I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Blasphemy!

I've been working on this for a day or two, thought I'd share it.

Good and Perfect Gifts

Matt Quarterman

I've read that God owes no-one anything.
Existence, heaven, noisy all-night sex
are things we don't deserve to have. At best
a man is just a cockroach, scuttling.
And that will just not do, as we all know:
the ship that our God runs is very tight.
We carry our diseases through the night
and morning brings a foot to grind us slow.


But can this line of reason still hold true?
He built the kitchen, bred this insect race
and masters' obligations to their pets
don't end when animals then turn on you.
We make him who he is, and so we face
the thought: he owes himself this massive debt.




It may be heresy, and I think I'm more or less fine with that. I've come to realize that even the most autobiographical poem is still art, is still fiction, is always some shade or version or half-truth. Whether I believe the theology behind the poem is somewhat beside the point. Your life is always just going to be the raw material, the jumping-off point for the myth that you construct around it.