We are going to the Promiseland
but Eli’s not invited.
You’ll be gutted to know,
you’ve went into battle for
nothing and now
all of your wounds are salt-soaked
with his crocodile tears.
You wear the disguise of a wise woman,
someone sewn shut, acquiescent,
not peculiar.
Bloody from one thing,
stinging from another, God is a
bully and a voyeur.
His spies lay among the weeds.
The man isn’t God’s apprentice,
he is barely even his creation—
a backwards Frankenstein,
gorgeous as sin
but all the prattle is malevolent.
He made a diorama of all of the
wonderful places you could end up,
should you oxidize for him,
should he breathe you in. A brilliant display
of What-If’s, held up in sound’s painful
memory where he is still glowing
and you are still proudly naïve.
So many vivid and intense images and emotions here! Love it. I also love that your poem really makes me ponder. There’s a lot to unpack here. I feel like the narrator has been deeply wounded and feels abandoned, perhaps even judged by God? These lines struck me as especially powerful “Bloody from one thing,/stinging from another, God is a/
bully and a voyeur.” When horrible things happen to people, I have often had the same feeling about God.