HELL-SPAWNED, HELL-BENT, HELL-BOUND

Answering Reader Mail

The poet opened his email, reeling at the unexpected stench of Florida trailer parks and moldy church basements. There was a long message from someone claiming to be Betty Ann’s husband Frank. Although for years a black-out drunk and a cad, the poet did not recall any woman by that name whose cuckolded spouse might target him with what first appeared to be a gypsy curse.

“You are a hell-spawned, hell-bent, hell-bound pipeline connected to hell-fire, swallowing and spewing forth satanic sewage, always contaminating yourself and others, everywhere you go, in everything you do! EPIC FAILURE.”

Weeks later, this opening paragraph would inspire musician friends of the poet in their own creative pursuits.

“Well, that’s the back of our new t-shirt sorted,” said the vocalist for a British occult metal band.

The e-mail continued:

“Pathetic! Pitiful and perishing!”

Alliteration gets a rotten rap these days, but when done well, as in the black comedy of Nabokov, can be pure delight. Would this missive contain much more?

“Your feet go underground, and your steps lay hold of Hell! So wallow in the quagmire, in your sinful deathstyle…”

The poet chuckled, then hummed the Led Zeppelin song “Four Sticks” with the line “…this is a deathstyle, don’t let them fool you.” This ruined the Pentecostal fire and brimstone mood of the piece, so he officiously cleared his throat, sat straight up like a good Christian at Sunday meeting, and dove back into the furious word salad.

“…self-condemnation and impotent attempts at self-justification! Go to your puppet master Satan, like a malcontent marionette…” Yes! More alliterative allusions! “…and thank him for the misery, desolation, desperation, and anguish he rewarded you with! Salivate in expectation on the Highway to Hell…”

The toaster oven in the kitchen dinged. You probably didn’t need to be told it was in the kitchen, except that a truly doomed soul might keep their toaster oven and a cigarette ash covered TV tray next to their piss and sweat stained, bare mattress.

“That smells great. Your leftovers reheated well, huh?” asked the petite fiancé of the poet, emerging from their master bedroom where she had been typing therapy notes.

“Even better the next day. That little restaurant never disappoints.”

“Never! It’s the first place my aunt insists on going when she is in town.”

“Really? Her state is famous for seafood.”

“She says this is better.”

“We truly are blessed to have it one town over then.”

The poet’s beloved took a few steps down their polished hardwood floor before turning back to look the poet in the eyes. He held her gaze for a moment.

“I love my life with you,” she said, before returning to her work.

At that moment, all of the poet’s doubt and fear about getting through the turmoil gripping the nation evaporated as if those bad feelings were a liquid of some sort, and the sun or another suitable heat source caused it to evaporate. She was a beautiful woman, smart, and sexy. Not just a little smart either, she had the fancy degrees to prove her intelligence to the world, but there was a universe inside her head that would take the rest of the poet’s life to explore.

After placing his dish and fork in the dishwasher, the poet remembered the e-mail from Betty Ann’s husband Frank. With the taste of a deeply satisfying lunch still on his tongue, he sat in his favorite chair and read on:

“…and your road to perdition (confusion, chaos, destruction, death and doom in eternal suffering) that is the final outcome of your futile existence.”

In his teens, the poet and his friends organized hardcore punk, all ages shows, with both local and nationally touring bands. Before he joined the promoters, they did business under the name “Futile Effort.” With the poet and one of his best friends from prep school helping out, the name was changed to “Combined Effort.”

The Satanic Panic of the 80s was raging. Heavy metal and punk bands and their fans were the target of scorn from our oh-so-concerned political and religious leaders. Their culture war heirs now claim their milquetoast political rivals are leaders of an all-powerful coven of Satanic high-priestesses. Actors whose mainstream films are about as exciting as watching paint dry, beige paint at that, they accuse of eating the adrenal glands of terrified tots. Serving up human children without even cooking them to a safe temperature!

In the late 1980s, even the wives of liberal Beltway hacks were playing hair metal records backwards so their tiny brains could make out words that were of course, not really there. Except for the Mister Ed theme, which does in fact, contain a message from Satan.

The poet and his friends had gotten a hold of that song on vinyl, and while at a Halloween party in spooky Troy, NY, replete with Ouija boards and art students dressed in their year-round black, carefully spun the record backwards on an old turntable.

“The surface is hot; it hurts in here…”

“Okay, now that was plain as day,” said the vocalist of a NYHC band who later became a bombastic GOP political figure in Queens.

“SOURCE OF THE DEVIL!”

The room was frozen in fear. The poet, then in high school, did not end up hooking up with a cute girl from the school of architecture, four years his senior. Sometimes the Devil does God’s work. The poet thinks that’s in the Bible, but he doesn’t have one around here, and doesn’t attach much importance to it. The poet did, however, use all of the future architect’s drugs, leaving behind a six pack of Mickey’s. One of his friends, now a television news reporter, had the ability to grow a full beard starting in 8^th grade, and was able to buy alcohol from cashiers who sent him off with a friendly,

“Thank you, sir, come again.”

“You will not quench the fires, not with your spittle,” continued the strange email. “as every breath you waste, only fans the flames!”

There was a smell like burning plastic that wafted into the living room. Did the poet forget to turn off the toaster oven? He got up from the couch and walked down the hall into the kitchen. Looking out the windows, he caught sight of a black vulture soaring above in the afternoon sky. Summer would soon be over, and the poet gazed out at the raptor as she teetered along the gentle August breeze out of sight.

Oh, the toaster! No, it had been off. The smell was coming from outside somewhere. The poet believes he may have been diagnosed with ADD as an adolescent, but it never truly held him back from accomplishing whatever he set his mind to. He had the ability to hyperfocus on projects or reading that truly mattered. This e-mail from Betty Ann’s husband Frank was not one of those truly-mattering things, as strangely compelling as he found it. It would have to wait for another day to be read in its entirety.

Grabbing a book from his bedside stack of reading-in-progress (seven in total) he saw that he had less than twenty pages to go in a novel he’d started last month. The reheated lunch was good, but now he wanted a snack. He grabbed a bag of pretzels from the cupboard and poured a sensible portion into a bowl. He was not some savage who ate from the bag.

Jason O’Toole is Poet Laureate Emeritus of North Andover, MA. He serves on the advisory board of the New England Poetry Club. He is the recipient of the 2025 Amy Lowell Prize.