The first time I heard the Lord's Prayer

Sup... there hasn't been much contact from me because I have been in New Zealand and Australia and being very busy and happy in a foreign country. That being said, I still wrote poetry. Here's a poem I wrote one night when I was bored and very much... bored.

The first time I heard the Lord’s Prayer

I was sixteen, barely alive.

I fed myself on the scraps of survival like

Empty words. They gave me the energy

Of a decapitated calf. I hate listening.

The young boy at the front of the church

Was as nervous as a chambermaid

Seeking a predator in the dark corners of a room.

Is God that scary? Is Latin so intimidating?

Aren’t both of those things dead?

The boy might as well been dead. He glistened gray

Under the heat of the lights and the heavy Catholicism.

And so he continued the song, his voice too stern

To break. He projected himself into notes so high

His sternum shriveled at each pause.

I would have felt bad for him but

You can’t feel bad for someone

That you hate so much.

His eyes closed as he breathed in like a faucet

And I wondered when he would crack.

Crack: like a linoleum statuette of Pegasus

In the bathroom at the back of the nave.

So real and so beautiful. So I’ve been told.

He opens his eyes and looks at me, released,

Unchained from his façade. He breathes hard

And closes his eyes again, catching wisps

Of the stale draft rippling through the elders.

He opens them again.

He’s looking at me again.
No, he’s looking at nothing.

I’m looking at nothing.