Saint Dick [revision]

I sit in the back pew of an empty Episcopalian sanctuary with my
degradable plastic sack and its transparent cellophane wrap on
laminated cardboard, a box of fourteen aluminum packets that contain
low-porosity, curve-cut moisture sheaths laid over 21-mg transdermal

Nicotine glue patches. A swell of lemon slavered wood and illumination
on cotton paper holds at length sweet iodine eddies from the chequered,
florid lane, and because there is a concert in town, the pungent squalls
of faker hippies curling along on mushrooms or methyl-amphetamines

With their costumes, Goodwill hunting and baby straps. Ceilings this
high create micro-climates in the dust-rayed suspension for door mice
and death moths stuck in the water tension of puddles in stone-columned
receptacles. Alone with the crinkling flotsams of Man in my lap,

It doesn’t seem to matter what might swim between esophagus and
lung. Only my lips will breathe this prayer, only enemies and friends
in far-flung orbits could form a basis for presumption or explanation
for why I’m here, but I’ve no known knowledge of my excursion

by any human ear. Tho I may detect the shriek of a suparna high
above the painted metal beams and glass of the cupola, it does not rain
fear, only static wonderment. I strode past shingled cottages, against
the backs of doorstop Buddhas in the creeping hindo-communistic

Aesthetic of the university neighborhood. A declassified man on feet
naked but for tar and sidewalk gum, with folds of cash and dreads and
beads pursued me chanting fumigation of indians by cigar store regulation
and the osmosis of their reservations, and his speaking slowed me down,

Gently forced the diversion that led me to a street that opened between
some trees where I could spot the steeples and the dome and its ribs
caught up with kite string and palm fronds and blanched bodhi skins
teased by saline winds seeping from the bay, which keeps away tsunamis.

Hoolie