I'm a bit apprehensive about posting this one, but that's kind of the point.

Object Impermanence

What is it?
What's the fear?
So worried
about scuffing the
whited sepulchre?

—a stroke of the brush
will clean that right up.
can't smell the piss
if it's covered in paint—

The censored sailor
still curses up a storm
under purgatorial bleeps
dead-set in slopping on
another coat, and I
mutter shit under my
breath when (I'm praying)
nobody can hear it.

—but what the world don't know won't hurt me,
and God's an infant lamenting
my new nothingness
as I leave the tomb.







If you want to take some more time to try and understand the poem on your own first, stop here.

This was a painful poem to write. I was struck today by how much fear I have of revealing more of myself than I am comfortable with in my writing. I am scared to death of showing what it is I really am sometimes. As a result, it doesn't even seem like me when it comes out. I think we keep an illusion very close to our hearts—that somehow, it's better not to be honest with yourself, with others, with God. I'm coming to the realization that I have often structured my personal life in a way that attempts to hide things—thoughts, feelings, actions—from many people, and from God. I have recently been trying to make a more concerted effort to counteract this tendency in my life, and it struck me that art is an area of life where honesty is not just valued, it is required. How can I assume that I could possibly create anything meaningful if I am afraid to articulate what it is I'm really trying to say because it's too self-disclosing, or because it involves language that I don't use on a regular basis? If this is what the truth of what I am trying to say hinges upon, how can I avoid it and stay honest in my writing?
Object permanence is the understanding that things exist whether you see them or not. Children below a very young age do not have the ability to understand this. They experience object impermanence. In attempting to hide things from God, or in believing that our actions matter more than our thoughts and our motivations, believing that these actions are the criteria on which we will be judged, we place God on the same level as these children who think an object that has been hidden from them no longer exists.

Pray for me, that I will become more open and honest with God and with people in all areas of my life.


note: If you think me a heathen now, please talk to me. I would love to have more than a one-sided conversation about this issue.