Nicole Payne - Baptized (Poetry)

Baptized

What is Baptized?

A font full of lies? Or a font to god’s eyes?

Bathing to prepare for a future more wise?

Bathing your soul for the day you die?

Or running away from those with blue hair dye

 

What is Baptized?

In dirty waters, it made Jesus clean.

In clean waters, it made a white baby scream

The same baby grew up and “sinned” at 18

Dressed like a woman, Her church shunned her, forced her to leave

She found a new god, one immersed in ecstasy

But filled with rituals to promote gluttony

Spoken through slurred speech and seen with red eyes

But one that won’t define her through a screen full of lies

 

What is Baptized?

Some say it washes your sins and saves

Some say it dispels your darkness, night to day

Some say it is needed to avoid a life of pain,

For it is medicine and will take all my problems away

But some go deeper, call it a beginning and an end

To fall from rituals, while at the same time ascend

You reject Satan while creating a covenant

Or is it a weapon and convenient

To justify behaviors that should be deviant

So a gay kids bullies can be punished so lenient

So a way one dresses can be called disobedience

But no matter of one’s appearance, origins, or size

Stepping in a pool they may realize,

 

What is Baptized?

Many eyes are locked on my preference of appearance

The same eyes are shocked to learn I pray nightly for perseverance

That the beads of a rosary are touched by my painted nails

In the hands of Jesus on my cross. He gazes down at my lip gloss, but to no avail

I am called lost, and sinning

Which caused me to retrace my steps, and go back to the beginning

To the water that prepared me for (Hey-soos) revisiting

He uses my prudence to provide tranquility

But this definition has more meaning, when I realized

 

What is Baptized,

Cleansed

Total comfort inside and out-

Landishly happy

The water is cold

And you are submerged, suddenly warm

You are immersed, you dive deeper in blue waters

Pink fire warms your soul and sets it ablaze

Joy wraps her arms around you and gently lifts you out, you look up

In the mirror and see someone new, someone old, someone whole

there is peace in your soul

You’ve arrived

You found grace.

 

These images described have interest to me

Do they define baptism? Or is it just one way to see

Terms that feed unease and contradictions.

For those words are described by many in two human conditions:

One, the Christians who live by the sacred traditions

And the other, Transgenders, who began their transition

We can enact beatings through tweetings to the day of rapture

But there is a larger picture that can be captured

For in the end these feelings leave you to decide

What is Baptized?