31st January 2024
Holy Filth
To hell with purity.
Or at least to hell with what the righteous tell us it is anyway.
To hell with virginal innocence, unblemished faces, untouched bodies
To hell with polished halo’s, hallowed silences, shimmering radiance
To hell with clean spoken voices, eloquent speeches, flowery language, and choral sung hymns.
Give me the screams of a woman in childbirth, give me the language she uses in pain.
Give me the songs that cry out for justice, give me the squalor from the place that they came.
Give me a child with scabs on his knees, give me the joy of simple pleasures like these.
Give me the love that is shared after dark, a body that’s lived, that’s loved, that’s stretch-marked.
Give me a face that’s seen years of life, give me rough hands that have known toil and strife.
Give me humanity in all of its glory, in all of its passion, in all of its filth.
Give me a life that’s lived long and full, that’s run through storms and gone at them full tilt.
I don’t want shiny or whitewashed or clean.
I don’t want eyes that have never seen.
Life
In all of its hideous beauty.
These bodies are gifts to use, these voices are voices to raise.
The stranger, the weirdo, the sea drenched hero,
Are people to live with, to love with, to laugh with and dance with and even romance with.
Our hallowed halls are places of shelter, so fling wide the doors and let refugees enter.
Mess up the carpet, get dirt on the walls, teach the choir new songs, buy them some drums!
And when we have lived our lives full of grace, when we have reached the end of our race,
Let’s arrive at our deathbed, not pure clean and good,
But in worn out temples that did all they could
With skid marks on our arse and elbows all grazed
And the radiance of a life well lived on our now holy face.
