A wise woman once told me Anger is no trustworthy emotion for a poet. Thus has my hot heart's spring gone dry: Pain and fury sapped it, Soft tissue stripped and bitten from without And within, leaving only smoldering bones, Teeth dulled and nails blunted; Calcified soles to carry me Through desert darkness, Where at last brittle, broken They fail. No more strength In clenched fists, Nothing But hope in a desert of light, To join there those equal to anger, No longer its slave.