July 2006

church

Are you in the hall
On the same dusty wooden boards
Where I sang "Save Me Lord" before I knew how lost I was
Are you in that hall
Still singing for your Lord's supper
Still trembling in fear and loathing
Still waiting for a new Jerusalem to come down in the clouds

I am in the market place in Covent Garden
Looking at the woman I will not fuck
She is buying paintings of a red London bus
How soon do you think you can send us all to hell?

I am by the river talking softly
On my mobile to a man who wants to hear me play piano
He is shrewdly pushing buttons in my ego
Left right and centre
So very soon I will announce a plan to play
There is a child of a tourist picking gum off the pavement
When you send it all to hell, do not send her.

I am blind and silent
Cooking dumbly for my lover
Cutting vegetable and liver
Drinking mindlessly and messy
Far too old, I've grown,
In these last few years

Are you in the hall
Waiting for the mercy of Ebenezer
Making hosannas for the saviour
A patient young housekeeper
Well David, I tried, so do not scold me for being here
Among the tax collecters and bus conductors and street perfomers
I could not take down the idols from the high places
I could not tear my sack cloth shirt
I could not stand in the Eglise Pierre St-le-Jeunne without thinking
"And where, do you suppose, is god?"
I prayed there, in my heart, to be swallowed up in the sea
Of the fresco of Jesus walking on the water
But the old guide came and asked for a donation
He smiled and I loved him
He showed me a relic
So I was not swallowed up into the see
I left, with my lady of the Rhine,
And there too I left my praying heart

But that was four years ago
And my soul aches for a god
But I do not know your god no more
David, show him to me
Please
Where have I gone?