THE SHOE CHURCH OF MISGUIDANCE

Today I packed for New Hampshire to meet
the teacher who can teach me to be quiet.
I plan to walk there. I will climb
the Rocky Mountains and I will swim
the Mississippi River. With bundles
of clean socks sealed in pill bottles
strapped to a sled that is tied to my waist,
I am half way through the smiling mid-west.
Word reaches me from the school of the teacher:
Heatwave. New Hampshire is on fire.
Housing is now scarce for students.
I spend that day shopping for tents
to pitch six weeks later upon
my arrival on his front lawn.
Tired in his yard, I see his family
frowning as I piss on the old birch tree
that shades well the teacher’s burning street.
Two hours pass of wild-fire born heat:
I break into the teacher’s house,
and make off with a pair of his shoes.
I read somewhere that a person’s face
can be seen smiling up from the tongues
of his shoes, so I build a grand church
to the shoes of the teacher in which
worshippers will come to hum in praise
of his poetic skill and leathery shoe face.
I can see myself now, cutting a check to
pay the tution charged by the teacher’s school
with proceeds from the admission fees I charge
the teacher’s worshippers at my shoe-church.