a poem for the torn cat's asking

Church-jackals, church-mice,
pious pillars, choir-urchins,
and other sundry minions
all all
still chafing at the chapel
(as if caught
in some medieval time warp;)
Endless shades and sky-raised arms
brandishing rosaries ferociously,
crowds like umbrella-waved seas,
all all
drooling to dine
on mummified monkish masks
and dusty relics
of beatified dinosaur anomalies
from distant, dung-matted epochs;
Now,
with creeping holy languor,
the robed hologram
approaches the Triceratops lectern
and taps the microphone-horn twice
before sipping glacier-born water
from his crystal glass.
He begins to speak
in warm Spanish drones
from which single words
drop steadily into the puddles
of my muddied understanding
until pain and judgement sleep,
and I see the scene
theatric and star-lit
through the stained-glass eyes
of my white-tower cranium

Hours later,
suspended from a long
tractor-like astral wheel,
I am careening and descending,
analyzing Dada,
down and down
closer and closer to earth:
my revolving world
shines dim in holograph,
to cut down on vertigo

If “bleak of brain,”
seek mary jane
to pass along
the psychotropic flame,
wick to wick,
and so in blood-fire
another hip apprenticeship
begins,
crackling a devilish cinnamon;
afterwards,
squirt liquid Lidocaine
on the burns for what pain
hydro-morphone can't contain;
Next,
press the poppy-purple button
and check your I.V.
before taking the window view
of gleaming green mountains
below drifting gray storm-demons
tempting the youthful woods
with the the thrill of down-pour,
sky-bending white hell-fire
and heart-stilling thunder
until every eye glows insane