"You.../ carried the cross/ and my shame./ All my shame./ You know I believe it./ But I still haven't found what I'm looking for." - Paul David Hewson
Is this the birth of faith?
Words - crucial, come together -
and press upon my anger.
I pray,
or just say, what is on my mind,
to ceramic statues and wooden planks,
arranged,
adorned with faces, traces of what evolution contests.
Or is it history,
that seeks to force on tinted glasses
through which to see, but not perceive,
not look hard enough, to break the illusion
that holds, that frames, and chains,
him to his cross, her to her veil, them to these pews?
knees bent, minds un-bending,
to what I want to believe,
but cannot quite.
Quietness, voicelessness, that weaves a spell, without help
of words from books too holy to be touched
by my pagan fingers, my chapped lips
too dry, to partake of
this wine, this blood.
And yet, I rushed,
to those chapels,
and I offered bread, lit candles,
stared at stone faces, and the occasional gargoyle.
The confession box and its holes, as large as stab wounds,
did not allow for evasion of discovery, or anonymity.
But the faith inside - a secret, a suffusing -
almost and also, closeted,
this lesbian feeling. Sitting inside private chapels,
still looking for, but not finding.
2016.
