Une Saison en Enfer
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interpretation by Greg Baysans
(more to come?)
(February 10, 2003)
A Whole Shift at Broiler
Once, if memory serves me right, my life was leading to banquets at which every whim was accomodated on an island in a sea of fine wine.
One evening I took Hope in my arms - the bitch bit me -- so I raped her.
And braced myself for punishment.
Then ran away! Left the Satanists behind and began a miserable life putting Eden-feasts behind me.
I've burned the bridge to human salvation. I'm the instinct a lion uses to maul a lamb.
I commit only crimes that qualify me for the death penalty. I want to suck the barrels of the guns that make up my firing squad! I invented AIDS and African famine, Squalor to me is a vital deity. I've lain in mud shitting myself in gutters and dried myself in the gas of Skid Row while I puked. I've played the Fool everyone seems eager to take advantage of and it's given me this vivid insanity.
Last spring I cackled the laugh of the dumb.
Now that it's fall and I'm ready to have myself committed, I've decided to remember those days long ago when feasts were just around the dining room corner. I want my appetite back.
The secret is Charity! (I've gotta be dreaming.)
"Just laugh, starving African hyena," taunts the Demon Muse ghost of Rimbaud who once sold me drugs. "Seek death with every breath you've got left. Consume everything with your voracity. Explore to their fullest each of the Seven Deadly Sins."
"Been there, done that," I respond.
The look he gives me back tells me he's disappointed. I'll have to try to gain his favor by telling some old stories from my hey-day.
Since he doesn't like fancy literary devices, I'll have to present them directly from my journal, the diary of a Damned Soul:
HIV Blood
From my Teutonic background all that's left in me is my blue eyes, a predisposition to HIV, a narrow brain and awkwardness in competition. My clothes are no more evolved than theirs. Instead of butter, I use daily hair gels when I can afford them.
The Teutons were the most animalistic thrill-seekers of their time.
From them I inherit: idolatry, and love of sacrilege -- lechery! anger! especially the ever popular dishonesty! laziness! (Great stuff that lechery!)
I have an extreme case of ergascophobia (I'm scared to death of work). Bosses and supervisors cause an allergic reaction in me. The hand that holds the pen is as valuable as that on the production line. (What a time for hands!) I'll never learn to use mine. House-cleaning is useless. I'm ashamed of being able only to beg. Thieves are as disgusting as castrati: I've got mine, I don't care if it means I beg instead of steal.
But where did I ever learn to bite my tongue and hide out doing nothing? I don't even try to get ahead with mhat I've got. As lazy as an egg, I'm ubiquitous. Not a family on the planet I've not dropped in on. Tribal groups, I mean, like mine, who owe it all to the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation. I give blow jobs to eldest sons to make them potent!
If only I had a connection to history in some way.
Instead, not even infamous.
I've had an inferiority complex since birth. I've always turned the other cheek. . . .
. . . .
. . . .
Farewell
. . . .
What made me mention a helping hand? It's just a good thing I can laugh the hypocracy of my love life and mock anyone who would try honor -- I went through a whore's hell over there! -- and I've seen both sides and can live in truth, an integrated multiple personality.
April-August 1873, January-February 2003
https://members.tripod.com/~poetx/wimb/b09.html