I have thrown out all my apples--
cracked crates and smashed pears
are all I think about. Rid of them.
An apple epidemic, I'd said before,
would be unethical
at the very best

and a way to get worms inside physicians everywhere
at the very worst. I thrown all of them out. Am rid them.
Farmers continue fitfully to exist;
they grow great sadness on stalks
and mutated salt-licks.

The hung head of Farmer Bob Fucking Maudlin, bearded,
you say, profanely, I maunder:

If the Spirit of Christ

works in us as in a tilled field,

but in a field full of Farmer Bob's sad madness,

the locust makes love & war

in the dirt. Flames spill out over the plains.

& the Reaper rides his horse over the red prairie.