Ask the angels to sing me to sleep

Pray for me. To your pagan gods and restless saints, weary from the moving of your lips. Sacrifice your animals, your food, your children. Sprinkle blood like sewing seeds - carefully and everywhere. Pray for me. Chant, dance, medicate. Call upon your ancestors as your feet make clouds in the dust. Let them intercede on...

A bush on fire doesn’t mean you’ve found God

Where there is smoke, there is fire, but there is no God. Listen carefully and you might survive this inferno. Hold your breath and don't choke on tears. No one is here to hear you. You don't recognise the shape of your skin. Extinguish your incense; smother your flames. Burning doesn't mean power; a bush...

The spirit will carry me across the blue

I burn my tongue whenever I say your name. The syllables are hot coals behind my teeth branding the letters onto my lips, love. Marry me and I will never be out of time or trust. Let me tread easy the staircase of your ribs to the altar of your Hail Mary. Carry me into...

Dear Caitlyn Jenner | Quite honestly

Dear Caitlyn Jenner Quite honestly, I didn’t recognise you at first glance as I scrolled past the cover of Vanity Fair on my newsfeed yesterday. I have followed your news-drawing story each day – from the triumphs and progress, to the hard days and the tears and the tough choices. Quite honestly, I don’t know...

Where will you go when the rain comes?

Where will you go when the rain comes? You cannot flee nor fight the flood, my dear. You must swim or sink or tread or drown or float or break the surface. That breath those lungs this baptism. Come up. Come up again. Come up now. Please, now, come up always and stay up. Become...

Dear church | On whores and unanswered Holy things

Dear church, understand that this is not an attack. I have burning questions and I entreat you to remember my heart as you read this. It is a heart looking for answers – looking to reconcile. A heart hoping to understand a little bit of why you do what you do, why you are what...

I cannot risk any more broken ribs

I seldom write with unedited unease and fiery determination but today requires a more honest approach than the emotionally-capped scrawling I have delivered previously. I am too wilted – too walk-over-me – too often and today is not that day. You have walked long and hard and I am tired, and I am hurting and...

In the wake of poetry

I wrote this as a gift to a fellow poet and good friend - a man that, I am grateful, is part of my life. -------------------- To the poet who makes me feel things I can’t put words to: You disarm me; I am a soldier sent to battle without a gun. I am only...