London commuters go to workand rock with roll of train,develop skills, enjoy a perk,drop eyes and home again.
Homes eat the bodies; TVs start;advertisements sell food,which end as a domestic fart,humanity subdued.
So busy people fill their homes,with shopping, DIY.The washing up bowl gently foams;they grow alone and die.
The black cloud hangs over the land andis called victory. Those who donot know defeat, own goal cheers. Here’sthe firework sound of nation celebrationwhile deathblood flows, foe’s woes.Important people manufacture praise; PA’s glaze.The stratosphere of lies, flies, defiesthe gravity of the situation.World leaders grave pavethe road to hell with good intent, bent.The black cloud hangs heavy over the land andGod cries with heavy rain, pain.Defeat for humankind, signed unkindUs, again, again.
Now know a holy fear before your God,the great Provider, good and wholly true,the purest crystal, leaf and droplet Lord,who makes with care the lepidoptera,creation’s loving user friendliness.The darkness dwells within, spills oil,so cynic, dirty, how our oil is black,and we must shudder at our really lives,and only good is good enough.Excuses all wear out before their time.Or we will frighten Godand shoo him off. We’ll makethe everything afraid of us. BooChrist, you must be scared of us.
How dare this man be so familiarGod. No “I’m the greatest” stuff, or “lookthere’s nothing scares me in the universe.”but “See the Father here before your eyes.You silly people, don’t you see that Godis here with you right now. I love you all.You are my children, friends and intimate.I live within your hearts, the Whisperer.You wear my uniform; I am your bossand pay you always more than you deserve.Sit in my lap and know identity;you have my genes and I know who you are.You rest together tender in my care.
So inevitable the middle-class pride, driveupwards to quiet, made-it glory on my own terms,the shell, and slow realisation of not working,patching up, making the best of a bad job life.Or nice beneath the superficial flaws.Why have they left the room?Or lock my heart in a deposit boxsafe from assault and beating, dead.Or live dynamic, switching on the sleepat half-past one with pills,to kill the making sense,background alive.
We are at risk if people talkdirect to God. Love, joy and peace destroyour powers. We need criss-crossing fear to drivetheir lives. With kids enjoying Godand all this easy access to the Almighty,things could get out of control.We’ve got to kill him soonor our whole system crashes to the ground.
Late train, again, and later night.Great Western Railway almost out of sight.The West is set in post-modernity,mock georgian concrete for eternity.
So creeps the East to West,Deflating the great pride.The middle way is best;the great white hope has died.
Success has suffered muchand true and false are dumb.De-solve yourself and melt.The vacant stare has come.
So blind, we cannot seecreation is so good;we live now through TV,the pearl misunderstood.
The fingers of God’s handcaress the East and West,touch cultures in each land.The humble poor are blessed.
How can you hate wise innocenceand seek to murder him,to plan him dead? Dry rot strandsgrow into furry calculations.Trapped, we decay,too late to go back,escalatored down.
It is not here; it is not there;you cannot find it anywhere.But stay and wait and seehow full God’s rule in you can be.
Hug, wrap around, enfold your lonely manand keep the bitter cold out if you can.He’ll come inside you looking for the womb,but fearing lest he find your home a tomb.Love is so complex; private parts so tight;the who is in there always out of sight.
“What will you ride, Sir? How will I order?”“That young ass, and bring its mother too,lest it be frightened by the crowds.”No warhorse, feet scarcely off the ground.They’re right, but so, so deeply wrong.
You sightsee through the world with souvenirs,buy the can here and can’t remember whereyou saw it on the screen sometime beforeand give it now a hundredth at f8.The distance of the world resides within,the smoked glass screening of the soul.
It is really difficult to conceive how anysane man, man mark you, could screw upso fully as to betray him for funds, Him,healer, coughing up pearls and gentle too,spreading love, like muck on barren land.What was in Judas’ mind? Bloody money.Sometimes I think we are all going downthe tubes.
“So, Judas, leave now, go and take the purse.Your friends believe you’re going to buy bread.You’ve had this opportunity to face your curse,but now you’ve calculated, go aheadwithout recriminations, nothing will be said.”
And so we come to trial. Harrow Crown Court.All good and true, but one perhaps. She knitsoblivious, deciding on the facts,no post-Tractatus judge, but Tory sleepof rentier law and order rich.The lady wears her blindfold.O Lord, have mercy on us.The victim is guilty, yes, but knitted upby the big mother, tape worm on lap.Where are the big house, greedy richfor whom we work, whiter than white,the milking class, porn, city, shares,drugs and monopoly, big dealing class?Our Pharisees? They’ve movedto get the nasty taste out of their mouths.The automatic milkers are at work.And so we come to trial.
