the coven
has settled all around me.
Without possession, there can be no release.
But a Black Mass is no place for a man
with a song in his heart, a skip in his tipsy step.
I climb to a crystal monotony of spires,
there to await the nymphs of temptation.
They may have left Saint Anthony unscalped
but by the crutch of Christ they’ll shear me raw.
Abused to a blasphemous lullaby, needles probe
the human bubble and a century connives behind the curtain.
Tolerant devils driven out too quick to tidy up,
their little crypt, in its abandonment,
has a tender dollhouse look.