The Essence of a Deal with God

Charlie Bowden | Poetry

Look at them, those sculptured faces plastered on the side of a bus,

acolytes desperately searching for a motherland. 

The endless matter of the earth, once observed by Hubble,

has decided that I am a heathen 

to be pressed against a wall and drowned in demons,

echoes of witchcraft and water filling the halls of my heart.

The sound of gentle waves at night is a placebo,

mere computer puppetry if you ask me. 

Conjure us a man, build us a moon, make both of their blood run blue,

then we’ll talk.

Liquefied God, in little bubbles that dream of love, has reached his zenith. 

Launched from a pretend platinum edifice,

he bursts through clouds and bushes of ghosts,

crashes into the portico of a state-run church,

drops down to the surface blunt and curt. 

Forearms lodged in the dirt like logs in a stream,

away so long he forgot how to seem real.

You can’t reinvent the wheel but you can kill the one who made it.

The gas rises, sparkling like the sugar in medicine,

and spreads across the sky, stretching itself thinner and thinner into nothing.

That’s the very essence of a deal struck with God – 

you can’t trust him to know when to stop.

Charlie Bowden is a student from Hampshire, England, who discovered a love for writing poetry in lockdown after spending years studying it at school. His work has been included in collections by Young Writers, Black Cat Poetry Press and the Stratford Literary Festival. He also won the 2021 Forward Creative Critics Competition.