No Advice Today, Thank You

Why, the presumptuous bastard
peddling his stock of conjugal doctrines,
trying to sneak a feel into
the warm tangle of our affairs.
Who asked him to butt in with
sawdust words stuffed with pretensions?
Let his pious nose sniff elsewhere
for gamey odors—I’d like to rub it
in the carcass of past rumors that decayed
before they died. I have more advice
now than I can use. Let him open
a roadside stand and offer real food,
potatoes, apples, carrots, instead of
the sacred wafer to hungry people.
Let him earn humility by good works.
We live as we must live and things
happen as they happen and no
cock-a-doodle-doo ever hatched out
the chickens we counted on.
We try to accept the thorns in our
flesh as if we deserved them.