do you remember sitting in the pews, heavy energies blanketing your hands,
not letting you pick up your pride and your dignity up from the floor
before the herd of believers trample them?
you’re going to cause the death of a deer. it will impale itself on your front gate
and mock you with its apathetic eyes.
salt is piled on your pillowcase again – why aren’t you licking it?
why don’t you taste it? everyone has to, why are you some exception?
a bird eats a man and a man reaches out from under your bed
and a man wants you to help him grieve,
to contort your face and share his sorrows alongside him.
now in poverty, philosophy is naked,
and you watch it sink into the eager grasses of your well fed lawn;
it doesn’t look you in the eye. it is ashamed, and you should be as well.