Rivers of the Underground: Styx

This promise that leads to our death, is to desire life. We are so faithful and stand at the side of the father like a flock of children. Zeus is grateful and tragically obliges our wishes without much thought. Yet what is happiness but the absence of unhappiness, what is pleasure but the absence of pain. To avoid our suffering, we desire to live. To fulfill my yearning, all I crave for is to avoid unhappiness. So I seek more pleasure, I must fulfill this desire, even if it means my certain death. So I enter this underworld of the subway at Grand Army Plaza, and every morning, dutifully, to avoid discomfort, I repeat this same, civic ritual, I descend, I wait. Then I see the head lights approaching, growing larger as they roll near. There I see the shadow of the driver of souls, appearing on the dreary side of the traced, yellow line on the platform. I step back at the roaring proximity of the flashing eyes. I get on, and am shaken silently, tens of meters under the East river to the island of Manhattan, where rivers are split, bordering the marshes of Jersey. Who is immersed here, finds eternity, invulnerable to the suffering of life, but lost of all human measure.

Rivers of the Underground: Lethe

Of all the evil my eyes have seen, oblivion was the most unforgiving. Who escaped it, never spoke of it again. Of all sins, to forget the wrongs committed, the most cruel is, more gruesome than the wrong that suffers of it, to forget. The closest to death in deed, oh she is not sleep, for even sleep will be forgotten. Here I sink into this hole of liquid, here I am washed clean of myself, and so not only drowned into this river of the living dead, also to know nothing of it. Three times crows the rooster, three times I disown, three times disowned, so I deny the love I loved, so I deny the friend I once knew. Is there greater sin than to stop loving, than to forget. Man, I do not know what you are talking about! and the Lord turns and looks straight at us. Oh Lethe, who washes with your waters my love. Oh Lethe, don't leave me denied. As I sink I feel her sense of great, calm soothing. There is no deeper river in the mind, there is no broader realm in the soul of man. To forget is the devil's water, and more than death, Matilda's hand I fear. Matilda, most beautiful woman, most gracious and fair, it is her who makes me forget what in my dreams I longed. She is covered in her veil, and by the spell of magic in her eyes, the breath of her soft breasts in her tender voice, the Siren draws me onto her clips. Here it is I strand, on the shore of Lethe, while on my long sea way home.

Rivers of the Underground: Phlegethon

The fire of my loins, flowing around my torso like lava, erupted from the mouth of Etna, spitting ashes in stone formations that sprout through the air, like the mountain being a giant whale ploughing its majestic grand body through the waves of the terrain, pouring open the wounds of evil, that live in my heart, of the cruelty that shoved in people's throats, like the sharpened pole's end of rupture and ego, penetrating their rectum, constituting the horrific rape of Lucrece, a crime that will not heal, but bleed here hundreds of yards beneath the plain's surface of goodness and kindness, of compassion, of humanity, like flames licking my beard, that smells of sulphur, the passion that once fueled my madness, now aflame, and like Tantalus bending down desperately to put out that bursting heat, my thirst increases, my hunger grows, alas, why were you Lolita of my heart, so young and luscious, to cut my head like Judith, the beak of a snake, now in your hand, that pulls me down this stream of fire. Did I not repent? To boil my soul in blood unto the end of times, is this the wage for loving you, this your justice. My crime to love you, to lust for the blood of your womb, to quench my violent passion to possess you, all born from love. Here now is my meal, the plate of man's hunger, for the flesh to ravishly possess, to penetrate the shield of other men with my spear, to kill the impossible and to take you. Now you speak, young maiden, where lies the crime in that?

Rivers of the Underground: Cocytus

Alas, formidable river, Cocytus. Nor baptism nor deluge washed clean my soul. No interest, no profit paid my debts. Here a sinner, I am, carried by this stream of consciousness, a frozen soul. If life is treacherous, nothing so compared to Hades. What priceless joy I thought to last forever, now lifts me from these misers? The price of passage, little, I would exchange all the happiness in life. Who can say they know the currents of the Cocytus? At the center, buried to my waist, the traitors of self, at the navel of being three faces, the father, the son, and the spirit. The surface of Cocytus a mirror that reflects the image of god, the self that could have been, and the horrific eyes, most feared by all, forced to look away in eternity.

Rivers of the Underground: Acheron

I crossed the river of pain. Some say it heals, for only when one passes Acheron, will one no longer fear the flesh of the body. Tightly clenched in my fist, I still hold the coin. This is the realm of the spirit, where I hold angels dear. For many this is the realm of death, where they feel nothing anymore, know nothing. This is a time to greet, for joy, for welcome. The water is a stream that nourishes the dead who only sense emptiness, they, Lazarus, pray like baboons. But I fear not, no need to fall on my knees. I do not shiver, but frivol. Those who think of death as life, those who fear, they pay a price when they cross, they cannot return. But to me, death is in life, with the spirit in which I joy resurrected.