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I’m in trouble. Here’s my problem, and I need a solution quickly. Why? Because I’m old; my health sucks, and “I am like a pelican in the wilderness; / I am like an owl of the desert./ I lie awake, / And am like a sparrow alone on the housetop.” That’s this poet’s story in a nutshell.

This isn’t David or Solomon — the psalmist, I mean. This psalm sounds like it was written by either my man Asaph or a son of Korah. This man appreciates nature and knows how to use metaphor and simile. This sad song about living and dying is one of the best psalms I’ve read.

“For I have eaten ashes like bread, / And mingled my drink with weeping, / Because of Your indignation and Your wrath, / For You have lifted me up and cast me away,” the psalmist tells YHWH. “My days are like a shadow that lengthens, / And I wither away like grass.” How sad.

As a student of constructing compositions, I’m confident that whoever penned this psalm also wrote Ecclesiastes — this psalm, in fact, being a 28-verse, condensed version of the greatest book in my Bible. The “preacher” basically says: I am earth, nothing but dirt; You are stardust.

This is the psalm that evangelical supporters of their lying cult leader — also a rapist and crook — need to read. It’s labeled “A Psalm of David,” but could easily be called “A Psalm of Donald.”

In the voice of hypocritical David, the psalmist says, “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes; … A perverse heart shall depart from me; / I will not know wickedness.” The denials sound familiar.

“Whoever secretly [or in Donald’s case, publicly] slanders his neighbor,” says David, “[h]im I will destroy; / The one who has a haughty look and a proud heart, / Him I will not endure.” Oh, really.

Finally, the psalmist claims, “He who works deceit shall not dwell within my house; / He who tells lies shall not continue in my presence.” And David — like Donald — says he himself is “perfect.”

This is a famous psalm — the hit “Make a Joyful Noise” song — though that same phrase was used a couple of psalms ago. “Serve the Lord with gladness; / Come before His presence with singing.” Maybe that’s why Amish singing and quaint Sacred Harp singing are done a cappella.

“We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” There’s that old sheep/shepherd metaphor again — like Isaiah’s “All we like sheep have gone astray,” and the 23rd Psalm’s “The Lord is my shepherd.” All you gotta do is watch the TV news or read the paper, and, yep, we’re sheep.

The psalm closes with a number of religious buzzwords: thanksgiving, praise, bless, mercy and truth. Using buzzwords can save time, but I wonder if people miss the point of them after a time. So are buzzwords like sheep as well? Maybe the wooliest buzzwords should be more like bees.

After reminding us listeners once again how “great and awesome” YHWH is, this psalmist notes that “[t]he King’s strength also loves justice” — referring literally to David, not figuratively to YAH.

Further, with a fearsome image of the Ark of the Covenant, the Lord’s mobile home, the psalmist claims that David has “established equity; / [and] executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.”

Then he name-drops Moses, Aaron and Samuel as “priests … who called upon [YAH’s] name,” and got quick responses because they “kept His testimonies and the ordinance He gave them.”

Now the clincher — for me, anyway: “You were to them God-Who-Forgives, / Though You took vengeance on their deeds.” But did YAH actually punish them? And what about David himself?

Are the people who make laws for everyone else to follow ever punished? Don’t political power and greed — the green-backed gods — always have final say on what’s legal and what’s just?

If they didn’t have the last word, then Moses would have been truly punished for murder; Aaron, for idolatry; Samuel, for genocide; and David, for adultery, murder and psalm-writing that sucks.

“Oh, sing to the Lord a new song.” That’s how this psalm begins. Oh, how I wish David — or his fleet of songwriters — had taken that line to heart. But they didn’t, and this is the same old chart.

We do learn one thing new, though, about YHWH: “His right hand and His holy arm have gained Him the victory.” So YAH wasn’t a southpaw. He was Spahn, not Sain, and He was also the rain.

“Shout joyfully to the Lord, all the earth.” In the KJV, that’s the famous “make a joyful noise” line. Trumpet and cornet noise are mentioned — neither Miles nor Bix, ‘cause both were left-handed.

