Within the vast suburbia of Hell,

Sequestered in his dingy, private cell

(Which lacked a window or a padlocked door),

Our reprobated hero paced his floor.

Not his the gaudy blaze of punishment 

For those whose lives in cruelty were spent;

Titans of wickedness whose earthly years

Could rightly measured be in others’ tears,

Whose lust to dominate, whose greed for gain

Makes them the heirs of everlasting pain – 

No, this lost soul, all snug to self within

Was but a dull banality of sin.

Externally, throughout his mortal course

He caused but little woe nor show of force,

No avaricious star ruled o’er his life

(Though lust and gluttony were somewhat rife),

No smoking crater hot with human ruin – 

Except the rancor that he chose to stew in.

He hoarded petty anger like a miser

And belched his bitterness just like a geyser,

Assailing (when he could) his neighbor’s ear

(Oft deaf to ranting tedious and drear).

But mostly was his bilious vocation

Employed in theaters of isolation;

Erupting in a flagrant ecstasy

Of fury in pathetic privacy.

Who knows that he might have become a saint

Except he mastered deftness of complaint.

His virtue was resentment in full spate,

He knew no other holiness but hate.

Now back and forth he’s worn a little path

And yammering, he monologues his wrath

With rotten teeth, all shattered shards and chips

That cut the air expelled through bleeding lips.

His jeremiads make his mouth run dry,

A tongue of desert sand begets his cry.

Such grisly maladies are no distraction

Nor do they mollify his spleen’s protraction.

Although the flames of Hell consume his brain,

His mind is scorched; his body feels no pain.

Rooted to grudges and hostility,

The flower of his wrath’s fertility

Shall blossom fully for eternity.

And like a sorcerer, in his hot zest,

Upon his dungeon’s walls makes manifest

The icons of his rage, the which he reams

With swollen, deathless symphonies of screams.

All those he knew on earth (or nearly all)

Have silent portraits hung, at which he’ll bawl

Perpetual tsunamis of rebuke

As fierce and odious as arcs of puke.

And all this rabid stream of vehemence

Has long ago lost every eloquence:

His diction has decayed to entropy

And gibberish of animosity.

A vocal vitriol devoid of speech

A raw and venomous eternal screech.

The principle of Hell is mindless passion;

The damned enact it after their own fashion.

As he pours forth his fury and reviles,

His muted audience with Zen-like smiles

Expend no energy his barbs to parry;

Make no protest, defense, nor commentary,

Nor offer any reconciliation,

Nor sheer contrition to his fulmination.

These, wordless in his house of endless night,

Withhold responses to his spray of spite:

He rests assured (at least) that HE IS RIGHT.

Through all the corridors and rooms of Hell

Such righteousness rings out just like a bell,

Declaring all his anger like a creed,

His teeth and tongue and lips forever bleed.