Apophenia 1

The Virgin Mary’s face peed into the snowbank
under the lifted hind leg of the labradoodle
who lives three doors down was radiant (though crusty).

I thought of Serrano's Piss-Christ, which
I wanted to hate but couldn't because
it was beautiful. My neighbor who talks to herself

as she digs her Tercel out of the snowplow-banked snow
stomped Mary just as NewsTeam 4 was setting up
their camera--a desecration to prevent desecration.

Since they'd come that far in the cold, the cameraman
shot the new miracle of Trent Lott's pompadour,
created of snow and pee and a righteous boot heel.

I watched the news that night but the story never aired.
Instead, the broadcast closed with a human interest piece:
a young Seminarian who lost his nose & faith

in a botched hang glider landing in La Jolla. He now
professes that accidents are the natural effluence
of a rational cosmos perceived as chaos

via the narrow lens
of individual experience.
So help me God.

Memes We Like: Apophenia

Apophenia is the experience of seeing patterns or connections in random or meaningless data. The identification of a face on the surface of Mars is an example of pareidoliac apophenia. --Wikipedia