Walking Barefoot Through Hell - By Mark Masserant

sometimes i see medusa

wearing my face,

with my dreams dangling

like an ominous crown of complex and

cunning serpents.

the horizon,

dormant

and riddled with salt-sculptured icons,

is emblazoned with the history

of mega-apocalypse.

sometimes i see a chained prometheus,

wildly waving a strangled eagle,

delicately

taunting the gods.

his mountainside looms

in the northernmost regions

of my mind.

sometimes i see the ferryman,

but he is a cautious one,

wary of the stowaway.

sneering harpies flank his approach.

sometimes i see bosch,

painting infinite murals

in unison

with my narratives

wrought with melancholy.

sometimes i see dante,

and hand-in-hand i guide him,

walking barefoot through hell,

the devil’s winds whistling our bones.

hell is a time in a place in my mind.

yet in a suddenly shimmering distance,

Jonah brushes himself off,

liberated at the edge of the

foul and festering morass.

he prayed himself out of a whale

of trouble.

i sense new direction

and plan my escape.

Walking Barefoot Through Hell – By Mark Masserant