From my open mike days a lifetime ago, here’s a ditty I spoke numerous times. Initially catching my audience off-guard, it became one of my more requested pieces down the road.

I can’t find the actual picture from Canyon de Chelly in Arizona that inspired this poem where a formation in the crags looks hauntedly like a demon’s scowl. The Chelly is reported to be haunted, so hopefully that serves enough as a primer for you.

Demon in the Chelly

Ray Van Horn, Jr.

maybe it was Pezazu

that puke-inducing hellraiser from The Exorcist

maybe it was Lilith

compulsory guardian of this craggy wasteland

or maybe it was that tetchy pile of rubble

Rockbiter from The Never-Ending Story 

but I assure you

as much as I know Kansas is flatter than hours-poured beer

there’s a demon in that otherwise impenetrable canyon

the wraith’s been shacked up there for centuries

I can tell by its stories-high,

wind-worn and perpetually pissed-off countenance

snarling an ecological caveat

to anyone spotting it amidst the majesty of the baking gorge it calls home

it likely devoured cowboys and Mennonites

before the Navajo chased the former into California, the latter into Pennsylvania

these days it likely inhales parasailers and climbers

and snacks on thunderbird-enamored tourists

invading outer rim reservations with soul-stealing digital clicks

freshening up at pueblo-styled chain hotels Custer would’ve found novel

and strapping on newly-purchased Canyon de Chelly souvenir shirts

suburbanerds straining their sedans into the steep gangways of sandstone chapels

genuflecting amongst the coyotes, antelope and scrub jays

and peeling off wonderstruck utterances such as

“Behold, the amazing work of God!”

while the demon, imprisoned within its coulee cell

takes iniquitous exception

and whistles odium down the barren chasms below

like the dubiously merged soundtrack

to a spaghetti western-meets-slasher film

it flosses its entrenched boulder teeth with rattlers

and it coughs up tarantulas

always parched amidst the choking aridness of its containment

with far-flung cactus juice ridiculing it from the ravine floor

woe be the unsuspecting American traveler

drifting by in steel wagons robed in travel-cracked bumper stickers

with Earth, Wind and Fire swooning soulfully

vomiting burger wrappers

out of rolled-down windows

obtuse to malignant possessors from the rocks

who threaten priests with gruesome avowals

and return the retching favor twofold

All photos courtesy of the public domain