Damned

“Inferno” by Marina Petro

(A modest homage to Dante)

abandon hope all ye who enter here

melt into the matrix of unclean souls

become one with the stygian night

a miasma of ill-conceived dreams

swirls in cornerless shadows aflame

with dead screams in a sulfurous air

down unspeakable steps of gauged agony

leading to the basest of sinners who

practiced betrayal as branded by Judas

caught frozen for time beyond end

in perpetual pain of the ice-pit

fourth nethermost ring of the final

ninth circle where the faces of Satan

make meals of the fear and the guilt

come too late to the worst of the damned