I grew up in Glendale, Arizona. During my entire childhood I only went to church, any church, about a dozen times. Yet the Southwestern American ambiance filled my head with certain Christian-based religious notions, including that of angels and devils. I regret not being a sufficient world citizen to be as familiar with other beliefs. I’d love to be able to do an equivalent of the above page with, say, ringing-true Hindu archetypes, for instance. We’re all stuck with our upbringings, even if we renounce the ideas behind them.

In the illustration accompanying the poem, Mister Devil is poking at Mister Angel with his trident and tauntingly asking, “Who’s your DADDY?” Mister Angel replies, “Well, I’ll be Damned–YOU are.” My notion is that Lucifer, eons ago, sowed some wild ectoplasm; further, celestial beings can access all their eons-long memory perfectly, but there may be a bit of lag time. So Mister Angel cast his memory back to when he was an angel-pup and found that the Devil himself had sired him.

If you think that’s far-fetched, it’s not even close to the weirdest of the “facts” about angels and devils. Just ask Jacob, first member of the WWF–or was it his opponent?

Here are the words:

BAD-MOUTHING is Alive–indeed a
Euphemism NEEDS a feeder
DRAINAGE dries a cul-de-sac
Emptiness lacks Bacharach
Visiting the pic’d Corrida
Ink and haemoglobin lead-in
Leave your heart at home if bleeding
Emphasis beyond the pale
Douses HOPE; delivers NAIL