Tag: church

An Episcopal Church

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Lincoln sits splayed in his pew
as clergy weep teargas tears –

they retreat from his chancel of
greeting air – sundered nearby –

[quick] flash grenades/ He does
not turn his head [he cannot] as

cries multiply [he’ll listen for old
axioms]/ Truth will fade too fast

if screamed too loudly – our first
rule of pluralism/ Instead recite

Yeats [often read after troubles]
& we may appreciate thinking &

art – we may take time out to sit
& win – without violent thoughts

[without violence]/ No holes will
be left to widen – to swallow lies

Plots

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Gavin reads an enamel plaque
on a concrete birdbath below
four blue clocks – true north is
implied by one of those faces/

God is too far to register every
minute marked over lead paint
& see countenances [his angle
set by our old misdemeanours]

In this churchyard [alongside a
stone set to recall a long-dead
missionary] my pain redounds
on a thought-chiselled bench –

In memory of.. a soul loved too
much to forget/ A yew denies
seeing anything as it watches
every headstone tilt over time –

witnesses to a wearing away of
names & dates & rarer refills of
flower pots by bent mourners &
then observed left alone – bereft

in this acre of dearly departeds –
I wait on time to halt – four faces
to stop & squeeze on my breath –
to take my life [my full measure]

but it passes – hour-kept treaties
of scribed plans keep me alive &
a cog in God’s plays [impromptu]
one stage for us indigent actors/

Perhaps Gavin fed birds here – on
this bench he would sit & scatter
crumbs to [now rare] sparrows/ In
time we’ll be him – a worm feeder

Also on Medium

@BHAFC

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

We are feral troops off to our
home ground [trudging on a
route levelled by worn boots
on almost every other match
day’s summoning to paid-sat
places] They don’t adore cars
so we make our own footway
Such a commitment [of never
really knowing how it will play
out] is not appreciated – ‘Sad’
when eyed by non-believers &
feeble snoots [f#cking snobs!]
who’ll never speak our prayers
or sing in our choir – It will be
another afternoon of elevated
expectations not-possibly-met
[football’s a game of 2 halves]
We are halfway back to my car

Plan F [in Cologne]

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Kölner Dom was a calculated
endeavour to reach unto God
using a scale rule as thin men
scuttered [up] trusting ladders
leant steeply gainst Him [risen
beyond rotting oak dominions
of nails & squeezed joinery] to
heights reached by remixes of
mortar & prayer under priestly
old ways below curbed Rome-
grown arches / Ropes hoisted
them up to Above /  History is
temporarily absent – known by
one God / From there – beside
their still standing twin towers
[built by slow breaths expiring]
of 2 apexes – few construction
plans rolled from old centuries
to tell our awed senses – what?
They eliminated arcs in arches
& found art in flying buttresses
Below it [bony] three wise men
are weighted down in a golden
box claiming to bear wry relics
This is their sky – glass – iron &
lead – delicate tinges too far to
decode without bound psalms
Incoming lights are a material –
detailed perception – also frail –
& so bent-framed – to be a sun
Carved bridges [exact masonry
scored to heights in sandstone
as chastened blocks] As finials
grip – after drop-bomb-damage
Trachyte was their first choice –
but [their] Lord dismissed loans
Their roof is both a rib cage & a
vault – a weight willing to plunge
to earth & to employ geography
towards glass-grains waiting by
furnaces / Sand’s wish to backfill
is digging under Nature’s way to
[one day] curtail man’s Cathedral

A Lepers Squint

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Our pew is set for untouchables
We watch through a hewn leper squint
That tunnelled sightline was gouged
by your dust-bitten youth and old men

to ensure that we filthy sufferers
are kept out of your hallowed house
of slung beams – of struck stones –
of holy words – we cannot speak out

My prayers rip up before they finish
I dribble red spit from my curled lip
I implore for my ill disfigurement
to plague your stonemason’s next kiss

On Church Street

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Shortly after closing time
outside my unknown church –
feeling a stone’s frore
off dead men and women
upright as chiselled recalls

and staring – all – in disbelief
at that zealous parish priest
who dolls up as a spectre
A welcome departure
from his-biking leathers?

