To the Cellars of Perdition
Falling down to unknown depths
from high homes and pure thoughts
and each day a further falling
with the dark side of man in control,
pushing him down the stairs
of shoddy palaces with chipped paint
amid old gardens that lost their luster,
showing him the pleasures of sin
from the bloody rumpled sheets of Babylon
and the feeling of the conscience draining away
and how it romanticizes a further falling,
the airy feeling of flying through the open earth
and singing above the thunder
and riding on a crackling lightning bolt,
down and down and further down
with the Prince of Darkness at the helm,
laughing at the God in him while they sailed over
Pleasure’s Isle with Gomorrah’s wind,
and over dark seas that hide the broken ships
and tombs of the crumbling seamen,
gone forever in Davy Jone’s locker
and their ghosts howling above the waves,
an assemblage of friends
of the dead sea society
pulling at the sleeves
to come and join their group
where conscience used to be
and will never be again,
down, down, down to the cellars of perdition
where the Prince of Darkness reigns.
