Three Poems

I recently began working on a series of autobigraphical, free-verse poems, dealing with my Reformed, or Calvinist, upbringing. My plan is to write one for each of the five points of the famous TULIP acrostic (which represents the distinctively Reformed doctrines of Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints; we won't stop to explore their meaning here, but this Wiki article gives a fairly good theological and historical summary), plus at least one introductory poem and at least one concluding poem. I don't have the whole thing mapped out, but I have the first three poems written, and I thought I'd share them here. I may still alter them further, I don't know.

It should be, but isn't, unnecessary to add that I'm writing about my personal experience of Reformed theology. I am not talking about anybody else in the world.

Trigger warning: spiritual and sexual abuse.

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The Garden

When I was a child I walked in the garden in the cool of the day.

The trees, gravid with fruit, hung branches low against the sky,

Offering, encouraging;

The flowers clustered close along the moss-soft paths,

Roses, lilies, clove blossoms, irises,

Nectar and incense over smooth stones.

There are footprints left on the path,

Mingled with strange, polished markings, curved or coiled,

And insubstantial or mutating shapes,

As if in imitation of those feet.

Keening, crying,

A cockerel calls the alarum.

Depraved

His feet among the tulips, his hands brush the roses and the lilies.

‘This is love,’ he says, laying his fingers on my throat,

Forcing me down to bow.

‘I know it hurts, I know it’s harsh,

I know it feels nothing like any loves you know,

But you have to trust me,’

As I writhe and gasp and my eyes blur:

‘This is what real love is.’

The thorns scrape on my skin

And I cannot feel my knees or my wrists.

‘This is love. Stop crying.’

Elect

I am fifteen and I know much of metaphysics.

I know the subtleties of Scripture, and there is nothing in Saint Paul

That for me is hard to be understood.

Hold a prism before the mystery’s light,

And I shall define the sevenfold color of being:

Sovereignty, holiness, truth, omniscience, justice, power, and mercy.

All things are in his will and are his will,

From the starlit glories of the galactic pillars,

To the dirty bathroom where someone tasted salt

On the head of a twenty-year-old cock.

It was not me

Because there is no me:

There is only the will of my God.