The Price of a Soul

The Price of a Soul

He sold his soul in china
and then again in France;
bought back from a child sailor girl
for the price of just one dance.

He lost it at a table,
A pool game in Taiwan,
the chick just smiled then put out her cig,
and took off for sunny Lebanon.

There she bet on horses
with money she didn’t have;
gave that soul to the loaning man
so she wouldn’t be cut in half.

He lost it in a chess game
along with three shark fins-
it was a game he didn’t quite lose,
and knew he’d never win.

The winner’s name was Rafael,
a pirate so they say,
he had it torn from his cold hands
on his last of days.

Hunted for two hundred years
by an assassin from the west;
they met in Ethiopia
and fought to test the best.

Raf, he pulled out his slim blade
and grasped its foreign hilt,
while the killer, H. then Bin Fahim,
unsheathed the sword he’d built.

Their blades but once made contact,
brushing edge for edge,
the slightest hint of that steel sound
as they lunged across the ledge.

Fahim, he moved just slightly-
no more than two inches down-
and drew that blade up through the air;
The pirate’s heart he’d found.

That dark assassin rode back home
beneath the black night’s shade
and traded it for some hashish
so he could rest that day.

The buyer was a traveling man,
a fiddler by trade,
had it stolen, swinging, from his pack
by a thief’s razor blade

The thief went east to Georgia
along the old spice route
and there became a business men-
the soul for a fine silk suit.

The tailor’s trade moved to New York,
where he had the finest clothes,
and one day while he ate downtown
the cook gave him a rose.

The place was called Hell’s Kitchen
in an area the same,
“This rose,” he said “will never die
unless you change your name.”

Well the tailor he had little use
for that soul in its mason jar
he quickly offered up the thing
and left that tiny bar.

For three years straight it stayed right there,
untroubled for its price,
and then the devil walked right in
and held it in her sights.

“How much you want for that soul up there
How much? What do you say?”
To which the cook calmly replied;
“I want just one more day.”

The devil she just smiled
as if at some small jest
“That I can not give you sir.
But you’ll settle for second best.”

The cook passed her that brown, stained jar
“Now just tell me one more thing
Why’s it worth so much to you,
With all its crack and dings?

The devil spread a sailor’s grin
and toyed with her sun-bleached pants,
“It’s worth the world and more to me
for just another dance.”