Roaster

Your stiff body is tipped into the chute
and carried swiftly along on the conveyor belt.
Your shiny flesh crackles,

parasols catching your dripping fat

which turns their paper skins translucent
just before they burst into flame.

There are precious x's stitched in gold 
across both of your eyes.
Every hair smolders, a field of smoking wicks,
and then you crumble.

And then comes the waiting room, 
the decompression chamber, the firing range.
Your new body, less substantial but more durable,
gets put through its paces:

every time you get punched in the stomach 
you sprout a set of wings, and every time 
you get a blow job, those same wings

get sucked right back into your body again. 

Afterwards, you balance, exhausted,

on the thin icy blue balls of heaven

in an endless, airless hallway 

where you pray for a fire to warm your hands.

But there's no oxygen here to allow anything to burn.

You look down at all those devils sizzling down there

and say to them Look, kids, you don't know

the first thing about suffering.

Beside you, the saints shiver in their bathrobes,

wondering how much trouble they'd really be in

if they shot down a cherub or two and plucked

their feathers to stuff downy comforters 
for themselves so they can finally get some shut-eye.

You weep yourself to sleep, or maybe just slip into 
a frostbitten delirium, and some old guy wraps 
his beard around you like a scarf and tells you 
that when an angel cries, the tears sear the earth, 
carving channels through the rock 
 and seeping down to the molten core

of the planet, where they cause

a series of explosions that send magma

shooting up to the surface in a spray 
of sizzling droplets. Look, he says,

and when you wake up, it’s true,
that very thing he said would happen, is,

and you lean over and burn your lips on the burning,
bubbling fountain of molten flame.

Filled with new heat, blood burning through your veins,
you cram your hooves into golden sandals, tuck your tail up

under your robes, cram your halo on
over your horns, then turn and kiss
the virgin on the cloud beside you goodbye,

slipping her a bit of scalding tongue 
before spreading your hairy wings 
and swooping down...