He gave us free will
and made obedience the key to his kingdom.
Offered unconditional love
with a caveat of repentance
Trust in his plan
is why your prayers go unanswered
Asked that you bear the guilt
for a martyred son he had forsaken
Using our free will
to chase the love of an abandoner
Naming faith an act of love
  in the absence of reciprocity
His act of love, to give us life
robbing worship from our mothers.

It’s a cowards world
Punching out a bravado beat on our apish chests
And a child’s vulnerability inspires only pity
A projectile repulsion of the weaknesses we hide
We’re all at war with ourselves.
Cutting the throats of whole stories, dragging their corpses to the grave and burying our personal hatred there.
Our lives become cemeteries of all the faces carved from us
We ***** elaborate digital monuments to decorate the rotting beneath.
And plant fragrant flowers of borrowed clichés to cover the stench.
And one day we whither, our cells begin their decay
We will meet our exiles in the graveyard of our collective cowardice

If our hearts will abdicate their thrones of fear
And our ruminating minds find rail to guide their runaway trains
Union flows through, life-blood in our ephemeral veins
A communion between our heart and mind, they meet in time
Neither raising fist for the subjugation of the contrary kind.
Herein lies the star-gate
to our liberated state,
Illuminating our eternal fate,
Love.

Fixed star Alphecca
Shines down on a Shepherd,
leading his thousand fat sheep
The sheep are indifferent
To Alphecca’s position
Eyes on the grass at their feet

Gently, my love
When you stay up late combing your mind for pieces of rot
Gently
When you stare into ***** mirrors and scrub yourself raw
Gently
In a brash sea with your periscope on danger
Gently
Riding the crowd in the nose bleeds of opinion
Gently, my love,
Lean into the frisson
Gently with grace
Gently,
My love.
Gently with grace

Paint:
me in tar, dredged from your judas soul
Where you once stored my love:
a devotion-less hole

Truth:
A shame-bound train and you’re tied to its track
Hypocrisy:
A thrown boomerang always finds its way back

Pray:
with your queen in your false praise of god
Bury:
your guilt in her sanctimonious nod

“How loud must it scream
Before I will hear?”
Craft your hollow platitudes
Into your pious veneer

See,
I know

the putrid self-loathing
That screams from within
How loud must it scream
For you to accept your chagrin?

If I stay a nervous bud
my full bloom will not encroach upon the grandeur of another
& I will invite no retribution
Though the artist in me knows
that a whole field in bloom
Pollinates the world.
Bloom with the artists.

If I stay silent
my words cannot be smithed into a weapon of censure,
and be used to cut me into smaller pieces.
Though the poet takes my words
& alchemises them
into an elixir for healing.
Speak with the poets.

If I smother my fire
I inspire no ire from neighbouring Suns
for whom my shine is a punishable theft of thunder.
Though a sister moon mirrors my light and illuminates the next.
Shine regardless.

If I stay in my armour
my vulnerability cannot become the missile launched at me
by the traitor who begged for my truth
Though an ally reveres my courage
and meets it with the honour of their own open heart.
Open, even though.