i'm just skimming the waves

with my wears and tears

the weight of a beating heart

that flooded my everywhere with

a sinking gold, weren't you ever told

that life isn't fair?

 

- it's a merry-go-round

fayre of circles and spins

you can't always win

the game

 

 

and don't you think of your younger self?

- all glasses and bookends and perched

            on a shelf

 

and i hate to see you question your soul

when you're glowing with radiance

and metaphorical

 

wealth

 

 

but, O my child, were you not informed

of the garden of Eden and how

our faith was reborn

into itself and unto a new world

and God didn't curse us,

for he simply mourned

our disobedience and

 

pitied how we hurled

his love and betrayed him,

how we played him,

how we were persuaded

by the devil,

 

(the snare)

 

how their heart

always break
            ing

would no longer

need to care

for knowledge

 

taking my oranges and lemons

the bells of St Clement's

walk into the night and let them chime

climb the ladder to the stars
and sing out the rhymes,
rhymes of where’ve-you-gones and the helplessness whys
yet i choose to, each morning rise out of my bed
my choice to awaken my faith from the dead

now it’s my choice to offer up my hands and live
God’s choice to show me just how much I can give
my soul over to him, surrender my woes
and to my lovers, oh followers of the Lord
good and pure

and i am ever-so-sure

of my former self
all glasses and weekends and worried-up-tunes
a suitcase of photographs of miscoloured balloons

 

and i cannot contain
the image that i feign

 

portrait of myself three years from now

happily here with a boy in the crowd
and i’m wearing in his sweatshirt and my
comfiest shoes,

 

mind full of questions and innocent truths

but ignore me, for now, in past and in time
for the present alone is the Lords, and is mine

myself who is broken and mending and free
hurting and skirting the edges of trees

in the woodland all tall grass and close-knit leaves
a symbol of everything I wanted to believe

 

 

but I jumped
when you pushed me
and I fell to the bed
of the ocean

 

in spring

when the water was cold, getting warmer

and the sky turned from white to silver to grey to black
and then in summer it turned right back
to blue

 

 

and that, my Lord

is when I remembered you

when you showed me Jesus
and his trueness of love
how could I deny myself
sat on a shelf with a book and some tea
in your image I’m you, trying to be free
and in sense you are me, and we are trying

we’re just trying

to
  be

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