Gabi Dorko

A digital art piece by Gabi Dorko, displaying Dante and his guide as the souls of Hell reach for them.

My guide took me down

and showed me all the worst. 

The fire and brimstone I anticipated 

was not what met me in the river. 

The lovers and lost souls cried on their knees. 

Begging for forgiveness, begging for a touch that didn’t burn.

And when I asked what they had done so wrong,

there was no response, but I was urged to hear their cries. 

My guide showed me the poets,

their licorice lines were meant to bite,

and they lived in my words despite 

their eternities below the earth. 

They took me by my hands

and taught me how to speak. 

They sang to drown out the damned, 

as if they were not in hell themselves. 

My guide warned me of all my coming woes,

yet I was still enticed. 

I heard of all the wars,

I drank from all the unhealed wounds.

I was told it was not wrong to listen to the damned,

for they have spent eternity screaming at nothing. 

As they spoke they decayed,

but a whisper in the hot air.

My guide let me listen to the carnal,

their crime was their appetite,

for lust, for power, for love,

unable to resist the sin of themselves.

The whisps spoke of love that drove them to death,

and the agony of losing a body to reach for in the dark,

for that is their hell. 

The lovers whom were one in life,

are doomed to be one in Hell,

every happy hour becoming days of resentment. 

My guide must watch me go on,

not welcome in the light of day.

My guide says this is my journey,

someone who pulled me through Hell

cannot walk me to the sky.