Angry Young Man by Raphael Maurice

I dropkicked the Holy Book before the morning Mass.
You don’t, barring dreamless sleeps & drugs,
tend to believe all of that yourself. Don’t give yourself a pass.

Even Scott, who’d trained me how to serve
high & low, gasped when the tassels flew out
like rainbow-birds, leaving the oil-slick pages open

& somehow sad upon the church’s floor. Look, my future.
We draw from the wells of common language,
from King James to Playboy. We salvage, rummage, high & low.

Tonight, in this paper-thin hotel, countless bits
rapidly come back. But I do not, save through the Spirit’s breath,
let go of the image of that volatile book—

now dead inside a drawer, the night painfully long,
or how it went flying out, a priest entering
just as Scott scooped it up, dusted it off,
closed it just in time, & put it back as the bells tolled