At the Inauguration

I am out of place here.
Am I out of place?
Yes, but in a different sense,
In the cravenness whence
I’ve ill used this day’s grace,
Blending while I should appear
A sign of contradiction.

A man of God mounts the stage.
The godless look sheepish as he prays.
No fear: this one’s no Ambrose, Leo;
He lacks the perspicacity and candor of Pio.
Repent! Repent! you butcher of your ways
Is what he should have told that brephophage.
Or was that above his pay grade?

Time fumbles to the Moment,
And tumid enthusiasm erupts
Into a cheer, spasmodic
Eructation of unhealthy souls,
Which reechoed on the air extols
gods both olympian and chthonic.
The miasma out and in corrupts.

Some woman reads some spiny prose,
Exceptionable for its affected solemnity
And unshaped metaphors, ill framed
By periodic carriage returns.
She remembers some oppressed yet spurns
The names of the dead who were not named;
She writes them no indemnity.

Now who will do the benignity?
Who will tell that one
That his ideology needs darning?
If not cleric, nor artist, nor I disarming?
Few indeed, and of those some
Surpass the very liberals for indignity,
Whose bacchanalia lasts past 4 a.m.

There is nothing left today
But to bitterly clutch my Rosary and say,

O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the Most Precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended. Through the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I beg the conversion of poor sinners. Amen.

Ben Douglass
January 27, Anno Domini MMIX

N.B., "brephophage" means "baby-eater."