I suppose when talking about the end god has to come into it, or the gods , as I like to put it as I don’t want to give the monotheists a monopoly on the language. I come from a household where my father was atheist and my mother was , is, non-practicing . My grandparents ranged from atheist to performatively C of E.

There was once nothing performative about my mother’s Christianity, it was once downright radical. She spurned marriage as irrelevant and performative, then went on to have a relationship with my father that would last 3 times as long as the average marriage. There were family rifts over christenings. There was an iron ‘trade unionist’ resolve in my mother.

After brief childhood fancies akin to belief in the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas I was formed an atheist. But I can see the beauty and power of religious icons and totems, even if I also think that the power of a sunset or a rumbling southerly change outshines them.

When my dad died, I decided to fill my house with totems, or welcome the gods in  as I like to put it. From sacred heart Jesus iconography , to Shinto masks , to Taniwha carvings to a Baphomet they all crowded into my cottage. It was my version of a mid life crises . No sports cars or attempts at seducing 25 year olds for me , just the paraphernalia of an apocalypse druid.

Then Mark Harris the local vicar befriended me. We make a strange pair. Me invariably dressed in pentagram covered metal shirts , and the vicar drinking together , putting the world to rights. I taught him about Black Metal, he taught me that holy men can have doubt.

I guess this brings me to the seasoning of the gods that runs through my poems. All the Gods and None of Them came from a night drinking with Mark where I uttered those words to him. It sums up my feelings that if I did indeed believe in the divine I would feel ambivalence to it considering the absolutely mixed job its doing. Once I would have been hostile to it so I guess like my mother I have mellowed.

All the Gods and None of Them

I believe in all the gods and none of them ,I say to the holy man between sips of beer

He smiles back , part amused , part adversarial , part happy inebriated

If there are gods they are here , in this pub in a moment of happiness

I believe in all the gods and none of them , as the ills of the world jump from the screen

Children starve and innocence burns , the world a penance we are forced to hear

If there are gods they curse our passage , a million lives of sacrifice

I believe in all the gods and none of them , as I sit with my dog , a moment of communion

 Scruffy together on a park bench , surrounded by perfectly tended subdivisions,

If there are gods they are with me here , messing up your neighbourhood

I believe in all the gods and none of them , after four fingers of whisky

Three am fear of finite mortality , the arc of a life keeps extending in front of me

If there are gods they offer no comfort , no answers to insomnious anxiety

But I do believe in all the gods and none of them, much as I suspect they believe in me.

Another poem concerning Mark is They Will Hear You at the Vicarage . Both the title of the poem and its central refrain What if the Vicar Calls? were favoured sayings of my father.  These were you understand jests on my father’s part. His first-generation New Zealander sense of humour spiced with the icons of the English village.

They Will Hear You at the Vicarage

When I was wee my father’s favourite warning was

“What if the Vicar calls ? WHAT… IF …THE …VICAR… CALLS!? “

My nakedness, my vulgarity,

My messy bloody bedroom floor

All were to be shielded from the holy man of god

 Well that Vicar never did call,

Our family had no taste for Jesus

Or the earthly handler of his affairs

Well now I’m old and beyond caring

What any bloody body can think or judge

And the vicar does come call ,

And drinks my beer and my whisky

And talks poetry, life and death

And the bloody ills of the world

And the stations of the cross

And indecision and such certainty

The blood, the guts, and the stars

The beginnings, the endings, the fire

And while the nakedness is saved

My bloody bedroom floor is still a mess

And my vulgarity is practiced to an art  

And the dog humps my leg with abandon

And the Vicar doesn’t care

And I don’t care at all

But just maybe you would have

Sorry dad.

But then life is for the living.

In the poem I make out that dad might be disapproving of me welcoming the vicar into my unkempt home but the truth is my irreverence and lack of value attributed to ‘what the neighbours think’ comes from him. Never believe a poet, liars and cheats the lot of em.