Fill your heart, fill it as full as you can.
Fill it with memories most warmly hued
and remember them well
in all their glorious, sweaty,
kindly brutal
minutiae.

Remember each drop,
each bite,
each individual dust
mote dancing
the still, hot, sunlit
February
Thursday.
Remember how different
places all have their own
unique elusive
smell and how
it is impossible to describe this to anyone
who has never lived
anywhere else.

Fill your heart with all those memories
of the best kind
of home grown hell.

Fill it until its tears are forced out.
Fill it against the long, cold dark of parking lost.
Fill it against mysterious hate.
Fill it against misery and mud and hard
frozen
bottle
glass
lies.

Fill it so full it can't ever sink far down.
Burden it with buoyant stories
and weigh it with
hypnotic winter flame.
These are the things of which
the cold terror to
victory apocalyptic will be born.
There are no second prizes here.

Fill it with the certainty of the worn places
where the chairs met
the table
each night.

Fill it with the truth of
the gnarled and sun-warm roots and
the indisputability of a Beetle motor accelerating and
the violent pirouette of each spring
and the ozone smell and
the way wet wood screams at the sky and
the way the sound
hits all ears the same
regardless of
their color or
what side of Line Avenue they’re from.

Remember what line you’re from
and to hell with the rest.
You must mind your own.
There’ll be water
if God wills it.

You are never too far lost if you still know
your father’s face and can still remember
getting milk from the tubes
in the
silver metal cooler
and the red cookie jar
lid as the
adults smoked at the green kids’ table
and everyone mostly had blue eyes
and red hair and there was always a phantom killer
lurking  
right beyond the only hope door
before you were ****** into the mirror
world and
*******, but
kids sure do have to make some
rough choices
before nine o’clock.

Keep remembering and when you remember,
remember even deeper
remember in yet greater detail and
practice that remembering until
you
ARE
the dust motes
the milk tube
Thursday
roots
sun
until you ARE each drop of sweat
until you ARE the phantom killer
and the red cookie jar lid
the straight line of smoke rising out
of the ashtray and
the motor and the
scream and the
ears and
you ARE all these things
and you ARE
and you can’t really say where these things begin or where
you end because you’re not sure that
anything really does end or
begin
anymore.

Beginnings and endings
haven’t much meaning after
everyone has
shown their cards and the worn places on the chairs have
met the table
one
last
time.

Last day of my week
I feel lucky—I'll be free
And party tonight.

Does God Love Me?
By Harry Toye

He suffered and He died for you,
An agonising death on a rugged cross;
Tortured and crucified for you,
To save the sick, the lonely and the lost.

Black hearted Pilate washed his hands in a dish of delph,
It could have been in blood as much as in water.
He may as well have nailed Jesus to the cross himself,
For it was he who gave the fatal order.

They surrounded Him in the dark of night,
Armed guards with torches aglow;
The crowds milled expecting a fight,
But Jesus said, “It is I you seek, let the others go”.

On His Head a crown of black thorns they did add,
Their tips dipped in a deadly poison;
A practice that could drive ordinary men mad,
As the Blood of Christ turned those tips to crimson.

The mass of bleeding tissue was revealed,
As ruthless Romans scourged again and again;
Strips of skin were torn and peeled,
But not even once did Jesus complain.

They mocked and insulted,
They ripped the cloak from blood congealed;
They pierced His Hands and His feet,
His back was like a furrowed field.

When they nailed Him to that cross,
They nailed our sickness and our sin;
They nailed your pain and your loss,
So you would learn the Kingdom of God is within.

His friends who loved Him looked up and cried,
The sky darkened and clouds gathered as if nightfall;
When Jesus looked down at the mob, just before He died,
His Heart of Love still forgave them all.

He had created the very wood and also the nails,
And even the merciless men who drove them through;
Despite the leather whip with it’s leaded tails,
He pleaded, “Forgive them Father; they know not what they do”.

They took Him from the cross and gave Him to His Mother,
She cradled and she held this Blessed Fruit of her womb;
She cried for her baby that once she lay in a manger,
But now she prepared to lay her baby in a tomb.

However three days later the impossible happened,
And Mary’s pierced heart was healed;
She screamed with Joy as the tomb was opened,
Jesus had defeated death, to all it was revealed.

He had endured and He had triumphed, this story is true,
How He dispelled darkness with the light of love that day;
And He would suffer it all over again, even if for only you,
So that you too can live again in a most abundant way.

Who is this faithful man who now holds out His Hand?
This man who is always honest, always true.
Who speaks to pain and misery and it’s forever banned,
He is the one who will never leave or forsake you.

You may not know Him yet but He knew you before you were born,
He knows everything about you, your strength and your frailties;
He loved you in the womb, before you were even formed,
And He will love you forever, and through all eternities.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 3:16

©Harry Toye 2014.  http://www.fivefoldministryireland.com