The guttering rain of home 

Stains the memory

Longer than churches

Can stand.

Is it duty to devotion

Or devotion to duty that keeps

Me standing in this field of ripe poppies?

At a loss. I don't know

How can we translate this chaos

Into words?

The grammar of suffering

Is indecipherable.

Lost in translation

Faith no longer floods my mind

My mind reminds me

That my veins are clogged with curdled liquor

And all is as it was before

Bloodstains on a wooden floor....

Leading to a locked and bolted door.

I stray away

From the empty promises of home,

Embed myself in this fraction of a day.

Remain the same for hours, minutes, days, drift away,

Escape a jarring remembrance of a past

Too raw, too ill-begotten, for this sunny day to last.

Christ, you send the rain on the just and unjust alike,

On our good and evil selves. You see straight into

The hearts of men who do not bend or falter.

You teach me to paint a mirage of hope

In this sandstorm of brokenness.

And to believe that the image is true. 

.......