Eyes Open ... Open Wide - The Download Single

EYES OPEN...OPEN WIDE is a collaboration of poetry and photographs by Steve Stockman and Gordon Ashbridge. All of the proceeds go to Capetownship a project of the Presbyterian Chaplaincy at Queens University through Habitat For Humanity. If you would like to contribute to fighting our enemy - the shack, then send a cheque for £8 payable to Habitat For Humanity NI to Eyes Open ... Open Wide, Derryvolgie Hall, 49a Derryvolgie Avenue, BELFAST BT9 6FP, N. IRELAND.

STOP THE SPINNING WHEEL (DO YOU REMEMBER...)

Grace is our only hope ... as individuals ... and as a world ... it stops the avalanche of tit for tat but needs more courage than war and the humility of a man dying on a cross praying “Father forgive them for they don’t know want they do”...

Do you remember when the sky exploded
Do you remember the sick stench of rubble and skin
Do you remember the children left waiting in nurseries
Do you remember the funerals without a coffin
Do you remember the lingering fidgeting agitation
Do you remember the paralysis of nothing you can do
Do you remember Jesus saying ‘Do unto others
As you would have them do unto you’

Do you remember the heart of the nation crumble
Do you remember the rip in the lining of your soul
Do you remember the day fair could not be mended
Do you remember despair spiralling out of control
Do you remember the news men lost for words
Do you remember fiction blurring into what was true
Do you remember Jesus saying ‘Do unto others
As you would have them do unto you’

And in vengeances vicious circle
In the perpetual cycle of hate
Someone has to stop the spinning wheel
Or everything is gonna be too late
Jesus said do unto others
As you would have them do to you
That grace can blow holes in our waging of war
So that peace can squeeze through.

Do you remember nowhere left to run
Do you remember the long cast shadow of death
Do you remember the people falling, falling, falling
Do you remember the fear for your next breath
Do you remember the panic ‘neath the dust of hell
Do you remember the heroes trying to make it through
Do you remember Jesus saying ‘Do unto others
As you would have them do unto you’

And in vengeances vicious circle
In the perpetual cycle of hate
Someone has to stop the spinning wheel
Or everything is gonna be too late
Jesus said do unto others
As you would have them do to you
That grace can blow holes in our waging of war
So that peace can squeeze through.

PHOTOGRAPHS

Written in the Philippines in 1990, this was rewritten for the HIV/AIDS pandemic in southern Africa...

Photographs don’t need houses
Photographs don’t get ill
Photographs don’t get orphaned
Photographs don’t get killed
Photographs never hunger
Photographs never cry
Photographs never get HIV
Photographs never die
But I see more than a photograph
When I dance on this street with you
Photographs never die of AIDS
And you do.

NAILED!

Covered in blood
Every fist that punched his wife
Every holy man that touched a child
Every circumstance that denied a life
Covered in blood
Every exploitative capitalist gain
Every dealer who preyed on the innocent
Every doctor who could have prevented pain
Covered in blood
Every murderer who is rightfully jailed
Every angry thought without a gun
Everything – nailed!

Covered in blood
The flowery words I use to deceive
The serial sinner inside my soul
And the days when I refuse to believe
Covered in blood
When my faith stands up too proud
My every selfish twisting of truth
When my insecurities scream too loud
Covered in blood
All those times my determination failed
And failure to take a chance to fail
Everything – nailed!

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