A spider pauses on the stairs
leading down from the judgment desk
toward the torture fields of the Hei Sheng Hell -
then takes off across the heads of attendants
forcing sinners into tubs of molten lead.
It briefly finds respite in the hollow
of one attendant's furrowed brow,
then bolts again, dashing to a fracture
in the joint of a mallet being driven
into some Hell Realm itinerant’s abdomen.
His panic seems induced not by the ordeals
he's traversing, but by the glare
on the shadowless plain, where
each impulse for the sunken spots that seem safer
still and all lead nowhere better.
The Buddha of Hong Kong was a bug once too -
his nose now hovers over the lurid scene:
Bugs and Hell-beings, pointless joy
began the moment I withdrew
from the fruitless search for a permanent
rift with a view.
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