Haiku #515

What comes from nothing?
Are you really living it?
Or reliving it?

Blood of the Volcanic Sands

Sulphurous decomposition leaves a conversation of desiccated remains

and milky white bones beneath a parchment skin.

A rictus grin tells of pain and a tear falls from my eye.

My eye is drawn to a yellow biro pen in the jacket pocket of the corpse.

I wonder who put it there, for later, when it would prove invaluable.

Now I take the pen from the pocket and see it has the lid on still.

I remove a notepad from my pocket, remove the lid of the pen and am amazed to see

that it still works.

Marooned as I am between dessert and volcanic eruption it is all I can do not to cry.

What will become of me?

©2017 Andrew Watkins

Torch Lite

Insensitive Cochons give me no air

As they root and feed root and feed

I must be the shit splattered everywhere

as they grunt and sniff, grunt and sniff

I forgot my really good line (again)

As I get pushed aside

and into the wall

bloodying my nose

that sprays all over them

As they root and feed, grunt and sniff

I sink to the ground

On dirty straw and exhale

Too tired to get up

Kicking an exclusion zone

I wrap my arms around my knees

as the shit soaks into my pants

and believe this is really happening.

It’s all part of Gods plan for me.

©2017 Andrew Watkins

The Wind

Let The Wind flay the dry skin from my face

Let the earth move me supine into rest

Let the stars move me heavenly into creativity

Let the moon dictate diurnally when I work and when I sleep.

Let my friends and family concern themselves over me

And let god take care of all that is heavenly.

Let the teachers teach the young in ABC and 123

And the trees that grow into forms will artists grow

inside as they grow older and wiser in the world.

And finally let all those who not believe below see

enough to convince them it’s worth trying.

From There to Here To Nowhere

Nice title Andrew!

Suddenly the music in my mind has changed and it’s down to Carissa liking my last post ♥. I was wondering earlier if love was what making me so sick of spirit. The beginnings of true love perhaps or something like that but I settled on my backwards tracking to when I asked God for His forgiveness of my sins last week. Seconds after I asked I was left with a doubt in my head. It went something like this: If you exist, then give me a sign (to say you heard my prayer) I brushed it off and thought something like denial would save me. (Huh?)

Seven days time during which time lots has happened that happens to fall somewhere over the thin line between good and bad, right and wrong, nice and horrible where your mood could be the deciding factor not the facts or opinions, evidence or intentions and I find myself here secretly glad I feel lifted up again (I do) and have something to write about again with alacrity.

So to Nowhere! Well if there’s no heaven then when I die I go nowhere, Right?

But if there is a heaven then everything will be OK? I get to meet all my dead relatives and we all get to drink Margheritas, Whoo! Eternal life! or was that only for Jesus! (Get my ignorance!)

But what if it’s all bollocks?

Or a monumental fuck up?

(In the Sky)

It’s better than hell, bound to be, but Hell could be fun, torture but fun.

Like its that simple, like you get to choose.

Like I did.

I never knew god was real. In fact, all the evidence I gathered pointed towards a non-existent entity of nothingness that lived nowhere in particular because it was nothing and, therefore, didn’t live anyway. But I sucked by the question? How does God live? Can something like God be alive like me? or an animal or a plant or a spaceship clone war model? Reading theology lead me to different conclusions. But it would say that. Wouldn’t it?

But I questioned God like something real so even if i contradict myself and say there is no god because there is no proof of god , YET I BELIEVE. I could be saved. Or dammed!

I also asked God for some help, also about a week ago. It’s hardly a sin. You should try it sometime!

Preach over.

