(For Friday)

I have chosen to speak to you
publicly

This is not an address
a letter
a collection of ideas I can now present

I have nothing to say
to you
and so I pray

You have said to me
Ask and it will be given
Seek and you will find
My darling
Just knock
The door will be opened to you

Oh we are raging at this door
I have slept up against it
The tomb is closed

I have been looking

You are the lost thing
Are you so small
Yeshua
That I could drop you
like my wallet?

I beg on behalf of us all
A prayer for the unmet expectations
The miracles that have not happened
The lovers that will never come back
The children you have hidden
In time

I have come to speak
And I have come bleeding
I have come to comprehend your mortality
I have come to wrestle with your memory

Appear, Lord
Appear, Father
Appear, if you are King

Why have you left us
In this basin
Of consumption
Of sucked-up plastic sex
And tended war
Of mixed bitterness
Lemon, lime and
fingernails down chalkboards?

Why have you left us
here?
In our devastation
In our unimaginable
Ugliness
Mirrored in ones
and zeros
on the internet?

Why have you watched us,
Cold and dehydrated
Unplugged
Unaffiliated
Opened and
Bled out?

God if
you
are God,
why can’t you speak?
Are you so mute
So deaf, so distant
Do you not understand my
broken
iPhone English?
Say words in my
language
Scream at me
Fill the sky with an echo
Fill the sea with a sign
Anything

God if
you
are God,
Remove the broken bones
Embedded within the broken hearts
Strung between the broken clocks
trapping us
in three dimensions
Why can’t you stop the sun from burning bushes?
Why can’t you keep the earth from what it grew?
It spins
it melts
it ricochets
All eternity maintained
Without you

God
I have asked for love
I have asked for it
I have waited
I have spit each partaking member
Out of my mouth
As lukewarm water
As love that is like vodka
As love that is like lemonade
When all I wanted was on fire

God
I have asked for light
I have hungered
For a fresher filter
In which I don’t look so lined
so old
so tired

God
I have asked for bread
I have begged you
For a crumb
off your table
Like a dog
I get skinnier
And I get fatter
And I have never eaten anything
That has ever done me any good

God
I have asked for a bandage
A block of ice
A piece of armour
A cup of tea
The rest of my family
I have asked for this pain
To resolve
Completely
I have asked you
For you

God
The question is
If you could
Would you not
kill me?
Would you not
let me die like that?
Would you not
let me be destroyed?

The coward I
here
confess
Is just the mould of your absence
Because I am afraid
You do not care
And I am afraid

You do not know
My flesh’s need
Unmet
You do not know
what it means
To bleed
And yet
We are dying

Lord if
you
are Lord
In the way they say
you have omnipotent
spirit
If indeed
you were God
I know
you could do it

Stop death.

If you don’t

If you won’t

If you choose

To just watch
my mistakes
from your throne
Lord, please
Do not let me die alone.

Face death:
Before
Behind
After
Alongside
If this door I knock upon
is not opened
let it be
because God has
died.

Will you taste it
to tell me
that you know
what it might mean
to be human?

(They have taken
my Lord away and I don’t know
where they
have put
him)

My God is

dead

My God

is dead

My

God is dead

My God is dead.