It's taken me a while, but

I.

I’ve thrown God off my shoulders

let him crumple behind my feet

and there is no enlightenment

no rasping cough and gasp that usually

follow such unwrangling

God, when you’ve reduced him to

stardust- niggling doubt

settling sandlike on a bed of coral-

is really no more than an

awkward silence

 

you talk… and talk,

it is important to exercise strange words

when you learn a new language

it is important to ask the usual questions

to get a grasp on someone new

II. 

it makes life strange to see with such

frightening clarity- all of a sudden

like scales removed from eyes

the mind breathes greedily

when the body feels so clean.

 

The emptiness they warn you of

‘godless void’, they call it,

is really the vacuum left behind when

anger at thou shalt nots

implodes with that final, knowing amen 

III.

Dinner, ‘heavenly father bless

the food before us that it may

nourish and strengthen us

in Jesus’ name amen’

 

Tooth-picking at cockles,

one fingers the grey, hardened thing

but all attention and desire is for the

raw, red warmth inside

to be picked clean of grit and sand

 

smut between the thumb and

forefinger.

one finds strange

satisfaction at teasing and smoothing

shit between one’s fingers

 

the cockle is all bleeding heart

warm like primal breath,

checked against the light, it proves

clean, plump and fresh.

 

I think I hear rolling thunder

but it is my head flushed with

hunger for symbolism

 

A final communion, body and blood

all at once, I take my piece of heart into my mouth

suck, bite into muscle and with a soft

pop it spills thick, sweet and forgiving

 

and I know, somehow, now that I have been

bathed by the blood of the cockle,

that I am truly clean and free and

saved.