Theology
Smaller than the oak stretch of the pew, I am
The child whose lips were blessed
With a kiss of the Eucharist, of the miracle muse
That walked on the water and
Turned the water into wine.
I have been given thirty silver coins.
Which I hide in my pocket of reason,
And count by deductive syllogism.
I am Adam, eating the apple; I am
The operation on the table.
Your church tower bell rings like a telephone calling,
Calling, but I am not at home.
I am planting a nihilism in my garden.
Your hierarchic hands, a prison of flesh.
But I have not surrendered yet; I am
Job upon the brink of madness.
Blank Verse to Ted Hughes
The panther, you stalked the dull moors.
In the rage of her spring you smelled the blood,
Hungered for the love, you killed
Everything that the Mother did dream.
Oh thirsty wolf,
Oh predator, of what maim do you please?
Of all the birds you seek the bees and
Take away their sting.
The Queen was not enough, or too much
More than one greedy tiger could chew.
Fallen into the pond, Narcissus resembles
That artic bare stare of the owl.
Blamed on the snake charmer, but you say
It was the snake that ate the biggest feast;
The perfect crime, you ate the snake and left
In its place two bright and new cherry
Trees that will never bare fruit.
I can not tell a lie, I hate you.
The jaguar, you stalked the white lamb.
Predator, you knocked upon the victim’s door
Taking the shape of a rooster,
Kook-a-dooed the morn in poetic form.
Left the hen still laying her golden eggs
In the hours I lay sleeping
Till I gave breath, now I breathe.
Victim number twenty three and twenty three or so.
I can not live a fib, I love you.
Painfully I do refuse the crunch from
Underneath your boot
And your hands that so readily helped to lay her down.
A Document in Madness
This bone-pick chill, fever on ice,
Has its turbulence quite refined.
It is a garden of familiarity:
Salvia that will not bloom, but stems from its just, long,
Lengthy and barren. Anemone.
Sweet William sans his saccharine attraction. Impatiens.
Foxgloves. The language of Lavender is a venomous snake.
My wild Pansies wear a woe-frown.
The Rose has her bud drunk shut, suffocating her pollen;
The uterus, the womb, the pistol, the stamen.
All guilty of feminine fame, and impossible
To the sting bearing trickery of bees.
My placenta feeds a dull void.
I am the unwanted disease of men
And I will always come on like a malignant desire,
Making soil from the best of them.
Fifteen and Rising
I receive postcards from every angle
And on their snow-capped mountains I climb
Along their flat, pink sands I writhe
Beneath the Sun I dine and She Rises
Bringing forth that summer crime.
In whose inward hills I climb?
From the eye of a temple in rainbow
The color of oak, of maple, of pine
From everywhere, everywhere, I drink the wine.
Into my misplaced bed I climb
And dream of sights I keep as mine.
Fifteen and rising they come to me
And bring the chill, the sweltering heat
The blankets of fog and the ancient meat.
