Life on Hell
Oh Morning Star, why must thou die;
So that the Evening Star may rise?
You dive toward the rising sun,
And vanish to the underworld;
So that you may rise again,
Brighter and more beautiful,
Reborn in the Western Sky.
Oh Morning Star, why must thou die?
You look so pretty from a distance,
Its a neat trick of the light.
The way your clouds reflect the sun
Make you shine oh-so-bright.
They say you’re not so pretty inside.
Underneath the sulfur clouds,
There’s lightning storms with acid rain,
And yet you shine, so strong and proud.
Oh Pretty Star! Do Tell!
Is there any life on Hell?
For Evening Star, you shine so bright,
I wish upon you every night,
Even though you’re not a star at all.
Evening Star, why did they name you
For the cruelest God of all?
So that the Evening Star may rise?
You dive toward the rising sun,
And vanish to the underworld;
So that you may rise again,
Brighter and more beautiful,
Reborn in the Western Sky.
Oh Morning Star, why must thou die?
You look so pretty from a distance,
Its a neat trick of the light.
The way your clouds reflect the sun
Make you shine oh-so-bright.
They say you’re not so pretty inside.
Underneath the sulfur clouds,
There’s lightning storms with acid rain,
And yet you shine, so strong and proud.
Oh Pretty Star! Do Tell!
Is there any life on Hell?
For Evening Star, you shine so bright,
I wish upon you every night,
Even though you’re not a star at all.
Evening Star, why did they name you
For the cruelest God of all?
♠ ♠ ♠
As a baby, I screamed a lot. According to my Filipino nanny, there were two ways to shut me up. The first was to run the vaccuum cleaner. Perhaps I liked the sound, or maybe it just drowned out the sound of my screams until I accepted that I was no longer being listened to and stopped screaming.The only other time I shut up was when my favorite musical interlude came on TV, a song called "A Song in The Night" by Silverwind. It ran for exactly 55 seconds, which meant that whoever was looking after me would get a minute's reprieve from my screaming. Then they had to run the vacuum cleaner or give me whatever I originally wanted, or else the screaming would start again.
Betsy Herdandez looked a quite a lot like my mother. She even had the correct hair and eye colour. Whenever I saw her on TV, I thought that my mother had come home and got all excited. Then, when my real mother really did come, I would want her to sing the MorningStar song. Only her voice wasn't nearly as good and she sung it too low, that song just sounds wrong in any key other than F# major, so I would always get upset that she was singing it wrong.
About five years later, I heard the song again at my very religious cousin's house. I got excited and told them about how I used to love this song and always wanted to go with them to the Morning Star. My uncle told me "but you have to be good if you want to go to the Morning Star." Then he told me you only got to go after you died, if you were good.
This sounded like a shit deal to me. There was nothing in the song about having to be good, or having to die. He said the morning star was like heaven. I said I didn't think it was. The Morning Star was a planet called Venus. I didn't want to go to heaven, I wanted to go to Venus. And nowhere in the bible did it say you had to be good to get on a spaceship headed to Venus.
He told me it was a metaphor. I told him I didn't think it was. I'd seen the Morning Star, I told him. It was Venus. I wanted to go there.
He decided I didn't get metaphors. I decided he was a religious fanatic who was trying to ruin my favorite song for me. I was disappointed that my favorite song was none other than a message to try and get me to behave nicely and believe in God.
I guess I am going to Hell after all. And Venus and Hell are kind of similar once you get underneath the sulphur clouds. So I wrote this poem.