Going to confession

"To those who have been far away from the sacrament of Reconciliation and forgiving love I make this appeal: come back to this source of grace; do not be afraid! Christ himself is waiting for you. He will heal you, and you will be at peace with God!” (Homily of Pope John Paul II on September 13, 1987 at Westover Hills, San Antonio, Texas.)

I.

I am writing from a lack but not to regain it.

A lack of the self, of an other from which to privatize myself

Of fences, and barriers, of the bushes that grow around the yard

Where I privately get drunk and beat children.

I have exposed myself to the neighbors in the most egregious way

Only to find that the houses across the street are empty and have been

Long enough that their structures are condemned and dust

Leaks from breaking rafters.

Understood in this way, contrition is therefore, the beginning and the heart of conversion, of that evangelical metánoia which brings the person back to God like the Prodigal Son returning to his father, and which has in the sacrament of Penance its visible sign and which perfects attrition.” (John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Reconciliatio et Pænitentia, n. 31. 1983.)

II.

I am writing in the way I stayed up until two editing

and drinking warming flat beer.

I am writing because I am a triptych, depending on your view

Of where I begin,

I do not have a sex life. I am one, though, in a nonconfessional abrasive way

The best thing I can do (and my most loving act) is to cut the inside of my lips with razors

And smile,

Not to show the pain in the smile

But because smiling erases the pain and shows the blood that tastes like

musk or semen, a coppery acid that has less the acerbic mushrooming smell of them

and carries new life the same way.

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell; but most of all because they offend you, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.

You may now go to Confession.

III.

This poem should not be disturbing, really, it is not auto, not biography, but more

Auto than biography,

A sense that it has lacked its writer

That it is its writer,

That I who am typing feel disconnected with its form

And that is the closest you will get to my private vision of myself

A rude confession to highlight the underarching accomplishment of

confession, of never catching it except by drawing a line where we are all greek, all roman, all jew and gentile.

The one Pauline ethic is that we never get it right.