Billy Markham and the Fly

Billy Markham slowly turns on a white-hot steel spit,
And his skin, it crackles like roasting pig, and his flesh is seared and split,
And sulphur fills his nostrils and he’s fed on slime and mud,
By a hairy imp with a pointed stick who bastes him in spider’s blood.

And his eyeballs boil up inside his skull and his throat’s too charred to scream,
So he sleeps the sleep of the burning dead and he dreams unspeakable dreams.
Then in walks the Devil in a big yellow hat as Bill hears the Hell gates clangin’
And the Devil wipes off his bloody hands and says, “Hey, Bill, how’re they hanging?

I’m sorry we couldn’t give you a pit with a view, but right now this’ the best we got,
But as soon as we’re done with Attila the Hun, we’ll move you right into his spot.
Have you met your neighbors, have you heard ‘em scream? Do they keep you awake in the fire?
Hey, a little more brimstone for number nine — and stoke up the heat a bit higher.

Ah, you just can’t get good help these days, and there ain’t much profit in Hell.
No — turn that adulteress upside down — do I have to do everything myself?
I tell you, Bill, it’s a full-time job, tending these white- hot coals,
So damn busy with paperwork, I hardly got time for collecting new souls.

Which brings me to the subject of my little visit. Now, you’re one of them natural-born gamblin’ men,
And I’ll bet you’d give most anything just to get them dice in your hands again.
So instead of swimming in this muck and slime and burnin’ crisp as toast. . .
I’ll trade you one roll of the dice for the soul of the one who lovesyou most.”

“Trade the soul of the one who loves me most? Not a chance in Hell I will!”
“Spoken like a hero,” the Devil says. “Hey, a little more fire for Bill.”
“You can burn me, roast me or bake me,” says Billy. “Go have your fiendish fun.
A coward dies a thousand times — a brave man checks out once.”

“Hey, Billy, that’s poetic,” the Devil says, “but life ain’t like no rhyme,
And I know ways to make a brave man die a million times.”
“Then do it, motherfucker!” Billy Markham screams. “But I won’t trade love away.”
“That’s what they all say,” the Devil laughs, “but when I turn up the fire, they play.”

And the flame burns white and Bill’s flesh burns black and he smells his roasting stink,
And the Hell rats nibbble upon his nose . . . and Billy begins to think.
He thinks of his childhood sweetheart who loved him through his crazy days . . .
He thinks of his gray-haired mamma, Hell, she’s gettin’ old anyway.

He thinks of his baby daughter — he wrote her a card last fall . . .
Then the Devil does somethin’ even I won’t describe . . . and Billy screams, “Take ‘em all!”
And — Zap! — again he’s back at Linebaugh’s, kneeling on that same old floor,
And across from him the Devil kneels, ready to play once more.

And Bill gently feels the Linebaugh’s tile littered with git and grime
And he sees his friends in the booths all around as they chew their nails and rhyme their rhymes.
And he hears the jukebox blaring loud, and smells the perfume and the piss,
And he breathes in deep of the smoke-filled air, and he thinks, “How sweet it is.”

“Well, are you ready to shoot some craps?” he hears the Devil cry,
“Or you gonna sit all night and stroke that floor like you stroke a young girl’s thigh?”
And as Billy takes the dice, he knows that if he wins,
Then Hades will have been a dream, and his soul will be his again.

“I guess my point is still thirteen?” Billy Markham asks.
“The point’s the same,” the Devil sneers, “and the stakes are still your ass.”
“Well, one never knows,” Billy Markham says, “when luck’s gonna smile on a man,
And if a charcoal corpse from Hell can’t roll thirteen, then who the Hell can?”

And Billy Markham shakes the dice and whispers, “Please, thirteen.”
And the dice roll out a six . . . and a six . . . and then, as if in a dream . . .
A buzzing fly from a plate nearby, like a messenger sent from heaven,
Shits — right in the middle of one of them sixes — and turns it into a seven.

“Thirteen!” yells Billy Markham. “I have beat the Devil’s play.”
“The Hell you have,” the Devil says, and . . . whoosh. . . he blows that speck away.
“Which goes to prove,” the Devil says, “that Hell’s too big to buck,
And when you’re gambling for your ass, don’t count on flyshit luck.”

“Well, that’s life,” sighs Billy Markham, “and it never lasts for long,
Buy y’know that fly shittin’ on that die would have made one Hell of a song.”
“You’re a songwriting fool,” the Devil laughs. “There ain’t no doubt about it.
As soon as you go lose one damn game, you wanna write a song about it.

But there’s a whole lot more to life and death than the words and tunes you give ‘em.
And any fool can sing the blues — let’s see if you can live ‘em.”
Then — Zap! — Billy wakes up back in Hell, turning on that same steel spit,
And again his skin crackles like roasting pork, and his flesh is seared and split,

And his mouth is filled with molten lead and his ass with red- hot coals,
And next to him the Devil squats — and laughs — and wipes his ass with Billy Markham’s soul.
And he hears the screams of his momma as she turns in the purple flame.
And he hears the cries of his baby girl as she pays the price of his game.

He hears the voice of his own true love laugh like a child at play,
As she sucks the Devil’s brains out in her own sweet lovin’ way.
And buzzin’ ‘cross Bill’s burnin’ bones and landing on his starin’ eye
And nibblin’ on his roastin’ flesh is that grinnin’ Linebaugh’s fly.