Marked on your head,

Standing in front of St. Stephen’s,

Proud.

How did you go far wrong?

Do not blow your trumpet.

Do not lavish in public.

Do not wear your particulate of virtue.

We see your shattered self,

Not wabi-sabi but fragments

Of necrotic flesh glommed together

With a broad ashen smear.

We hear your sin through your sing-song salutations

To cohort lemmings exiting to their own street corners.

We know you.

We see through the holy camouflage.

Surrender the charade.

Huddle with them, the other, in the dark alley.