I am happy to announce the launch of my second chapbook, Naked Animal. This chap explores the secrets of the human condition and the conflict between faith and self. Check out “Trinity”, then buy the book!

Trinity

 

What if I had stood beside Jesus during His passion?

Would you have thrown stones and told me I love badly?

 

What if it were just us? We, us three. You, Him

and me together where our bodies converge

into another ending, a completely different narrative

filled with your forgiveness, one where I am

raped by the muddied feet of my mind, my sin

carelessly painting the sky with the color of your eyes.

 

No one ever told me it would be like this.

That tonight would be a tiny slice of distance

choked down with uncertainty as you and I lie

awake in bed wrapped in guilt’s coarse, black blanket

until the stray dogs chewing on lost shadows

lay siege to the street and we are undressed

by the eyes of the ceiling, peeled back into strips

by the smoky, wet, dirty words slapping us

into the surreal yellow emptiness of the evening.

 

But who are we to question what is real?

 

What is real spoiled quickly into the smell

tempting the dogs, a scent moistening

a bidding neither of us could put our hands on.

 

There is no Braille, nothing to rescue us,

to save the dawn, the sun caught up in this stench

of dead meat. All that remains is humped like a pyre–

you, me, the forgotten father, the son, the life

everlasting bursting on the splinter of a cross.