Mea máxima culpa
Through my most
terrible defect – He’s
behind you! Beware
of snaps & slapstick

& other whip stories
loose on barebacks –
Don’t e’er coddle me!
or beat me to excess
for my sins of saying

bad words ’bout God
[those howled out by
me – we disbelievers
see overturned hulls
not huge cathedrals]

Perhaps we shall sit
as a cleric counsels
his penitent puppets
One Punch & Judy’s
papal prank or two?

Don’t tip a sugarloaf
hat to any old Devil –
Doctor – or snapping
Crocodile – every kid
has a fear of clowns

A brief confessional
erected on beaches
to entice children to
our Lords of Misrule
That’s the way to do it

Let me enjoy a show
of robes in your vast
theatres of comedy –
then let me with fists
steer Mr Punch home

I returned the ripped heart
of Saint Laurence O’Toole –
canonised post-mortem
for acts whilst entombed

As Archbishop Lorcan
he acted well in hair shirts –
and in shroud-wrapped death
he performed miracle parts

Another found-reliquary –
I gave it back to the nuns
Religion is theatre –
but it’s not the West End

I don’t believe in God
but I think she hears my prayers

I can only hope to touch her face
if she deigns to ever care

We don’t talk much about politics
it bores her more than sex

We drink red wine and compromise
on what is truly meant

I woke to judgement nightmares
and a terror in my heart –

with an empty wine glass by my bed –
that brittle bodyguard

If we stop to look up
at that vast underbelly
of the slow, the turned,
those Gods above us,
struck indolent, stuck,
and expect their help,
a thunderbolt, salt-pillars,
such types of intervention,
we will find no solution:
we are the only gods,
unbelievable as it is.

So, they were gathered early
in their Sunday best
for a christening,

and she said that kids
can be so irritating,
as she sipped coffee in Costa,

and then she complains
about the churches
which let children run wild:

He asks if you can rip a new fiver,
and the man with the plummy voice
jokes about fake Euros.

Then an American accent plays
within this cobbled troop,
with his knowledge of money,

as one of their kids, jacketed,
wanders among the group,
with a straw, Irritating them all.

Benoite, you are not, but still a reader of hearts,
a live angel on Earth, but not the saint of Laus:
that girl watched Christ, she witnessed his passion,
and I watched you undress with stiff absolution:

The lace-pull of perfume took her down from the hill,
whilst here in your thighs I drank from a well:
I saw her people slow-mo into prayer,
the rest fell in agony in that melee.

Benoite was sent to the Valley of Kilns,
by a dark-skinned Saint who worked those hills,
and I fall to sleep on your flattened breast,
as you turn your head and see your own Benoite.

I live with no religion,
I live without your god,
because they screwed it up –
one hell of a lot:

Mismanaged and misplanned,
offering little in good faith,
instead they demand
a foul life be your grace.

Child sacrifice and abuse,
put upon one’s only son,
in the name of god’s love,
for the good of everyone?

Let us raise a faith,
in our own kind hearts,
and leave it to religion
to blow itself apart.