LITMIR.BIZ

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      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)

      O Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger

      These bones are nothing—human bones are leaves

      in waxed paper—but I am stuck in them;

      I am my veins, my thoughts are smeared on them:

      where does love begin and my corpus end?

      You are the beginning of the end. You

      are what I am not and are what I am

      and on the page you say you are I AM.

      My heart is paper, a veined pressed leaf

      that lies on the sea of salt where it fell.

      For I have sinned and am a fool, alone

      in an old ocean, lost, at home on bones,

      becoming comfortable with myself:

      as far as anyone knows, good in bed—

      the satin one, where you stay when you’re dead.

      Psalm 6 (b)

      Depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.

      What shall we do to work the works of God?

      “Believe.” Iniquity works by itself.

      Would you be pure, be pure belief in God

      and in whom He has sent. None of this help

      for the other side, the mills and engines

      of iniquity. Work in the pure Word.

      On bad days I am friction—grit and grime—

      in the motor of the Ford of the Lord;

      on good days I’m a Fifty-Seven Chevy,

      small block two-barrel, two hundred fifty

      cubes of honey-smooth exuberance: me,

      a classic two-tone, steering-mounted shifter.

      Juice me up with ethyl, I become all creed;

      avenues of asphodel dissolve in speed.

      Psalm 7 (a)

      God is angry with the wicked every day.

      The wrath of blood. Expose it to the air,

      and blood wants blood—like water wants the sea,

      like fire wants dry company:

      everything compensates the nothing that things were.

      It must be seen to be appreciated,

      the wrath of God. Expose it to the air

      and we inhale the icy glass of terror,

      reasonably. Lenience is over-rated

      in matters of moral accuracy.

      No sin goes to waste. We shovel our own

      bladders and livers onto our own plates

      and knock up hot mock-ups of our own facts.

      Dust to dust, seed to seed—it all returns

      under the sun and at full speed,

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