123. Mass

Fifty thousand mouths agape
one hundred thousands fists raised

a Sargasso sea of blood and bodies
borderless, it spreads itself wide

a flash-flood of energy and expectation
a collective yearning for a makeshift community;

ritualistic, it belongs to age-old traditions
of communal gatherings and catharsis

stretching way back to pre-recorded religions.
Wordless, it is more a mass recognition

of man’s right to worship idols of
their imagination’s own making -

catholic in the original sense of the word, this
mass knows no name, follows no concrete doctrines

rejects such as ideas as immaculate conception
or divine intervention and instead places onus

on the moment, the simplicity of volume and rage;
a brief sense that anything can happen in the next hour

and it is here in the moment when the devotees
feel closest to some sort of God, an entity

whose divine presence is recognizable when as
parts seas with a wordless wave of the hand.