Go to Hell

Let us love this modern world, or at least
Accept what it offers with some show of grace.
Let us try to enjoy the silliest
Jazz-joke. And in the crooner's contorted face
Let us try to imagine a romantic,
An heroic symbol of commercial love
And contraceptive innocence. Let us not be pedantic,
Bitter, vitiate in a derelict groove.

I am in earnest, ignore my cynic, he
Is a leering prophet whom I've twenty times
Cast into exterior darkness, but, ah me!
That snake still spits his venom through my rhymes.
Accept the present, be moved by mass appeal
And do not heed the lonely ideal
O let you be a spark from the world's fast wheel
Though it turns upon the spindle-shank of Hell.

§ In the final line, ‘it turns’ is circled and ‘it reel’ written alongside.