Thanks for listening. Andrew

 

Write A Children’s Prayer For Christmas

I thought that I should try to connect with the magic of childhood this Christmas. So I thought I would write a Children’s prayer – a Prayer for Children to pray. When I was writing it I found myself remembering on some things from my childhood so I included them in my prayer and asked for God’s forgiveness. While in this frame of mind I found myself reconnecting with the simple ideas of prayer, which i had lost touch with as an adult. I soon gave up on writing a prayer for all children. (Which is just as well as they are probably capable of writing their own!) So I just wrote it for me.  I found this to be rewarding and cathartic. And the closure was a good thing to get so many years after the event. Perhaps we all have some hangups from our childhoods we could do with God’s forgiveness with. Try it. You don’t have to post it online. Just pray. Don’t forget to say Amen. 🙂

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Dear God,

Please listen to me now because I have lots to say.

Please bless my mother and father sister and brother with an amazing Christmas. That means to let them be filled with the Holy Spirit and to get lots of presents and to be close to the Lord Jesus whose Birthday we are supposed to be celebrating.

Let Michael, my friend have an excellent Christmas. Lord forgive him for not lending me his bike. That way I don’t have to forgive him.

Forgive Nick for roundhousing me.

Forgive Paul for playing grown up games with me without explaining.

Let the starving people of the world have food enough to eat this Christmas. And give them homes to live in.

Forgive my Dad.

Bless the saints and us, the sinners.

Amen

The Armadillo

Imagine that you are an armadillo with an armoured carapace. What would you shield yourself from? Birds of Prey? Predators that prowl  in the night? It weighs a lot this armor but really you as an armadillo have no choice but to wear it. It is part of them and protects them fro when they are most vulnerable to predators: when they are calmly going about their daily business of eating, preparing or maintaining a burrow, raising their young or whatever. The armor isn’t the only defences nature gave to the armadillo: a keen sense of sight, smell and of hearing also aid the armadillo in keeping vigilant when it needs to be. Our health, mental health, prospects, ambitions.

Beyond what we as humans know about keeping vigilant in our own lives is our faith. Faith can take on many forms. Faith as a person living alone is as strong or needs to be as someone helping to raise a family or running a large corporation.Why? Because you are human.But stuck alone in a bedsit without anyone to talk to all day long it is often the feeling that faith is without form to be strong and to celebrate the Christian festivals which all seem to be centred around family or community. Taking in the harvest, Easter, Christmas alone are all an act of will devoid of the variety and joy we were lead to believe that as Christians our lives would contain.

Be not bitter. Have faith becomes a mantra repeated indefinitely through friends, family and the media. Have faith because one day fortune will come along! Have faith, do not be selfish, think of your friends and family.

I am confident that many of you reading this can tell uplifting stories of faith has carried you through difficult and testing times and this will come as no surprise to you probably because as you have no doubt realised: faith works! When we are down in the dumps, friendless or feeling like that, when hope seems furthest away is when we Christians come through for ourselves and for others.

When it really matters. When the odds are stacked against us time and time again, faith and the presence of God and the Holy Spirit makes us strong enough to mend that fence, to take out and scrub the bins, to clean the windows, to wash-up and dry up.

And in this time now when nothing adds up is when as a Christian you can use your faith imaginatively or like the armadillo’s shell, just to keep yourself safe.

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Phew! I think that’s what ‘they’ call ‘cathartic’ in that my own experiences and views came out in my writing. Be that as it may I realise that the struggle many people face is very present and real and difficult, if not extremely so and prayer seems like so much p***ing into the wind. But I also know that the bible teaches us about Jesus the Healer, Miracles and believe that much of that is because stuff like that happens because God wills it to.

I am still waiting for my book on Lay Preaching to arrive, but I am going away for a few days now so there will probably be no more writing for a few days until Monday or Tuesday of next week.

I am still open to requests for writing on a Lay Preaching theme. If say you wanted a piece of writing centred around the parable of the miracle of the loaves and fishes I would be happy to attempt it for you, as a form of practice for me. It’s a win-win. There will be a delay as I do research, draft and read around your chosen subject. But so long as you are aware of this you can give me as much information as you like e.g. word length, audience, bent etc.

If any of you good people (or not so good) does wish to contact me please do so using the website. Bye.