Here I was told to rest
though with quill in hand I wrest
I fight setting paper alight
with heaven dark and hell bright

Hell is mine and His is heaven
Of that there was no question
Though neither were mine:
It was just
this war of mine…

So I lost sight
of day and night
and spent my life in fright.

When we were born,
we were afraid of the unknown.
The monsters, ghosts, and creatures.

We grew up.

As children we imagined
and believed in the fantastical,
The pixies, wizards, and dragons.

We grew up.

As teenagers we found connection
and believed in the supernatural
The demons, devils, and angels

I grew up.

And you continue believing in
demons, devils, and angels.

Regardless of my choice of origin
Whether I'm a bipedal ape,
or molded out of clay and rib
I sense it fruitless
To let the complexities of the cosmos
cause me strain

It does me no good
To give unrelenting effort
to a greed-like god
named “Understanding”

I am to wonder and wander
I am to live and love
I am to dance and ponder
To be free
of what's above

Sometimes, such as on days like today
I sit and I mourn for my long-forgotten faith
I miss the certainty of a Most Divine Plan
Those self-assured speeches of a holy man
Assurances he speaks for the Ordained Track
Promises of a Supreme Being who's got my back
On these days when I wish, reminisce and long
I can't help but wonder where it all went so wrong

It's not that I Believe that There Is No God
Or even that I am unsure whether to believe or not
I don't bother questioning if god is real
For there is a bigger issue at play, I feel
When I became faithless, it was just in HIS eyes
"Faithless" I am not; there's just so much to surmise

I have Faith that the sun will warm each new day
I have Faith that these heavy clouds will give rain
I have Faith in the ground solid on which I stand
I have faith; just not Faith in the Words of a Man

See, I have come to accept that I soon will die
More surely, in fact, than the sun that may rise
Any day that sun may not appear
That day of darkness that we so fear
I accept that any moment May advent my end
I accept that there May be a sunrise just round the bend

With my flawed, weak powers of human perception
Dependent as they are on my senses' inception
I cannot Know a god, not many nor One
Just as I cannot Know that tomorrow will come

Maybe it will, and maybe there is
after all,
But truly--
who among us can Know anything
at all?

I REACH OUT TO THE GREAT UNKOWN
with the natural hesitance of a child
nursed on plastic american protestantism,
always prosperity gospel or pariah,
answers just hidden behind a preacher's palm;
in retrospect i wonder what questions those
republican suburbanites crippled in their hatred
came to submit at the foot of the cross.
saccharine and soulless every sunday,
the rot reliably festering under the church stage,
brimstone traded for the wasteland of undecaying concrete.
i was baptized by a stranger in stagnant water,
now swaddled in the arms of a man who is not my Father.
i'm always the cold one. bad circulation when i'm turning away.
that abattoir left a pulsating wound at the
center of my chest— starved weeping
sickly and red.
every sunday, the worst thing i could do was be honest.
i worship with my hands,
i falter for words;
i never got to know the Lord in my youth
because He never called me back.
i find fragments of Him in lovers' eyes—
fingertips glancing over flesh as if
forbidden fruit, sweet real and warmed by sunlight.
i think God was always this;
physicality, connection,
the simple intimacy of making someone else laugh.
the only time i ever felt devout
was when i was walking to get an arizona tea
at the gas station next to the church with my friends.
stumbling over asphalt still sincere in my vulnerability.

He lifted his leg,
And ****** on
The Tree of Life,
The Tree of Knowledge,
And the entangled roots
Of all humanity.