Tag: Poetry

Caterpillars ugly but they die pretty.
God know why he make them so.
He told me the reason.
I forget what he said.

I love with most of my heart
God says always keep a little for yourself.
Now I know why.
Seen my tombstone.
Ones with the rest of my heart showed me.
Real nice of them.
I want to postpone the funeral 
to count my blessings.
Can’t wait they say
Program done printed.
Killer obituary.
Family flying in to pay respects.

Meta-morph-a-what-ever. 
Caterpillars can, so why can’t I?
Ask God. It ain’t my time. 
Rebirth resembles Death. 
Or precedes it.
Can't do one without the other.
Reconnect to life to live again. 
Reset the breaker, 
plug in the stove, 
make some tea.

Get in the coffin they say.
We gone eulogize you.
Talk about how lousy you was
Why we glad you gone.
How we miss you already. 
You was a good man still
Now you gone burn in heaven.

Straight jacket too damn tight.
Expectations strangling.
Break free.
Just like drowning. 
Forget which way is up. 
Yet. I always know 
Come up for air. 
Breathe! 
Feeling free and falling relentlessly. 
Giddy from the motion of standing still. 
Memories swirl and dance on the horizon, 
Turn into smoke. 
Sail away into the distance
over the edge of the earth.
The dirty cocoon drops.

You changed they tell me.
If you better now, how come I can’t see it.
Let the wings dry, jackass.
Flying ain’t easy.
Those who stay on the ground always think it is.
They imagine you don’t have a care in the world.
God know that’s a lie.
Big ugly lie.

Casket still there. 
Gone use it someday.
Just not now.
Got too much flying to do.

The moon’s reflection echoes 
dark in the stillness
as a choir of mosquito wings 
hum a woeful dirge.
Three parts blood, two parts water
the river is as still as ink.
A cold wind puckers and blows
making the surface shiver
and a ripple rises 
like goose flesh.

Burlap hooded and black as the night
the ferryman poles this dinghy
down the Styx on capricious tides. 
I, his lone fare. 
As the wind blows 
he points a bony finger at the bow. 
I turn to see and stare. 
He grins
gleeful to show the eternal fires
awaiting my flesh for fuel
and drawing so so near. 
His advice: that I contemplate 
my life of sin,
and ponder the fate of those who never learn.
“Why?” 
I smile back with narrow eyes,
“My soul is anxious to burn.”

Part One

The inquisition is here;
the firing squad
with the loaded guns.
Gunfight at the corral.
But it ain’t OK.
Six a them to me one.
This ain’t a fair fight.
I need Jesus 
and a miracle.

Remember the Alamo
and the bitches of Salem.
Same in difference.
These hired guns tracked me down.
Big reward for my head.
Dead or alive.
Depending if you believe the posters 
or the gossip.

These hombres was my brothers.
Now I stare back at ‘em.
They don’t remember me.
How we used to sit 
round mama’s table and talk trivia.
Then they said they loved me.
Money makes men feign amnesia
and tell you they can help.

Part Two

The sun goes behind a cloud.
High noon.
The moment of truth.
Before the first sweat bead drops
I fill the bastards with lead.
Heavy shit.
They stagger back.
I see the blank look in they eye.

In all of them guns
they only ever had one bullet.
A silver one.
Big hole in my chest now
sucking on my blood.
Hole was there before
the first shot went off.
Foregone conclusion.
They don’t have to be right
to kill me dead.

Poetry is the history of the human heart.
Billy Collins 

---

Leaving the Jehovah’s Witness religion was a very intense period for me. There was such a potent cocktail of conflicting emotions coursing through my soul: betrayal and guilt, happiness and sorrow, and feeling everything at once and all the time.

During this period I wrote a lot of poetry as an outlet and a way to cope with the stress. It felt to me that poetry was the only thing that came out whenever I tried to write. It was my self-help and comfort.

For inclusion in this project I have selected ten poems that I wrote between 2003 and 2009. This period coincides with my awakening while within the Witnesses, my journey out of the religion and the immediate aftermath. Some of these pieces have been previously published, but here alongside the seven skeletons they are now, for the first time, presented in the context in which they were written. I feel that this contextual shift makes them all hit different. 

I have, for the most part, resisted the urge to change them. I will admit though that there have been some light edits, mainly changing line breaks and enhancing readability. 

From now until the end of this project I will provide a poem or two that fits alongside the week’s essay.

As I try to explain in the essays, on an intellectual level, what it meant for me to leave a cult like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, hopefully these poems provide some insight into what that felt like.