The 36 Percent Poem

The 36% Poem I recall going to the stained-glass church as a child and wishing the Jesus statue would move, that he would just step down from that hanging cross and walk among us, casting droplets of healing holy water with an silver ice cream scooper. Then the choir would begin singing with the heavenly virgin voices of one hundred catholic schoolgirls, wearing plaid skirts with white beanies, emitting angelic sounds and crescendos not heard by most human ears, nor conceived by any body of do-good thinkers or evil-doers alike. And as their eyeful gazes ascended to the heavenly heights, with their attendant intonations spiraling up like a musical tornado, I remembered the first time, that precise moment of childlike humility when, while on my knees in the purple darkness, I sought forgiveness from a secret sinner, one with a relaxing smile and a calming voice. As he forgave me my trespasses with the Sign of the Cross, and a blessing, this conflicted man of someone’s fake god, which resides with silent giggles inside the soul of corrupt mammon, told me to pray for my sinful life from behind his dark foreboding window inside the confessional, while mumbling ancient Latin words with loud forced breathing. And once again there he was, Father Fitzpatrick, with holy purple stole, watching a multitude of sinful children say with folded shaking hands, ten thousand repeated rosaries for two millennia, and a day, these rabid canonical dogs, dragging huge tarps caked with lust across the convulsing mud flats of earth, because…because, well, there was really nothing else to say or do, except pray about sinning. I remember she was standing in a plaid skirt, waiting in line by the confessional, this sweet-faced girl of sixteen years, holding a daily Missal in hand staring into it, wondering intensely, if God had a plan for her, a spiritual guidepost from which to proceed. But Father Fitzpatrick, from within his dark purple web of forgiveness, had other spiritual plans for her, as she silently prayed for a sign. And now, a statue made of ivory, not of the Nazarene, but of a queen, comes to life miraculously, and she floats ghost-like above the ground, hovering over the staring congregation, who kneel open-mouthed and dazed, as she points to the lifeless Christ on his splintered detestable cross, made of wood, clay and paint, saving the multitudes, the living and the dead, with three bloody nails, and a stabbing crown of killing thorns.