PSALM 2

      Sweet willing water of my mother's body
      why have you left me here?
      My heart once so vivid and precious within me,
      is now incased in sand. The thoughts of my father 
5     are as strangers to me, unbidden and unwelcome;
      we never traveled very far together.
      Sleepless sour frowns on my muse's face
      create ignorant clouds inside me.
      Streams rush by battling, happy and buoyant,
10    while I stand aside. Leaves crack into fruit,
      my blossoms have never hardened or matured,
      they orbit ignorance and ecstasy irrelevantly.
      Maddening ruts follow their own roads nowhere.
      The seasons cringe into change. I, larval,
15    wallow in wasteful wonder bewilderingly;
      my body is the scrapped habitat of apes,
      the single plume of a doomed bird: an ostrich, an eagle.
      the razors of my eyes have told to dullness,
      and are bloodied and blunted,
20    numb with too many things. The water
      is at my feet; my feet are cool
      in the growing roll of water, laughed at
      and comforted are the ankles. The walk is easy; 
      the knees are held lightly, shining-weighing.
25    And now my lungs are stamped with the new motion.
      A heavy mercury, bright and without mercy,
      holds the muses' potent time, a cadence 
      against teeth, increasing in loveliness,
      and sufferers into the appellate gullet
30    like a cold breath, an endless spurring.

 

From the collection "Naked Eloquence"

Written by Gregg Glory [Gregg G. Brown]

More information available on gregglory.com.