PERFECT SAINT

The indigenous people of Guatemala say that
Saint Maximon is the union of saint and devil.
He drinks, womanizes, sins
and forgives any transgression.

Wearing red and smoking cigarettes
he rises with the sun and burns all night long.

How glorious to be naked
beneath a blanket of forgiveness


(First appeared in Free Verse.)

SOLEMNITY AND THE SERIAL KILLER

Across the dew with slackened maw
Through lemonade light
Treads a tribute to the drizzle
Spectacles mist, the man unseeing in nature's claw

On waves of heather over reservoir
The breeze carries its perfume
A heady cocktail mixed for pleasure
And to the town 'au revoir'

In reflection of puddle and design of cloud
Decisions are prompted
A flock of ducks help relieve the muddle
And he buries the children in the ground.

Stroking the Beards of Saints



A church is a butterfly exlusion zone
but last night the moon shaved
these ancient roof tops
with a razor of white light
and baby Jesus peed on both Poles.
Styrofoam wings beat blizzard drumbeats
on young girls' bedroom walls,
and the patriarchy groaned in its bed of shrapnel.
At midnight, a nun bared her breasts
to give baby Jesus a drop of pure nectar
churned between worlds by kundalini snakes,
and every war turned into a factory of pancakes.
Cathedral space spread out like a bandage
over wounded concrete and bruised flesh,
monk mouths making oral compensation
for two millennia spent back to back denying
that tree roots suck sperm from the earth
and pump it as sap through bark.
Human veins and nerves are networks
woven to catch spiritual fish, no miracle
on the mount multiplying fishes and loaves
like an out-of-control abacus spewing vitamins,
but the day-to-day birthright of unclouded minds.
Not one word of any sermon
saves the world from rushing forward
toward waterfall roar,
not one Bible page squeezes the warm
woman's breast of Mary, but last night
the moon came close to breaking free,
last night we almost got out
of the doctrine's grip.