God help me

ive forgotten how to pray
ive forgotten how to humble myself
ive forgotten what more there is
more than me
God help me

i am ready now
i want to know more than
me
more than my own little pains
and little joys
my own little life
i want to sacrifice myself
to something greater than
the life i can envision
i have too long carried myself
away from you
too long kept myself away
from life
i sacrificed my life in favor my control
i made the wrong choice
or stayed comfortably secluded
longer than needed
i courted my loneliness
and my separateness
together
and the cost of this courtship
is all that i have always venerated
everything i thought of as high
and above the world
above me
Lord
i am tired now
i am tired of walking alone
i am tired of this plane of individual conscious development
i have attained all i care to of it
i need something more now
something greater than me
greater than everything i have known
i need the thing i have modeled my life around
the thing made central and yet untouched
the thing i separated myself from
thinking i was heading toward
fear has owned too much of me
i dont know what i have left now
to barter
for this new thing
i dont know that i have strength left to change this course

i made gods of small things
Lord i courted
trivial depictions of that which is holy
never the truth
never the sacred
only its immature picture
and now i dont know if can recognize it
should i have chance to see it
my eyes are too full of tears
too dry from tears not cried
strained by the distance between them
and what they ached to see
that voice within
the voice that spoke so softly
and knew of so much more than
my eyes and mind and fingers have tasted
i can barely hear it now
it weeps uncontrollably for those things
it could not bring me to
what it could not,
in its gentle guidance
point me toward
it feels now that all that is lost
or that i am too lost to find my way back to it
the road i took
too long, too dark, too lonely
to travel back on
and the path is not circuitous as i once believed
i am not coming home
as i have often consoled my weariness with.
and now
alone
and tired and weary beyond words
i cry out in muted tones
in a faded memory of what
prayer was
to a God
i hardly know
anymore
can you help me despite
despite my turned back?
is my cry coming too late?
beyond all forgiveness?
is the penance too much
for this haggard soul?

i thought i was punishing you
for pushing me into a world
of pain, and ignorance
of decadence and decay.
i was punishing you for veiling
goodness
too well.
but i punished you wrongly
and myself in the meantime
separating myself from you
as if to test you
to test all of you
to come find me
to prove your love to me
to prove your worthiness
as if i was something to be won.
i see now
i punished myself
for not being enough
i am not enough
and i ask now for help
to stop this self imposed flagellation
deserved or not.
i want more.
please, God help me.