gift shop on main street

This poem was written for the 'risk-taking' assignment.  Here is the assessment read to the class (hopefully the poem will make more sense after this...)

This poem is about a man who is cheating on his wife, but feels no regret for it.  He has turned away from God's path to follow the devil, but he puts on a mask and plays the part of a loving Christian husband.  This is a very personal poem for me, because three people I am very close to had their husbands cheat on them.  Although the incidents happened in the past, the pain is still there for all of them.  For one of them in particular, her huband doesn't seem to understand what he did was wrong, and, like the man in the poem, has no regrets.

I used a ton of references to the devil and Hell in this poem to try and make it clear how evil the man's acts are.  I also used 'gift shop on main street' as a metaphor for the place this man finds women to have sex with, be it a strip club or simply a place prostitutes hang out.  I didn't want to get into the details of what exactly was going on, so I used vague details.

This poem took me forever to write, but one thing that gave me a lot of trouble was the line "(halt for the applause from all seven levels)."  Almost everyone who read the poem told me to get rid of it.  It obviously hurts the flow of the poem and is easily the least descriptive line, but it serves a purpose.  The line isn't supposed to flow with the rest of the poem; it's supposed to make the reader stop for a moment and think about what's going on.  The 'seven levels' part alludes to people who committed one of the seven deadly sins and have been condemned to Hell, as they cheer the man on as he unwittingly becomes one of them.

As for poetic devices, there was imagery, metaphors, and the usual end-stop and enjambment. :)

PS. The poem is currently formatted incorrectly.  I promise I'll fix it!