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(x = space)

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The Devil in the Middle

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What is in

The center of it all?

A devil laughing?

Why should a devil

Laugh?  Why should

A devil care?

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Devil-may-care,

What does that mean?

It means cavalier

In this instance;

Cavalier meaning gallant,

Gallant meaning piquant

Small matters

To the devil

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Some imply a drama:

The devil made an angel,

Risen through the rank

To be chief angel

Even over arches

The prince of light

In the maker’s eye

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Then came ambition

There must be more

(there isn’t

there is),

A form of pride

Borrowed from the will

The maker gave

The last things made,

Before resting

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Pride made or given,

The angel rises

Now to have something

Of its own,

The will to chase the universe

To know

And thus have

Everything that moves—

Better yet, motion itself

And heat

And all reactions,

The moving in everything

That moves

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The universe is not

Statuary;

I will own dynamos

All that makes possible

All else—this

Is ambition

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And the maker,

The maker said no

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Other than the tree,

The first time

That was said

More so imposed,

And the devil knew

The maker meant it

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And there was howling,

The first kind

Ever heard in heaven

And rebellion

And rejection

As decreed

In the moment before

And in between

Anything beyond the host

Was made

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The devil thought

Nothing like this could apply

To an angel

Better than archangels—

But this was meant,

It knew and so

It and its own followers

Must leave,

The devil

And the devil’s own

Sliding onto Earth

In a compromise, it hoped,

Of creation’s creating,

Maker’s binding law

Not to destroy in victory

Anything that was made,

Even with

Accounting the defeated

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Earth the great place

In between,

Where battles might be fought

Until the last engagement;

The devil knew it all

And didn’t care—there

Were its own skirmishes to win,

A campaign of turning

And, turned enough,

To ruin Eden’s darlings

Even turn the animals

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Twisting the good

In molecules

And lightning

And all forces remade

Into viscous virtue,

Easy to remake

And redirect,

Blurring the vision of the end

Even in its sight—

Maybe the devil and an army

Of the Earth

Will split the maker’s love

And all will overthrown,

New laws

With everything its own

With what might be taken

From each other

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All anarchies,

All chaos

Water will not fill the shape

Of its container

For physics overthrown

With anything agreed-upon

Undone

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Undo it all,

The devil owning energy

Would win

And have its own,

More than any other

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Enough of a plan

To ruin Eden’s promises

Then go from there

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C L Couch

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there is more

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Photo by Jonathan Bean on Unsplash

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