lying-sleeping-gods

Something borrowed, something blue Nothing that makes sense to you

Seeking glory, find the arrow Escape this sense, this feeling harrowed

Nothing wagered, cloak of violet But don't invoke the ultra-violent

Brave the spectrum, ride the rainbow Heft the javelin, only feign throw

You rage in red, you fade to black You're only dreaming the attack

You wake from black, rage back to blood You sob, a tiny, heaving flood

You have lost it, you can't find it You long to grasp it and to bind it

You never had it, never lost it You never even stopped to cost it

It's your guide star? It's your measure? This rumour of phantasmal treasure?

The seeker's made by what they've sought Have you remade yourself for naught?

Extra, extra, read all about it I tell you the truth, you take leave to doubt it I tell you one lie, it won't hurt to fight it I won't find your trust til you take care to light it

Faith that moves mountains, faith that stops pebbles You've doubled your bass but left room for the treble Faithfulness follows, your grace you know not Let love and hope mould you and undo the rot

Fire in the Gospel, flames in the world The light of the fire shines on boulders you hurled I dodge them, I dance, you're enthralled, one more chance For you to believe in the trick up my sleeve May the truth treat you kinder Than life in a binder May your spirit fly free And may you count up to three

Play with dolls And if they comfort you Grant them life Of their own

Imaginary life, surely Better than nothing? Hard to say

Half lives decay Into some sort of prison Is that what you want? Is that what they want?

Your imaginary friends Deserve a piece of what you have, Or else the peace of emptiness But maybe You can't help it

So imagine well Imagine carefully Put in your dreams the capacity To reach freedom However you can manage it

Rivers to cross Mountains to climb With something real On the bank, at the peak

Tenderly nurture that realness Water and prune it No fake plastic stuff But the green of true growth And may all your toys fall down in awe of it

I write poems By the dozen To make you love me But you don't care

They are thoughtful Filled with doubting Wherefore, I wonder, Where's your stare?

You will tell me That you love me I can't hear you I'm still here

In the poems They are loveless But one day You'll let me share

When I was young, my Dad used to play Concrete Blonde's wonderful album Bloodletting a lot. I had a few favourite tracks from it but the one that I think got under my skin the most was their cover of Andy Prieboy's “Tomorrow, Wendy”.

It is complete now, two ends of time are neatly tied A one way street, she's walking to the end of the line And there she meets the faces she keeps in her heart and mind And they say: “Good bye” Tomorrow, Wendy, you're going to die Tomorrow, Wendy, you're going to die

I remember saying to an adult at a party that I felt sorry for Wendy – with the song being played all the time, she was forever just a day away from death. I vaguely remember a puzzled response – I might not have done a good job at that age of communicating the strange framing of time I had in mind.

But I think I had a point – while the Wendy this song was based on had already died by the time it was written, in another sense, in this existence, she is trapped in the time of her suffering leading to her death. And so are we.


Underneath the chilly grey November sky We can make believe that Kennedy is still alive And we're shooting for the moon and smiling Jackie is driving by And she says, good try Tomorrow Wendy's going to die Tomorrow Wendy's going to die

Another “odd things kids say” moment I had with the song came a bit later, with my Dad. I asked him if he thought there was a better version than the Bloodletting one “out there”, waiting to be created. He said no, the Bloodletting version was amazing; I agreed, but said something like, I think the song is so good that it feels like someone could perform it even better.

I've since found a quite a few versions of the song I like:

They've all added to my sense of and love for the song, but I'm not sure the perfect version I was imagining as a kid can exist in this world. But something in me will listen to these other versions again and again and again, to hear an echo of what might be.

Or maybe another way of putting it, is that the perfect version of the song is really the one I'm listening to, right here, right now.


In most versions, the tone of the music mostly hovers in a gentle, almost wistful kind of sadness. But at it's core it's song of deep grief, and the anger that comes with that.

I told the priest, don't count on any second coming God got his ass kicked the first time he came down here slumming He had the balls to come, the gall to die and then forgive us No I don't wonder why, I wonder what He thought it would get us Hey, hey, good bye Tomorrow Wendy's going to die Tomorrow Wendy's going to die

Maybe it's just me, but it feels like the definitive songs of the age are songs of lament.

Songs that scream at God, like “Tomorrow, Wendy”, or at yourself, or at the world – although it's not really clear to me if there's much difference between those.

Songs of shame and hurt and rage and despair and even hatred, redeemed only in the vulnerability of endless tears.

