Saint Nicotine, Hear Our Prayers

Within the hooded cloak of smoky night
the ritual is performed.
It’s not magic; it’s evil, kid.

The handlers have me.
They’ve mapped my routine,
and plotted a compass course,
sent subliminal messages to serial killers
                haunting mysteries in the dark.

For they reasoned (however unsoundly), saying to themselves,

"Short and sorrowful is our life, and there is no remedy
when a man comes to his inevitable end…”

Meanwhile I’ve found the radioactive stones,
the combustible stones,
reacting and igniting to the heat of human flesh
that they left for me,
arranged on the shoreline in non-Euclidian patterns.

They glow and call to me
like an octopus in the mountains,
like a forgotten Roman god.

And I will answer.
I will have to answer,
I cannot refuse.

Let us test him with insult and torture,

that we may find out how gentle he is,

I will put a penny in the fuse box.
And when the connection has been made
I will think about the future that they have designed.