Hell Poem by John Lars Zwerenz

HELL

Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me....whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.

— Matthew 25: 41-43

PART I

MY MISERY

On fire by the sea,
Underneath a flaming canopy,
You came to me -
As I was alone.

Your hands tried to caress my brow
And pleaded for me not to allow
Satan to implore...

Yet my misery is definite now.
And hope
Is
No more.

PART II

THE ROPE

Cold salt for tears,
Rocks for a bed,
The agony of all the years
Has left my whole heart dead.

Dead is all my hope.
Eyes closed,
Bereft of love's rose,
I behold
What Jesus foretold:
Hell at the end
Of a tightly wound rope!

PART III

THE ABYSS

Into the outer darkness
My soul is thrown
Where no pitiful groan
Can touch the starless blackness.

No desperate plea
Can alter this fiery infinity
Where spiritual and carnal misery
Are amassed by a horrid destiny.

Inside, a prisoner of a barbed wired fence,
Sobbing next to a pool that does never reflect
The abyss that swallows every layman to Pope,
No drop can be sipped without irreverence
To the guilty mind, devoid of all hope.

PART IV

THE DEN

The trail that goes beneath the starless eve
Leads to a cavern, devoid of all light,
Filled within the horror where no dim delight
Can be had amidst the chains. No one can leave!

The way that has been crossed, engraved in stone,
Can never be trod on ever again.
No note can be written for help, no pen
Can be put to use in Satan's den.

So one must be alone, among the cries,
Amid the screaming amid the false hope which dies.
Open mouths suck in terror filled air
To take a breath in this black, brutal lair.

The walls know no escape from the fierce, endless toil
As the skin is torn from the flesh to boil.

PART V

MADNESS

The buzzards circle around my mind.
Unable to marry my soul to mankind,
I am in the grip of an endless, eternal exile
On a forgotten, icy, dreadful isle.

I have walked the last tangible mile
Among my brethren, from whom I am banned.
I am a lifeless soul in a lifeless land.
So I plea to the starless, outer blackness
In a tortured fit of eternal madness.

I have not even the moon for my companion -
It is swallowed by the torrid sea -
The horrid waves which have engulfed me
In this gloom filled, lightless haunted mansion.

I am caught in a merciless, iron mesh.
The bats, they speak, the pipes, they leak.
The straightjacket strangles my soul, beyond weak -
And the rodents feast upon my flesh.

Hell is not empty!
Let all tongues be still!

JOHN LARS ZWERENZ