in their crippled 'systems' ... What?
The fish again? what was it like?
Crawl up your old lady's twat,
slosh around in there three days–
that's what it was like.
What did
I
eat? The boy here
wants to know what
I
ate, inside.
I
ate what you eat,
I
ate what
I
could get.
Dig up your dead,
I
tell you,
stand them up in ranks around your squares,
twist their hands in stiff salutes
and when you're angry hit them
and get on with it, and when you're hungry
eat them and get on with it. The stink,
the stink . . . I'm not too well,
I
know
I
had something to tell you,
but bless me I've been up the arsehole
of God. Praise God, pity an old man."
III.
Prophetic Hindsight
The manufactured Bernadettes and sudden cures
prove equally miraculous at plastic Lourdes;
God's bloated body in the lime-and-Iemon
slime of troughs frescoed with rainbows of sores.
Even the skeptical reflection helps;
a mottled mirror of naivete, another act of faith.
After the bus tours of pilgrims are said and done,
when nothing remains but the payments,
nothing happens but the faces of the prophets,
birthmarked, blotched, raving to themselves
at windy corners, picking problems like a crusty scab,
searching for our ambergris malignancy,
the holy spermy tumor fueling our auto da fe,
while we while away the time inside a whale.
J