The last verse starts with “Let the sea roar,” reminding me of Chicago’s oldie “Wishing You Were Here.” Psalmists would have dug that song with its moldy theme of a heavenly love gone wrong.

Once again, this psalm admits that other cultures with other gods exist, noting “the multitude of isles” in this Old Hebrew psalmist’s world. Would that be the Greek isles? Islands near Turkey?

Of course, this guy’s main point is to say how great YHWH is, and he declares, “Let all be put to shame who serve carved [or graven] images, / Who boast of idols.” Like a star or cross, maybe?

That makes me wonder what the psalmist would say about other man-made objects we worship today — our iphones, our cars, our homes? And what about guns, red caps and all those flags?

And then there are logos — not words, but symbols. They say who we are and what we value. I collect — but certainly do not worship — the Aum, which reminds me of the iSoul, of Everything.

So graven images can be bad or good, depending on one’s mood. To the Amish and indigenous peoples, photography is the devil’s work. To us, a good pic is the icing on our social media cake.

After reading Spurgeon’s commentary and then the psalm itself, I’m reminded that we read the Bible all wrong — as progressive textualists, not as conservative originalists. We fool ourselves into thinking that The Holy Bible — like The Constitution — was written with Americans in mind.

When — as with this psalm — the psalmist writes, “Sing to the Lord, all the earth” and “the Lord made the heavens,” his ideas of the land and sky are much different from ours. His world — his entire universe, in fact — was much smaller, more compact, less well rounded than ours is now.

Even Spurgeon interprets those references in terms of his limited 19th-century knowledge when the preacher declares that “National jealousies are dead” and “All the earth Jehovah made” and “the sun shines on all lands….” Neither the State of Israel nor the late great USSR existed then.

But in Old Hebrew times, Copernicus and Galileo and all of those other great lookers and big thinkers weren’t even glints in their distant ancestors’ eyes, so the heavens and the earth to King David and King Solomon — and millennia later even the Rev. Spurgeon — were so much different than now.

And what about in this day and age with all the new wonders we’re seeing and coming to know, whether virtually or in person? Isn’t it ironic that many conservative thinkers now — originalists, they call themselves — interpret a wrong-headed holy writ like beat poets but our most vital rights like flat-earthers?

In tonight’s psalm, the concepts of God the Father and Mother Nature are interchangeable. “In [Her] hand are the deep places of the earth; / The heights of the hills are [Hers] also. / The sea is [Hers], for [She] made it; / And [Her] hands formed the dry land.” There’s no difference, really.

But I’ll take this exercise a step further and suggest that Nature or Science is neither binary nor non-binary, nor is it conscious of parental status or responsibilities. Is it the old clockmaker who built the timepiece, wound it up and left it to run? So, what sex is sunlight and shadow, anyway?

The iSoul — Emerson’s Over-Soul — is collectively unconscious, but in this psalm, It speaks of humanity’s failure as a caretaker: “For forty years I was grieved with that generation, / And said, ‘It is a people who go astray in their hearts, / And they do not know my ways.’” But that’s not all.

“So I swore in My wrath,” adds the iSoul as this psalmist’s God, “‘They shall not enter My rest.’” In other words, when YHWH … when the iSoul … when Mother Nature tells us something we’re doing is like using a monkey wrench to fix a fine watch, we need to act before our time runs out.

I just read the first line of this psalm and winced: “O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongs—” Oh, god, another one of those psalms, I thought.

But I read the whole thing, anyway, and I saw that it describes as proud, wicked, and insolent, people like MAGA fanatics and their lying leader.

The psalmist asks why YHWH hasn’t smacked all those bad people down yet. “[Y]ou fools,” he says to the wicked ones, “when will you be wise?”

And then the psalmist adds, “The Lord knows the thoughts of man, / That they are futile.” But is this wise guy referring just to them or to us both?

This is a short psalm — only five verses. The overarching — or, in this case, overriding — image is of water — that YHWH is more powerful than the great sea billows that roll, than the mightiest tsunamis that cross the wide oceans, than the monster swells that only the best surfers can ride.