My Holy (Revised Version) Poem by michael oliver

The Christian cup of tea - handed and asking
Asking the stiff white collared guru
Askig the collar - So what is Holy?
The clap trap of church speak delivered - Squawk!
Flapping the orbit of praise and acknowledgement
Defining God as a celestial numb nuts
OK-Yeah - BUT - What is Holy

Can you wrestle Rilke's angel
Emerging with a crippled reverence

Lust after Michaelangelos cosmic Erato
Daring to touch beauty with a pink finger

Will the knife new realized at the precious throat
Confirm the exile and the instinct Holy

Hidden by the cave -frightened of the imagined Holy
That echo whisper darking the volcano and the wind

Thrown down petrified in a sunlit courtyard
While the comforter quickens the Lapiz Lazuli womb

At the extremis of pain memory rebels
Shouting at the closing sky Lemi Lemi Sabacthani

Ok - Yeah - BUT- 'What is Holy'
Is all this Holy? so what - or

the spring buds confident and green
a BB pencil leaves its dust
an evening so transformed - Holy

ink ground, brush wiped, movements
the lines, the washes and omissions
the shaman dances Holy on rice paper