--from The Inferno of Dante Aleghieri

            Then he stopped talking, the bandit
            Launched two stiff fingers skyward
            And screamed, “Fuck you god, sack of shit!”

            Thank you snakes for choking that blowhard.
            One coiled round his throat, squeezing it
            as if to say, “Shut up, retard!”

            Snake two bound his arms, handcuffed fist
            to fist so tight his hands turned blue
            like they’d been severed at the wrist.

            Pistoia, queen of some stew
            you’ve spawned. Why not spill your own blood
            before the whole world stinks like you?

            Your son spills the foulest black-biled cud
            I smelt in hell’s disgusting pit.
            He makes Capaneus look good.

            Then he ran off, biting his lip.
            Enter a centaur, mad, he rages,
            I hear him shout, “where’s the cynic?”

            Snake-plagued Maremma’s barren ranges
            Hold fewer asps than his horse’s ass.
            Till to a man’s back it changes.

            Sprawled on his neck and shoulder mass
            Lolls a spread-eagled basilik
            That scorches all it sees to ash.

            My mentor tells me, that’s Cacus.
            Beneath Mount Aventine he made his bath
            In a lake composed of blood’s detritus.

            He’s shoved deeper into this shaft
            Than his brothers for his slick theft
            Of the great hero he drove-in front to back.

            ***

            Hercules him of his warped life bereft.
            He used his club to whack the beast
            Until the “senseless skull was cleft.”

            Cacus exited. Virgil ceased.
            Three souls entered into the pit
            below, unknown to us, ill at ease.

            They looked up, flinched, shouted, “who’s zat?”
            Virgil’s mythology class was over.
            We gazed down at hell’s latest drek.

            Who were they? They didn’t seem familiar.
            But as their colloquy unwound
            A name exploded on the ear.

            “Where’s Cianfa at? Wa’nt he around?”
            Lest my guide interupt, I put
            Finger to lip, made as “shh” sound.

            Really reader, you really should
            have seen it. Unbelievable. Ugh.
            I followed it as best I could.

            I gawked. A huge lizard-like bug
            With six quick reptilian legs, flung
            its middle legs around one thug

            At gut-level and tightly clung,
            tied up his arms with its front
            legs, bit down on the screaming tongue

            wrapped its hind legs around his butt
            and poked its long tail through the fork
            of his loins so it stuck way out.

            Strangling ivy never did work
            So tight as the way this mutant
            Entwined those limbs in its monstrous torque.

            Neither body now was extant,
            A blent half melted half melted wax-like mass,
            Shapeless, synthetic, miscreant.

            ***

            Hueless, like paper kindling in a dish
            Half-crumpled as flames make it blush
            Not yet black, no more white, vaguely brown.

            The other two gaped at the hybrid slush
            “Wow, Angel, you've changed, son.
            You ain’t two or one, fish or flesh.”

            Two skulls contorted into one
            Both faces were lost but mishmashed bits
            Of each one forged one gross compilation.

            Two arms congealed out of four flesh strips,
            Thigh gobbled calf, belly at torso
            unheard-of limbs like hieroglyphs.

            What nature made gone all askew
            Two things, nothing, twisted image, sick.
            Slowly it slithered out of view.

            Think of a lizard, watch it flit
            By you on a dog day of summer
            Into a bush like lightning. Quick

            As that small serpent-like creature
            Flashed near the stomachs of the two men,
            sleek and mean as a bad green chile.

            It stung one guy right in the belly-button
            Then flopped down onto its own belly
            Stretched out there before its victim

            Who stared back at it quietly.
            Just stood there, opened up his mouth
            Yawned like a feverish man deprived of sleep.

            Man and reptile checked each other out.
            Smoke from the wound, smoke from the beast’s
            mouth was billowing, forming one great cloud.

            Forget Lucan’s poem where he treats
            Of putrid and bloated war carcasses,
            This next metamorphosis defeats

            ***

            Ovid and his myth apparatus.
            Arethusa as fountain, Cadmus
            Into seprent, need not impress us.

            Two distinct natures did he show us
            Whose individual forms, juxtaposed,
            Snapped their essential substances.

            So here’s the way they trans-metamorphosed:
            The lizard’s thing bisects its tail,
            The man blends two legs into a long, thin hose,

            Legs and thighs coalesce, joints fail
            Of all articulation, bone abates
            In one sinewy organic flail.

            The fissured tail itself inflates
            To form the legs the other shunned.
            Its skin grows soft, his like a snake's.

            His arms shrunk up inside his trunk
            While the Beast's short forefeet expand
            As much as the man's arms had shrunk.

            Its hind paws entangle in a flange
            Of dangling skin like the thing men conceal
            His dick splits into little hands.

            Smoke bedims each and both, unreal.
            Hair emerges on the hide of one,
            the other's hair falls out unsheared.

            One stands upright, the other flops down.
            They never break eye-contact. Next?
            Transubstantiation of the snout.

            The erect on scrunches muzzle-fresh
            temple-ward where folds of fat cheek skin
            bunch up into ears. From the excess

            Tissue still left where his snout had been,
            A human nose blossoms from a reptile skull,
            Lips grown thick that had been thin.

            ***

            The other one, prone, jet-propels
            His snout. His ears retract back into
            His head like horns into a snail shell.

            His tongue, discrete organ, soulmate to
            His reason, cleaves. The forked beast tongue
            Stitches up. Smoke clouds fade from view.

            The shamed soul that these staves have sung
            Fled hissing from the ditch of grifters.
            The other spat, coughed, cursed and swung

            Around his new fabricated shoulders
            Saying to the third, "I want Buosa
            To drag his belly on the boulders

            Like I did." This canto's very raw,
            Thieves fluctuate in the seventh bogia.
            Hard to put in words the bizzare things I saw.

            At the time, my eyes were popping out,
            My mind was blown, but I scrutinized
            The mugs of those low-lifes as they slouched

            Out of their cockpit and recognized
            Puccio Sciancato, the only pissant
            In the first trio not transmogrified.

            The other guy was Cavalcanti, called "Squint."


Copyright © Howard O'Brien, 2005. All Rights Reserved.