Apaches,
the Last Mohicans, Crees, Arapahos,
or what have you—you know the litany—
so they could get handouts and casinos.
They’ve seen that baby playing on the dirt
floor in Mississippi, and they want her.
Psalm 2 (b)
Why do the Christians rage? the heathen ask.
Why do they trumpet prayer like sounding brass?
Why do they shove their muzzles up our ass?
The Christians rage because they hate their freedoms
and everyone else’s—but then again,
since when do Christians rage? These believers
are something else: they have taken the name
in vain—squandered the term on righteousness,
kidnapped Jesus, and left us sinners stunned
at Calvary. The god they worship hates
pale light through summer blinds, reflected sun
on morning walls, its shadow-barred white
beside the Mediterranean bed,
the glass of last night’s wine, the sacred head.
Psalm 3
Lord, how are they increased that trouble me!
We don’t believe in demons any more,
but disbelief was never a deterrent
to invisibles. Specters are stronger
than I am. Modesty forbids mention
of whom and what I have antagonized
by mere existence, but a wet dragon
the size of Manhattan licks my brain
in his sleep. The Lord does not let him wake.
A tapeworm wants me and I can’t prevent him.
He came wrapped in glass – Satan sent him.
He is real, but God will not invent him.
I sow and knead and shape my waking bread:
the consequences drink my dreams like blood.
I will lie with the dead. I will see God.
Psalm 4 (a)
Stand in awe, and sin not
What? Sin not? Good luck with that. Just to stand
these days is sin; in fact, could there be greater
sin than doing nothing?—than pretending
innocence when Wall Street knocks at the door
and homeless children blow up like balloons,
full of C02, tuberculosis,
other people’s prosperity, and doom.
See them floating above the skyscrapers
wise as serpents and innocent as doves,
red, yellow, blue; interesting as newspapers,
“all breathing human passion far above,”
giving this old world everything they’ve got.
See them passing. Stand in awe and sin not.
Psalm 4 (b)
Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed
Pure awe is incompatible with sin.
Just try to sin when you have put your nicest
Aurora Borealis on, Orion’s
favorite, and wait for him to notice.
Ah, what can we do but our best? Work well,
try to be sane and healthy, try to love.
And when the daily infinite feels stale,
when you have nothing worth saving to save,
then commune with your heart upon your bed.
Consider the heart. It is everything.
Once Orion was a man, it is said,
like any other man. He heard you sing,
was the lucky difference. He stood in awe
until his heart became a field of stars.
Psalm 5
Lead me, O Lord, in thy righteousness
But what it is, God’s righteousness, who knows?
The brain is broccoli, and muscles peel
like cabbage shards, the joints are garlic cloves
in red threads: the body is a cow.
Where does God’s righteousness even begin?
In the brain? In the rules? In how we feel?
All these separate here there and then now.
The mind is a cracked glass: we are insane.
God’s righteousness is wholeness, everything
here and now; only what is whole is real.
It would be righteous to know this, but how?
Faith says so. Everything but faith is sin.
Devils look up and love us the wrong way—
piece by piece: sex, viscera, tongue, eyes, brain.
But God alone is lover of the soul,
always everywhere suffering and whole.
Psalm 6 (a)
