Rooting around in mental underbrush,
new age Mary, unannunciated
celebrates a New Year with a forbidden cigarette,
considering her self something like
Lawrence Ferlinghetti,

    whose name simply suggests
    images, of an Italy she's never seen -
    warm and wet in nostrils,
    colliding in
    dark smells and crumbling dusks;

    whose verse recalls
    the coppery taste of youth -
    fresh on scraped palms,
    bright flush streaking pavement,
    skinning knees,
    flowing from summer suckerpunch nosebleeds,
       plunging up to elbows in adoration
            of ancient sandbox converstation   whisper
                          Rapture, rapture... repent,

            Mary cover your ears,
         the sycamores are singing blasphemy
         the sun has set with sympathy,
         corner girls are stirring, red lips blurring,
            Mary, cover your eyes.

                  They will cast you in iconoclast plaster
                  dress you in blue,
                  bleed your eyes dry -
                  carve you into the marble of motherhood,
                  dance around you and sing,
                             Rapture, rapture... repent,

             Mary, remember your name.

Unwinding her veil at the crosswalk,
wending her way down Main,
Mary pauses, trembling in the wait
             for the sound
                  of wings,
              the kiss of tradewinds - waiting
                   for a hummingbord to alight on her ear...
                              Rapture, rapture...repent.
run, Mary.

The hands of time are coveting, cloaking you
in two thousand years of mystery,
invoking you
with every bead of rosary,
they've got you pinned
in the dark alley of human history,
     but by the time they worship your Viginity,
             there will be no deflowering you.