To My Lord

To my Lord,

I give the meaning of that word,

I bequeath him all the lies he heard,

From my lips,

Knowing the truth of it,

Before I conceived a word,

And yet he heard with a smile,

And loved me still,

Knowing beginning from end,

That indiscretions like good intentions,

And promised mentions,

Were laid thick with ripped up paving stones,

 I stole from my path to hell,

Sure, I intended well,

You went there first,

So you knew,

What good I would,

Or would not do,

You paid my debt,

Knowing how often I would throw it in your face,

Christ is that not the very definition of grace?

And I have the tenacity to call you Lord,

When I have scarcely learnt the meaning of that word,

I bequeath my heartfelt lies,

And all I've come to despise,

And lay it at your feet,

Oh for perfume,

That I were a prostitute with a pot,

To pour on you,

Rather than just these tears

In my unworthiness,

It would be better 

And more truthful by far,

Than the word Lord,

Simply thrown off from the cuff,

Oh Lord Jesus,

When will enough be enough?

(Not all who say to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter. The double use of the title almost infers we are over familiar and complacent, like 'daddy, daddy'. In one sense we should be confident in his affection, but also we should never be complacent. The title 'Lord' has a meaning.)

Disappearance

The disappearance of the day begins at dawn,

Born dying, the sunlight ascends to height,

Night, sees its descending,

The ending of flight,

The light of the sun,

Spawned ending, even as it has begun,

Clung-to moments are already on the run,

Spun leaving the second they come,

We are all of us leaving,

Cleaving, we are, everything, leaving.

Believing seconds are for sentience,

Sentiment settles on our decadence,

To lavish ourselves upon the hours,

Like a leaper lavishes themselves upon the rocks below,

Go, take every second by storm,

Born dying, but living and reborn,

Scorn shame and waste the same,

I came to spend them both alike,

Like the disappearance of the light.

When I Was A Child

When I was a child

I reasoned that although I was a child

The fact that I was a child

Bore no bearing

On who I was

And I had no concept of becoming

I did not feel like an incomplete soul

I was not waiting to be made whole

I was not enriched by what I stole

Nor depleted by what was stolen

I was not held

Or beheld

I was not emboldened 

Nor beholden

I was me

And I longed, more than anything, to be free

My fantasies were winged things

Wolf-raised loners or kings of the invisible,

My longing was for the infinite

Stretched out for ever before me

Never diluted nor divisible

Risible though they found me

Climbing trees

Scraping knees

Caught in rainstorms

Playing windmills in the breeze

They tried to encage me

But they could not

I would not cease nor freeze

Simon did not say

And I never wanted to adapt

That was pure essence

That which you thought play

I was the skinny, day-dreamy cry-baby kid

I was too sensitive

The teacher told me 

I looked at hawks

In books

Paddled with the other boys in brooks

Put people off by my open hearted sincerity

I clung as tightly to friends as I did to dreams and desires

And thus suffocated the air out of friendships

Quenched fires

And retreated 

Beyond the walls

Within the earth

To the inner life,

Perhaps that is why I write poems

Because beneath the crust, and tectonic, melancholic plates

The magma is still moving

Still flowing