SuicideKing
03/03/10, 10:15 AM
this is a spoken word poem i wrote and performed a few months ago. it went over really well but i wrote it in one night and never even bothered to get feedback on it. comments would be appreciated. thanks for taking the time to read it
Glossolalia
Brothers and sisters. Temples,
We were told we could be anything.
But these days I feel like an empty church
Littered with leaves torn out of hymnals.
Like a tabernacle wandering the wilderness
With all my holy hollowed out.
It seems I can’t muster the mustard
To move molehills, much less a congregation.
We seem so eager to fill the air with funerals we must sound
Like canaries with the bottom of a coal mine stuck in our throats.
We dig up dirges. And we kick up the sawdust
Of all the corners we cut wanting to be heard.
When I was a child I believed
That if I held steepled fingers to my ears
Like seashells I could hear the voice of god.
He told me to unlock my knees when I pray.
Please, repeat after me:
“Our Father,
Who art in heaven,
We are yet unleavened bread.”
You remind me with your smiles,
The kind that look like the front row of a gospel choir,
That we are not forsaken. We are Hallelujahs.
We’re just written in crayon.
We are not cemeteries wanting to bury hope.
We are floodgates with oceans at rest
In our bones, just waiting on the moon
To harvest our tides.
So, these days, when I cough up communion cups,
Half full of blood colored lightning bugs,
My voice will crack, like a songbird
With broken wings, but I know He’s listening.
Let us pray.
Glossolalia
Brothers and sisters. Temples,
We were told we could be anything.
But these days I feel like an empty church
Littered with leaves torn out of hymnals.
Like a tabernacle wandering the wilderness
With all my holy hollowed out.
It seems I can’t muster the mustard
To move molehills, much less a congregation.
We seem so eager to fill the air with funerals we must sound
Like canaries with the bottom of a coal mine stuck in our throats.
We dig up dirges. And we kick up the sawdust
Of all the corners we cut wanting to be heard.
When I was a child I believed
That if I held steepled fingers to my ears
Like seashells I could hear the voice of god.
He told me to unlock my knees when I pray.
Please, repeat after me:
“Our Father,
Who art in heaven,
We are yet unleavened bread.”
You remind me with your smiles,
The kind that look like the front row of a gospel choir,
That we are not forsaken. We are Hallelujahs.
We’re just written in crayon.
We are not cemeteries wanting to bury hope.
We are floodgates with oceans at rest
In our bones, just waiting on the moon
To harvest our tides.
So, these days, when I cough up communion cups,
Half full of blood colored lightning bugs,
My voice will crack, like a songbird
With broken wings, but I know He’s listening.
Let us pray.