No time for truth – nearly two thousand years.The current problem is the populace,their clamour fed by morsels, carefully dropped.Keeping things ordered is a daily race.
Ten thousand problems, carefully seen through,all by one man, here, looking at your face.He sees the structure of your Godless Romeand why the Empire will not last the pace.
The people are a problem for him too.They want a sign, a miracle in casetheir neighbour love runs out and turns to hate.No votes for him; truth always in disgrace.
The opium is the TV and the press.The Sun shines down its arse and makes a mess.So Murdoch makes the monarchy his tooland drugs and tarts the nation, dies rich fool.
Why, God, did you not listen to our argumentsfor your existence, rationalize yourself,speak when you are spoken about,and take up residence in our academic heads.They were quite open-minded, logical.You could have been an avant-garde Idea,established by our books and articles.You lacked ambition of our intellect.A simple-minded God can’t go down well.
No accident, that war, nor yet the next.The US pushed out BP,installed its puppet Shah and milked the oilfrom mogul empires in tall offices.Then Jimmy Carter’s naive principlesof human rights upset the applecart.The Ayatollah severed hands and cutthe arms trade, but we financed war,sold weapons, built up debt, Saddam Hussein,Iran-Iraq, tame weapons and the Gulf,used smoking Bush to service limousines,and pardon North, the White sepulchral House.So silly Saddam does not know the rules:buy weapons; do not use them; play your games.A wicked victim, hollow President.
How do you understand conspiracy?To kill the Son of God, a grand design,the evil one, or two, or all of us?the increments of sin, small private thoughts,clever, not holy, not considered wrong,just selling pigeons at a premuimto fodder people, selfish calculus.The picture is a pixel pattern lie,conspiring with, against, defeating us.
Here is the Word redeeming allthe flabby self-indulgence of our words,the formal maps and tailored cadences,the pneumatic authority of arguments,elaborate categories, dilettante shaped,destructured in the foolishness of God.
You cannot make the journey, nor can I,but come along the track a little way.Say you were good, and gave and gave and gave,fed, healed and cared for crowds who followed,but, when it counted, chose a murderer.Say you withstood all evil when it grew,and carefully exposed its origins,until the predators all turned on you,saliva venom, hating all you did.Say you as teacher shared the greatest thoughtswith those you’d nurtured through to understand.They, vacuous, threw the pearls away.Does not self-pity work within your soul,resentment that this good should be so spurned,and anger than such truth is trampled on?The more you know and love, the lonelier,the deeper good, the greater gulf between.And then to know they want to crucifyGod’s love expressed in you.Now love them more, nasty and fickle,blind after wickedness and fools,yearn for their lostness, care lessfor death, know and forgive.Then lose yourself, the Father in your heart,and freely sacrifice your very self,for this dear scum.
Each tortured day of horrorscopes will leavethis question hanging on your consciousness.This man was killed by suchas walk our streets,sick unto death.
You, naked on the cross.We know our shameand look away.
This quiet morning, stretch, tender my side.Your sunshine, Father, warms yellow on blue.Nothing to do. Death over. Now you guidethese little ones to us and all is true.
How does the Spirit rest upon our time?Not uninvited, but not absent now.No future fast or living blick by blick,but when we hear, no ashes or regret,nostalgia, polishing the past.God’s time has come, is now and now.Each heartbeat hits the moment,just, true and good.
Where, Lord, this Easter will you visit us,Cathedrals, mountain tops or Holy Land?Please come to Butlins, welcome with us herein Crazy Horse, Big Top and Beachcomber.You may not like pink mermaids, plastic treesand fake stone walls. Your style is Spring and wind-swept hail. But slum and harvest hearts. We givean alto sax, voice, arms and tear-stained faceto praise you, resurrected Lord. Not deathbut Ishmael’s stomp. Not vain, proud, grave, all lost,but clappy happy mad and bouncing praise.So easy God with us, for us; beneathour weakness, failure, mercy-swinging grace.Dear Jesus, friend of sinners, all-in Lord.
So, is it merely a happy ending?God wins on Easter Day,defeating death and bastards everywhere,the cosmic V sign to the human race?
Thus we confront our superficial selves,that cannot live one life, stay in one skin.We even posture with the truth. Our wordsstill try to gloss our evil and injusticeslike Nixon’s tapes. But stop.Now God is with us, everything exposed,knows us and suffers all in sovereign love.All things are changed, but really as they are.We dwell now in the passive modeand watch the ego silver fish run fromthe light of Christ transforming all the world,dead sinful selves, no death wish,life.
Alan Storkey 1990-4
