Keats in Hell

Sulphurous depths proved real, not just uncouth:

God was a monster after all. Goddamn.

Beauty was just the opposite of truth--

And Keats was still a virgin, thank you ma'am,

An unbeliever, sentenced thus to barf

His lungs eternally, just like back home.

That cap Fanny sewed, lined with her red scarf,

Transmuting now, scalded the cranial dome

With torrid iron . . . fever imploded, raged

Until his brain backfired on holy plots:

Its neurons fused to a neutron star which phaged

All agonies, and jetted forth not clots

Of mouthed blood but measured, violet sound

Too purged for heaven, too quick for underground.