St. Anthony, my father’s holy man,
was tempted by a worm fair, spills of guts,
soft coupling toads, blind fish and seeing maggots.
The whores the devil sent leaked through their skin.
Now who would leave off heaven for such stuff?
What in the devil was the devil thinking
to try to turn a man with such a stinking
parcel of shoddy? Or were times so tough
he hadn’t one small kingdom, or at least
one final Lilith to give sin some standing
a man could sell his soul for without branding
himself a damn fool before man and beast?
The devil’s a better confidence man than angels
or he’d have starved long since. When slobs die poor
on rotten kingdoms and a nagging whore
still in her heat when every other chills,
the devil keeps that last bait for the ardent:
my father bit bare iron to go damned:
I see the leakage past the door he slammed:
I think the devil almost hooked his saint.
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