The Devil dying in a hospital.
You occupy the plastic chair
in the waiting room of A & E
on show your scant props
through the plastic sack marked
patient property
what happened to the plague?
the all-consuming ague?
you miss the withering of limbs
the stigma of goatish horns
and salamander fins
it’s been so long since baby’s fatal cry
your unkempt fingernails pried
you’d never be able to reprise
your deft application of disease
Your tariff now in laying ill
reduced to the odd mischievous pill
or oil spill or economic dirge
the ur-fear where we now converge
you barely make the papers for a day
as fatalism and zeal now hold equal sway
your elegant and complex stealth
obviated by a common carnal wealth
so now you’re dying
on a trolley in corridor nine
you’ll retch one last lick of brine
the antiseptic air will stringently engulf
his satanic majesty, and there’s
a final whiff of sulph.
On his gravestone;
The Devil
And with my passing ravens halt
at enamelling their wings, then sulk.
Obsidian creatures of the deep dark sea
sigh florets of detritus and keen for me
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