Satan Says
I am locked in a little cedar box
with a picture of shepherds pasted onto
the central panel between carvings.
The box stands on curved legs.
It has a gold, heart-shaped lock and no key.
I am trying to write my way out of the
closed box redolent of cedar.
Satan comes to me in the locked box
and says, I'll get you out.
Say My father is a shit.
I say my father is a shit and Satan laughs
and says, It's opening.
Say your mother is a pimp.
My mother's a pimp.
Something opens and breaks when I say that.
My spine uncurls in the cedar box
like the pink back of the ballerina pin
with a ruby eye, resting beside me
on satin in the cedar box.
Say shit, say death, say fuck the father,
Satan says, down my ear.
The pain of the locked past buzzes
in the child's box on her bureau,
under the terrible round pond eye
etched around with roses,
where self-loathing gazed at sorrow.
Shit. Death. Fuck the father.
something opens.
Satan says Don't you feel a lot better?
Light seems to break on the delicate
edelweiss pin, carved in two colors
of wood.
I love him too, you know, I say to Satan
dark in the locked box.
I love them but I'm trying to say what
happened to us in the lost past.
Of course, he says and smiles, of course.
Now say: torture.
I see, through blackness soaked in cedar,
the edge of a large hinge open.
Say: the father's cock, the mother's cunt,
says Satan, I'll get you out.
The angle of the hinge widens until I see
the outlines of the time before I was,
when I say the magic words, Cock, Cunt,
Satan softly says, Come out.
But the air around the opening is heavy
and thick as hot smoke.
Come in, he says, and I feel his voice
breathing from the opening.
The exit is through Satan's mouth.
Come in the mouth, he says, you're there
already, and the huge hinge begins to close.
Oh no, I loved them too, I brace my body
tight in the cedar house.
Satan sucks himself out the keyhole.
I'm left locked in the bed, he seals
the heart-shaped lock with the wax
of his tongue.
It's your coffin now,Satan says.
I hardly hear;
I am warming my cold hands
at the dancer's ruby eye the fire,
the suddenly discovered knowledge
of love.