Do you fancy a whole Sunday
of such wanton dressing-up?
But – note – none of that
purely Anglicised-God-stuff
No vertical iron pressings
No M&S slacks in ageing beige

I am not of that creamy dotage
marked heaven-ready
My dark walk is guided on
by each clack-clack-clack
of my tapped black stick –
no more standing as a stone
Satan will catch me
if I stay too long

Above Glynde Reach

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I picked a bent path of grass treads
between time’s tipped-hat stones
in St. Andrew’s – Beddingham’s
dry-high whispering graveyard

It hasn’t absorbed any rising tidal
surge or sudden winter wash – of
God’s clearing-out-no-chance-flood
since He-knows-when-of-last

Once vagrants were listed here
in this river-fashioned parish
in a sub-Lewes rolled distance –
68 villains, 6 bordars and 5 slaves

Now Major and Mrs. lie thigh-to-thigh
in parallel places under that shadow
of repurposed stone and fixings –
another bypass and road of sorts

as cars hurtle at a throw’s distance
taking travelling parishioners
beyond unmarked boundaries
without a detour to see bowed stones

A Thankless Task

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Here fifty-six lichen-dipped
granite bodies sunbathe –
some lean – some almost swoon
in April’s upset of unexpected weather

Here clippings
and rolled stripes of grass
mark long-sunk slopes
under headstones

A cartographer
had taken up mowing
and looked back
upon his day’s work

as a map folded open –
to be figured out
For him
that thought was wasted

There are no travellers here –
all trips are done
Quarter bells
serve no purpose

except to drown out
tinkling-bloody-wind-chimes
and
always ignored car alarms –

no one moves far
from these landmarks –
we are all within earshot
of cuttings of blades and spades

between those engravings
dead endings expose our half-thoughts
about stuff like
Crematorium or lawn cemetery?

Smoke Over Paris

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Their Lady of Paris burnt
in one online afternoon
Her re-imagined spire
tipped to robes of smoke

like a bloodied lance
in surrender – once more –
to politics and holy battles
in a kindless fog of war

Her heated metals ran
as dark beaded sweats
from her swealing heights
to leave cooled scabs

of Saint Thomas – and others –
spattered across worn stones
under her collapsed transept
Those slabs will be saved

with high relics – rescued
from clouds above la quatrième
No puzzle of scattered ashes –
France has her couronne d’épines

A Pathogen at Work

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This year’s olive crop
is failing across Apulia
as older-than-Christ
groves are uprooted

to break the spread
of the end of the world
for sun-dried farmers
who bear the dark look

of bereaved parents
at their child’s funeral –
as their questions to God
are waved away at mass –

Their pontiff no longer visits
because Rome is burning
with rumours of disease
promulgated by priests

Shrove Tuesday

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Shriven into a repentant’s place –
readied for a cross of palm ash –
a marking – tomorrow – of believers –
Yesterday was our early Mardi Gras
of confessions – But we do not follow
those fading rules of others’ liturgies –
We cannot name their Shriving Bell
as they stick it loudly to parishioners –
I was last in a church in Birmingham –
under glass and impressive masonry –
but did I not see the work of God –
Now on this half-holiday we will feast
without you here to guide turned heat –
to sear fat and remnants of shopping –
We have given up everything
to a non-date far beyond Lent’s tests

 

The Ascension – St.Martin in the Bull Ring

~ mikebellwrites ~ Leave a comment

Before that art-by-light –
a conceit of Burne-Jones
which is framed within lead –

before the builders’ thrums
from the other side of
that tall story of saints –

commissioned under strict
instruction that it should
bear no oxen –

it was possible to feel
the touch of his brushwork –
of his mixing of skin colours

to be lent them by dipped winter
backlight – as it was designed –
to feel dried paint on my face –

those pigments rear-projected
into a warm kiss of soft gobos –
then my own-ish ascension

into an understanding of being –
under that church’s vaulted height –
My creed warmed – half-confirmed

within that minute of grace –
of time’s fusion of experience
and of being there

 

And Disorderly

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He visits lost priests
to mumble-in-vain
for what?
His loose-lip prayers weave
over tremble-woven fingers –

This is the church –
this is the steeple –
look inside
and see the people –

God’s gatekeepers
cannot force the bolts –
not slammed
gavel-struck ones –
so he carries his sentence

out in public spaces
as drunken stumbles –
Ready the stocks –
they mutter to others –
He is a convict clapped

in cold iron hobbles –
Of his own bad choices –
manacles left visible
to every untrained eye –
they see another barfly

 

A Bull Ring Recital

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Into God’s house below the Bull Ring –
it offers automatic doors
which open to a wild piano recital

before empty pews – set C of E stiff –
aligned and tuned to religious creaks –
here only stained sunlight warms

as fat chattering volunteers spit
in tongues – the pianist is subsumed
by her memory-art of ivories and wires

as half a dozen souls – hard seated –
do not dare shift lest it upsets
her selfless performance
which – when ends – is not applauded

E160219

The Lungs of God

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I stand under this vault
of our common church –
off-centre on this sea-girt isle

Our stone tradition of roofing
is more to do with fools’ fires
than Heaven’s weight

Here the light is insipid –
no tang of incense
only the blue miasma
off flume emissions

My legs tire – but find no pew –
no tuffet to take me
to the path’s cathartic
kneel-down call