I stride along a
gum-stained sidewalk
flanked by armies of
fellow corporate soldiers
marching as to
acquisitions and mergers

my iPhone
filled with mega-bits of
self-importance
downloads into the
margins of my mind
crowding out
ISIS
Iraq
Iran
Inner City
blind I’s of
inhumanity

wisps of cigarette smoke
interrupt
my corporate gait with the
intensity of a
hostile takeover

my gaze shifts down a
light-starved alley of
rear doors
dumpsters
littered with morsels of dog crap
garnished with
Red Eye
tobacco spit
ownerless semen

empty amber signposts
chalices of liquid salvation
mark the pilgrimage from
Izzy’s liquors
.
freed from all those I’s
my eyes inch upward
past graffiti inscriptions
spattered on
crumbling bricks to a
vaulted canopy of
fire escapes

a vision of Chartres appears
rising above a Joan D’Arc plain
rusty drainpipes turn to
fierce gargoyles
in my mind’s eye

a sole worshiper
huddles in this
base basilica
beneath prayer flags of
dingy laundry
flapping in sacred air

his holey socks
slouched on bony ankles
protrude from a
cardboard crate
his hallowed ark
floats in a
dead calm sea of gin

I’s turn to eyes
that see his pain