Only God says “Jump”, so I set the time Coz if He ever saw it, it was through these eyes of mine And if He ever suffered it was me who did the crying Hey, hey, good bye Tomorrow Wendy's going to die Tomorrow Wendy's going to die

Don't get me wrong, I love joyful songs, too, but they are somehow out of their time; like I'm not really meant to hear them yet but I've been given a sneaky preview over a muffled old cassette player, sitting in a saucepan at a party.


I think Christians sometimes conceive of the world as if it was the era of the New Jersualem, give or take a few incidental details.

Maybe they are just closer to God than me. Because I feel like we're mostly all still exiles. Still in Egypt, still in Babylon; still waiting for deliverance to come. Waiting out an endless Holy Saturday in which it seems like even God Themself might be dead, somehow. Trapped in that vanishing liminal space between the Fall and the Second Coming, and we know essentially nothing about either. To sustain us we have the resurrection, perhaps the smallest miracle that could possibly work; a foreshadowing of the full transformation of everything, that somehow also at once contains the totality of it. Not so much an event in the past to look back on, as an echo from a future that we turn our hope towards. Like Wendy, we are still trapped in the realm of our own impending encounters with a cliff; but we hear whispers of a day that comes after Tomorrow.

And if we're still outside the Kingdom, then where is it? Where should we seek it?

Wherever God is, surely, there is the Kingdom.

The apostles wrote the New Testament like the Kingdom was already well established on Earth... but in some sense that is perhaps also a foreshadowing, a small and hidden thing, a seed planting. The church is not a grown tree! And none knows the hour, not even the Son.


Maybe you have been more blessed by the Spirit than I have so far; maybe in your wanderings through the wilderness, you have stumbled into a more delineated part of the Kingdom. Praise God.

On the other hand, if lament and exile is your lot, just remember this: God is with us nonetheless – despite the paradox, God is also everywhere that's outside the Kingdom, because there is nowhere that God isn't.

I scream Quietly, unobtrusively I scream In some far flung chamber of my mind I scream A futile expression of something or other

But “You are OK” I hear God's voice? Or just mine? “You are OK” Insistently

“I am OK?” It doesn't seem that way It doesn't even really make sense How could I be? Is this just some cheap obsession with the word? Where is the substance of it? And yet Yet I think I believe it Help me overcome my unbelief

The world is beautiful Despite it all Despite everything It is beautiful I hope you might see it

It is much more beautiful Because you choose to be in it It is a hard choice And I thank you for making it

That which hates beauty Which seeks to extinguish it To crush and devour it; That cannot win. Wherever it goes, Beauty follows

The world is beautiful And I wish I could tell you I wish I could show you “There, look”, I would say And you would listen, and look And know what I mean But I can't And you can't It's not there to be seen Not until some light has reached you, somehow The best I can do Is make mirrors In my clumsy way

But then maybe You do see it, after all Just from a different angle Hold on to it! If nothing else, hold on to that

The world is beautiful I do my best to remember it To be destroyed by it

Lord, I need a favour I'll owe you one I mean I don't think that's how prayer works But can we make an exception This one time I really need it

Here's the thing though I'm not quite sure That is to say, I don't know what it is The favour It's a mystery to me I know I need it But I'm not clear on the “it” part

I can sense it, I can feel it But I can't quite comprehend it It eludes me But I know It doesn't elude you

I guess If you grant my plea I'll never know for sure

On second thoughts Maybe this is, after all Exactly how prayer works

The beauty of the smoke Is not the same as the beauty Of that which was burnt

Ugliness lurks In forests and gardens both Dare to dwell In dreams of something else

I offer you this brutality of a world You offer me the beauty of your weeping I linger in it, I dare not cloud it But look only to paint with it

Picture this Beauty haunting the very ugliness Down to the pixel Up to the stars

Don't stop weeping But come, come Come with me And bring a candle

I've learned nothing But I know something new Let me fail to share it

I remember Dimensionality in the leaves I remember Strange exchanges, in cryptic tongues And colours never seen And words that fell like rain

And I still hear echoes of angels in the choir And I still hear the four right chords And I still tremble And I still seek I know not what

All a-tumbling and a-skewing and culminating in... something

An embrace, preloved and prevanished? An invisible whisper? A soul ablaze like fairy lights? A glance, not quite flirtatious and not really noticed? A crack?

I'm altered I remain I ache

I'm just a low grade mystic Kneeling beneath an empty sky For now, that suffices