Psalm

Damn the brain's chemical spills, evacuating
Every thought. Damn the smiles I pinned
To my face like a politician, a face
Like coffee with too much cream
Because I could not draw the
Curtain strings, raise the
Flag of a new day.
Cry, too, for the lost nights,
The poems, aborted, because I locked
The canvas of my heart in a man's closet
And talked my way into his bed.

I was nineteen when I saw the light
Of God escape like steam
From every living thing.
Now doctors say it was just
A tap dance of neurotransmitters.
But I know what I saw and what I heart:
How His heart pumped inside the heart
Of the Sandia Mountains like an accordion.

God, you alone know I took notes;
You alone know I wrote pages
And pages of psalms,
Then lost them on the road
Down a red-ribbed mesa north of Albuquerque.

Twenty years later I am rewriting them.
Remembering, dismembering.

God, will You forgive me
If I call them
Poems?


From THE DEVIL'S WORKSHOP (University of Arizona Press, 2002)