To literature’s inconvenient convicts—
                    those bold hymnists whose expurgated lyrics
                              call out to me, their chorus of free spirits

                    crying from behind blank masks an evidence
                              of asterisks laid on them by idiots—
                                        I am their advocate exclaiming, Justice!

A plague of obscene scent thrown down upon
     mendicants menacing hedges below
     profane love’s sacred window, too often
     have I breakfasted with pornographers
     seeking to know if in dreadful winter
     beautiful whores still tasted like poisoned
     honey, if the moon would follow me when
     I ignored her insolent company.

Imprisoned by desire, I denied her
     my presence, preferring instead to get
     up to her brother’s bedroom and piss out
     of his loft’s window onto the vagrant
     procession of torn-suited suitors whose
     threadbare pursuit of her had set me off.
     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *
     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Unsatisfactorily removing
     myself from her perfumed stench, that cloudy
     unrest of half-assed beauty, while fuming
     at her for such turbid, ill-illumined
     olfactory, I lit the tower’s base
     ablaze and blasted from it every
     last blind pursuer climbing after me.
     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Let down your pants, I declared, threatening
     with hubris of half-dishonesty and
     whole indecency, like Napoléon
     marching boldly on Vatican pavement,
     half-winded, fanning incendiaries
     to raze the dare, tying up Pope Pius
     the Seventh just to elicit a scare,
     Or I’ll undo my belt and come in there!

A torrid bitch gone amiss, midwinter
     moon in high heat bent herself like a foil
     coin into a silver crescent, a sin
     reminiscent of a wet, dexterous,
     prehensile tongue diligently twining
     around her cousin the sun as he pricked
     the thin hymen of hoarfrost horizons.
     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Indecent sightings punctuated by
     sighs enticing the leather judgment of
     those men whose sinewy minds stewed too long
     before abandoning them, I had grasped
     myself and stood prodding my thick little
     inquisitor, demanding to know if
     my Catholic cock had hatched any plot
     to lodge into such frigid air my most

     [lewd and lascivious heir aberrant].

Glancing down, I queried my head, grabbing
     it like Baphomet in my sinister
     hand, wrapping sticky fingers around it,
     asking, If I am repulsed by virgins
     and by women, does it make me a sick
     heretic to eye the hidden part of
     their brothers and husbands, lusting for it?
     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

To bring love to the free world, I ensured
     my question would be spent on Midas ears
     desirous of learning the same, so I
     coursed to the apex of the tower, and
     above a Manhattan thoroughfare, bared
     my body to my confraternity
     of faithless freaks gathered at the creaking
     behemoth’s concrete feet, What say you, freaks?

I addressed my congregation lining
     the street, Are we contemptible creatures
     in need of holiest reprieve? Would god
     itself counterfeit a crisp air of feigned
     charity, and pause for us, just this once,
     the almighty global economy
     to concede? Wrapping up such rhetoric,
     I jumped to the crowd below and shouted,

     [This is how far I am prepared to go]!