The Perilous Adventures Of Saint John Bosco

Saint John Bosco walks diagonally across a weedy playground
next to a defunct school that looks like a smashed shoebox.
Saint John Bosco is wearing a cassock and a funny little hat.
Behold your divine visitor, Detroit,
behold and be glad.

The basketball boys watch Saint John Bosco.
A white man here is about as common
as a dik-dik
or a dugong.
Saint John Bosco is the patron saint of boys:
unwanted boys,
neglected boys,
like the basketball players once were themselves
and their younger brothers are now.
Saint John Bosco loves them
when no one else does.

The basketball players usually while away the days
with dapping and bullshit.
Today they refer to Saint John Bosco not as 
Saint John, or
Giovanni...
They use the traditional multi-syllabic epithet.
What, they wonder, does the motherfucker want?
Is the motherfucker lost?
Crazy?
High?
What would be, they speculate further,
the optimum and most entertaining way
to fuck up the motherfucker?

At the far corner of the rusted, sagging fencing,
appears what might be an American bison,
but it is not quite so large;
or, perhaps, an enormous Brillo pad,
but it has legs!
amazing legs which laugh as they lope across the ground
In great joyful bounds.
It is the dog that follows Saint John Bosco,
protecting him.
It is the canine servant of the Divine,
ensuring that the humble saint's beautiful mercies continue.

"Shit!" say the basketball boys.
"Woof!" says the dog.
"Thank you, Father," says Saint John Bosco,
"for sending me your blessing this day
in the form of an angel."


dedicated to two of the world's three greatest dogs...Bosco and Chinook.