An Eternity in Hell

Author's Notes - This poem was for a partnered -- my partner was Emily Collins -- creative writing piece based of an art piece of our choice.The art piece we had chosen was The Beekeepers and Birdnesters by Pieter the Elder Bruegel,  which is pictured below. The main concept behind this poem was concieved by the idea of the people in the painting being hollow like. If you look at the painting you will notice, number one that it is not colored, simply just black/brown and white, but also notice the people in the painting  have head's that are made of wood, kind of like a tree stump. This gave us the idea of hollowness, also branching off that idea we came up with the idea of the people somewhat relating to Dante's Inferno and it's nine levels of Hell, including the one where the people who had wasted their lives becoming intombed in the ground only with their heads above the ground forced to live an eternity in Hell.

We are hollow,
No faces, no expressions,
We are numb.

Work, work, work,
Our punishment is cruel,
But we are stuck here.

No colors, no life,
Only black and white,
No light to see our souls.

Feeling pain, hurting,
Is better than feeling nothing,
Knowing our soul is wasted, going to hell.

We look, but we don’t see,

We listen, but don’t hear,

We search, but can’t find our purpose.

We live in fear of life after death,

Where will we go?

Is there anything beyond this life?

As we lay numb, we are trapped in this layer.

We are in between two worlds,

Our bodies are empty.

Our minds are in one place,

Our souls in another,

Our hearts far away.

We were created with eyes to see,
Ears to hear,
Hearts to feel.

Then we are fed to the devil,

He carves out our cores,

And fills us with lies.

Injects us with evil,

Soon we are nothing,

Nothing, but a hollowed shell.

A shell that once housed life,

But now it is gone,

We are dead inside.

We waste away,
All the same, every day,
An eternity in hell.