The Hunting Night

The word of your mouth
is a tearing knife;
the word of the Lord
is a severing knife:

O Lord, carve me up.
Walking barefoot

on the broken bodies of apostles

Lord,
tear me to pieces.

It is not without reason
that the prophet
saw in Assyria, and in the land
of Egypt, his God fanged and roaring, lionlike.

Fatuus Profanus

You are dusty vinyl to my soul

I see your image
in a factory Matisse
that hangs over me

like a promised judgment,
a voice emphatic
to remind

the shaggy-bear
                          the
                                lumber-lurcher

          the trip-and-stagger
making clumsy groans
upon the earth

                              You leave me only
                              the broken voice of
                              self-reproach, having
                              learned to speak
                              obscurely but not well.