Sirocco

Remember we're but vagrant ash

pursued by hot sirocco selves,

a dance of dust, a pirouette of earth

whose partner is the passing gust,

desire and drought dry despair

carve hollow caverns in the air,

until our ashes rest at last,

commingled in a common peace.

The opposite of violence

You have your pain. I have mine.
All I really know about yours
is that it hurts. I can't share it.

You can never know my pain
beyond what it has in common
with yours. Our wounds

belong to each of us alone,
and yet we know enough, I think.
If we can trust, and listen, and love,

we know enough to hold each other,
to understand what we can,
acknowledge what we can't,

and undelete what crueler hands erased,
restore colour to those memories 

made monochrome with pain,

and maybe I can finally forgive

those who hurt me
as I beg my own ghosts, 

the ghosts of who I was 

and who I hurt,

for forgiveness.

Kino

We glamorise the void

so we can recruit monsters from it

with a clear conscience, 

raising celluloid and silver screen

to mark the perimeter they patrol,

the vanishingly thin membrane

that divides the darkness of the auditorium

from the bottomless pit on whose brink they stand.

While we sit distracted and safe and soda-bloated

they stand, drenched in blood like greasepaint,

converting carnage to farce, breathing fire

into balloon animals before they maul us,

but while they perform the alchemy

that turns fear to entertainment,

before retreating back into the abyss

from which we summoned them

as the credits roll and the theatre empties,

returning on cue as the programme requires,

imagine how they regard us. Imagine

the void we represent to them,

the horrors we portray in our indolence, 

our eloi-indifferent indolence, and be grateful

they don't stride off the screen

to slaughter us like morloks.

הָעֲקֵידָה / The Binding

Abraham bound Isaac upon an altar

and the angel of the Lord came 

and stopped his hand. Today 

one child of Abraham binds the other,

and there is no angel to stop it. 

Prayer

Dear Lord, hear my prayer. 

I pray to you for forgiveness.

God knows - that's you, after all - 

I'm a deeply flawed person, 

but at least I'm trying my best. 

Well, maybe not my best. 

I mean, if this is the best I have to offer, 

what does that say about what I'm capable of?

Not very much, it would seem. Ok, well, 

at least I am trying, in some form or other,

to some extent. At least I'm trying. 

Although, come to think of it, 

when you consider the effort I put into sinning

can you say these attempts at being good

really amount to trying at all, in comparison?

Ok, so, at least I know I ought to be trying,

even if I am not actually trying terribly hard,

or at all, for that matter. At least I know,

but what do I actually know?

I mean "consider the lilies" and "the fall of a sparrow"

and "the eye of a needle" and so on? It's not clear,

not to me, at least, what I am supposed to try to do, 

so you can hardly blame me for not trying very hard,

so, as I say, forgive me, Lord. Hear my prayer. 

Hear it, at least. 

I don't expect you to do anything about it.

I mean, why should you if I can't be bothered

to even try to be good. Come to think of it,

why am I even raising my voice in prayer at all? 

Dear Lord, sorry to have bothered you. 

Amen. 

Ascension

We are born. We eat. 

We die. We are eaten. 

Our bodies become something else. 

Our atoms have no memory.

We grind our grain to make our bread, 

our daily bread, to give us strength 

to work our fields and raise the crops 

in which this memory is absent, but

there was a man, of woman born,

who broke the bread, as bodies break,

and said "take, eat, this is for you,

this do in memory of me,"

and when he died and rose again

that memory rose with him.

Death was broken. For forty days

and for all time with us he stays,

and from a hill near Bethany, today,

where Lazarus awoke, and every hill,

and every day, that body without end

in glory into paradise ascends.

Blackbird

It is May, and the day is on fire. 

The tongues of a thousand sparrows

are the flames with which it blazes,

while in haste and hesitation, in the distance, 

through the shimmering passerine chatter,

the single melody of a blackbird strides

and stops, casting the notes of his song 

like seeds within the radius of earshot,

and tuneful roots push through the sound

from which the Sun rises bright in bloom. 

Palace

Sitting in my shed,

Radio 3 at midnight,

a backdrop of rain 

whispers at the skylight,

contraband whisky 

in camping enamelware:

there are no palaces,

because what palace

comes close to this?

Sitting in my shed

at midnight in May,

listening to Radio 3 

with whisky and rain.

Isaac

Justifying the death of children?

Are you really justifying 

the death of children? 

Provocation?

Extenuating circumstances? 

Retaliation? 

What future do you think, 

do you believe, you procure,

because this is about belief after all,

what future does your belief buy

with the blood of a child? 

You killed peace.

There is no peace. You killed it. 

Don't talk to me about peace.

That is not what you 

are in the market for. Fighting? 

The children were fighting?

So we kill them? 

Your abacus of blood

will kill us all. 

The desert is airless,

hot and airless. 

What did we teach you?

You will die of thirst

unless you drink my blood, 

and I will die of thirst 

unless I drink yours. 

So do not drink blood. 

Pray for a miracle. 

Pray for a miracle

as though your faith 

depended on it. 

My word is a blade

across your throat, 

your word a blade

across mine. No-one believes

in words anymore, only blades,

but a miracle is still possible

beyond our understanding. 

Pray for a miracle,

unless Isaac is to fall at last,

no more than a pagan slab of flesh

beneath two blades,

and where the angel once intervened

there is instead now only laughter

and the ugly jubilation of bullies.

Pray for a miracle.

Dark light

What if there is a dark light, and stars you cannot see,

that form a secret zodiac, their verdict not revealed,

whose influence you cannot know? You'll never realise

that everything you see on show is destiny's disguise.