We thought once Law was killed we’d loaf
on lawns composing tight haiku. Instead we’re shown
as were-hyenas tearing our own breathing young
as God stares down, repenting of His work
so bathed in baby blood.
His sabbaths stacked in locked backrooms
now tumble down from heaven’s shelves
and clatter galaxies about. In fact,
A third of golden stars go black,
A third of terra’s leaves go brown,
A third of every clan bleeds white
to clot the rivers red and globular with toads
who croak out time and times and half again a time.
Speak, prophetic toads, horned altar, scream
to River Guards that they confine and bind
their currents for a swarm now freed.
So prophet, don’t you number out this horde.
And altar, signal to the Paraclete
so He who now constrains steps back.
Permissions now are granted;
vermin lust for men
and men all lust to die
as solar spasms dry
their favorite sores.
And who is like our beast?
Dead wounded by a cobalt blade
yet patter and legerdemain remain
and silken scarves. And yet he speaks.
And claws the world to add up integers beneath,
because the Lord had said no census counts.
Just cringe, you whores,
and don’t dare try to run.
Permissions now are granted;
The fugitive world is felled
and dragged into the city square
where He who’s never known her sin
now stoops to count five stones.
We should have pondered alchemies of doom
when He strolled right beside us in the gloom
of evenings, why – not how, it’s never how -but why the fig tree withered by His choice.
But first, this tree, just why it heard His voice.
Why won’t you chat with me? By now you know
my name. Feel how I grip your nape in fangs.
So shall I free you or illuminate my walk with you
a burning torch upon a high and garden cross?
The heart of the king is in the hand of the Lord;
He turns it like a mountain turns the river.*
Are you a king? Do you not understand I have the power to release you and the power to let you go?
But now the swords refuse to nap in sheaths
and companies of angels throng the stage
and I can’t make them fade like dreams.
,
Children Have Peeped at the Brink of Birth
but no-one has strength to bring them forth.
Hear the words of Sennacherib
which mock the Living God.
Because You Raged against My Work
I’ll hook your nose and push into your teeth
my bit and I will turn your back.
Your house had best be ordered fine
for you shall not recover.
I will not sleep in towns so weighed by God.
I’ll fly into the country, leave my pots
on coals and let the mortgage grow unpruned.
Please pray that it not be in winter,
please pray that I not be with child.