Dante In The Laundromat - Journeys Further Into Hell With Two Lines From The Inferno Poem by Warren Falcon

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:

'At some false semblance in the twilight gloom
that from this terror you may free yourself'*
posthaste, gracelessly cast out, the closing
hour is soon come caught in spin cycle after
hard rinse, an entire bottle of fabric softener
cannot unstiffen these mythic threads,

the ancient weaves fray, displace, are
'undone, so many' beneath the winnowing
rotors that beat-beat with hope slosh-wash
wash-slosh slosh-wash all sins away.

Yet gathers the dirt.

There's more sin ahead
heady in floral scents.


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 only
seven minutes as is
the seven rungs a
quarter, just one quarter
more, one thinks, prays,
hopes, seeks upon the
dirty tiles beneath metal
folding chairs for just
one more to stay warm
enough before venturing
further, a 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 schedule, lights

die a sudden death,
glass door solid

with blackness locked,
metal gate rattles

its chain, slams shut,
the sidewalk shakes,

half cigarette lit,
he bolts away

(perhaps knowing
the 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,
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 nether 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 to heaven.

****

*from Canto 2

**Quote from Dante here:
4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-information.html

flagrante*** - 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