Dante Never Met My Landlord

Dante Never Met My Landlord

By Alec Whitson

They say that The Divine Comedy is a masterpiece,

that Dante changed the face of literature forever.

His Inferno an elaborate, all powerful, awe-inspiring fresco

of sinners, the very bad things they do, and what they deserve.

But Dante never met my landlord,

a senile pervert who would threaten and bitch

at a house full of kids just trying to survive.

Dante should’ve made some room in hell for him, too.

Dante never heard of Srebrenica, or Babi Yar.

He never saw that dude cut me off on the freeway last week.

He never felt the oppression of the capitalist machine,

and he never met Gary from work, who’s a dick.

I’m not saying I could do better, just that Inferno could use some updates.

We could take out Paolo and Francesca and throw in a Koch Brother.

We could fill the seventh circle with all the drone pilots.

We could give Satan another mouth so he could swallow Kissinger,

and maybe we could beat up all the folks that weren’t so nice on the internet.

After the endless eons of incomparable asses,

you can’t convince me that Judas was the worst guy to ever live.

What about Himmler, Dahmer, or the guy who invented parking tickets?

For God’s sake, what about the guy who invented parking?

Dante envisioned an ultimate darkness,

but like all the pre-Christians he wrote off to Limbo,

he died before knowing just how dark we could get.

And yet, while I sit here and bitch about how the Inferno seems unfinished,

For all of our sakes, I hope he was at least kind of right.