Spirals like Dante’s Circles of the Inferno

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Don’t let the beauty of the seashells fool

You.  Beauty is a scam.  These gorgeous shells

In shape of twirling trumpets or a jewel

Of twisted love are searching for the hells

They want to wham on other creatures.  They

Crawl round in dread of Giant Tritons.  These

Are evils shaped in loveliness.  The splay

Of Crown of Thorns wide starfish offers pleas

To Starfish Gods to save them from the teeth

Of Giant Tritons, but the trumpets creep

Across them with that one stretched foot beneath

Pacific Ocean waves and there in deep,

Deep beauty chomp the deep doomed starfish, chew,

Chew, CHEW despite protections that divine

Ones give the victims.  There the Tritons spew

Saliva in them — slurping flesh like wine.

  The spines and prongs protecting hapless ones

    Are brushed aside by Tritons.  Their spit stuns.

©  Phillip Whidden