Holy Fools

You found God you say?

How cliché.

Hallelujah baby. Good for you.

The angels only sing that

‘cos Leonard Cohen made it cool

not like back in school

when you sung it monotoned

aged five, tinsel-haloed

when you thrived,

on Mummy’s love.

Dressed in Jesus white

and only you mattered

‘cos they flattered you

and said you were a star.

He found you in the bar

slumped in cocktails and cheap sin

when your star was gone.

Nothing to believe in

except for him.

You say he saved you -

wiped the slate clean

of the grime

of the times with the drugs

and the late nights alone

when you’re dead inside.

Phone off the hook

and dead eyes.

He sang Hallelujah softly

in the morning light

in his quiet voice

when he’d stayed the night.

Hallelujah baby.

Said he’d treat you right,

Ran a finger down your check

and smiled.

Little child you gave in

‘cos he’d wash away that sin.

Protect you like your Daddy did

and you could be that angel

once again.

Amen.

This is one of the poems I performed at a reading a while back. I wrote it because I wanted something a bit different to my normal style. I suppose it's a bit of an odd one in some senses. One of the rare occasions when I write and a voice that's not my own comes out of nowhere. This isn't exactly a peom about religion. More than anything it's a poem about people.


I think when I first read this out, one or two people thought I'd been listening to too much Leonard Cohen. If you're interested, this is the actual song that was going round my head when I came out with the first (very rough) draft. I wouldn't say the poem is based on it but I guess this is one of the seeds from which it grew into something completely different.

There's something strangely viral about the word Hallelujah. It can breed very quickly in the mind once you've heard it a few times.