Fury Psalm 4:
Let the flowers make their journey
to a bit of field on my table,
close to the worms. Listen, world,
the white fingers, the penny heart
have nothing more to say to me.
Take your emblems and leave.
She was flawed. So what?
I failed. Get therapy-taught to say
the undone is out of range,
burble it up and send it river down.
None of this has anything to sing.
The journey of every flower
is the same: pucker, petal, and
pout; shed and mimic drought.
And the journey of the field?
fertilized with detritus or dead
fruition, it’s thrashed and bound
into sheaves mounded like graves.
And the furrows? a striation
that falsely seems to wave,
flowing toward that same black
horizon. So, when you’re cleaned
but not ironed, when you’re dried,
but not powdered, there is no
soothing. Our bodies are trash.
We leave them on the shore
and only a silent God knows if
the soul flies loose or is moored.