ELECTRICITY IN MY BRAIN

Something beyond my memory happened, and here I am.

They tell me I was born.

That I rolled messily out of my mother's womb, was spanked into self awareness, and here I am.

And that somewhere in the nine months of my development, God took time out of his busy day to bless me with life, or so I'm told.

Now, somewhere in the stars and over the moon there is this great deity looking over and controlling everything (yes, everything) around me.

Or maybe not.

Maybe this is just a repeating pattern of questions with no answers and unsolvable equations.

Maybe nobody is out there, and the only people controlling, judging and looking over us, are our own consciouses.

But

Dear Sara

I would love to say I love you and make love to you and live happily forever together while our children play in the snow and become doctors and lawyers, but God says, God says, God says, Dad says, God says you can't.

And that when I come to see you and hug you and hold you and be there till I die, you say you love Brad because he loves God more than me, and I start castrating myself in front of you while asking, "who's Brad."

But Brad is your David, and that's hard to accept, baby.

Hard to simplify things as big as creation, after life, human will and the omnipresence of God into a couple of loosely followed traditions, a day out of the week, and the motivation of your effection.

Hard to know that when you were the only one I ever wanted, I gotta love something else more.

Something I've always said doesn't effect me

Something I've always said can't control me.

And now he's got you by the spine, you've got me by the balls, and ain't nobody thinkin' for themselves.

Thank you free will.

Thank you biology.

I'm not saying I don't believe, but I can't.

I also can't say it isn't possible for there to be something out there.

And just like with my art, and my life, and my school crushes, and this poem, I got no focus.

But I can't focus when there are so many little paradoxes.

Mel Gibson's anti-semetic Jesus got struck by lightning twice, statues bleed somewhere, Nostradamus was sometimes right, and I've seen people be possessed by spirits.

But that shit about Mel's movie was just something I heard. The bleeding statue thing is something I've never seen, Nostradamus died a long time ago, and fuck, those people at that Santaria thing that got possessed could've just been faking it.

I'm not saying that God is disproved by science, culture, and free will.

I just want to know why the only ones telling me about God are other people, who at the end of the day, are just as clueless as I am.

I don't want more paradoxes of faith vs. fact.

I want a sign.

And sometimes I'm mad.

I'm mad that my only influences toward the good grace of religious life have been practical reasons.

The figures of God and Jesus Christ hold your hand, Sara, saying "come, join us and make out with this beautiful girl" but that can't be the only reason.

And sometimes I'm scared.

Because people can't tell me that he is real, just that they believe in him.

Like Santa, and the tooth fairy, and Johnny Appleseed, and the Easter Bunny.

Nobody can tell me straight faced that after I close my eyes and stop beating my heart that I will fade into a decision of raging fire and horns or pearly gates and wings.

Nobody has died yet

So nobody knows.

And sometimes I'm scared.

Because, Sara.

You can tell me I'm going to Hell, and people can tell me that there is an after life. That there is a God, or Allah, or a collective unconscious or a great beyond where we will all join in post-mortum unison

And I can accept the possibility, but I can't accept the fact.

Cause I won't guarantee you a happy life, but I can guarantee that it ends.

And as I looked upon the man who once proclaimed Christ his savior, and now preaches atheism, I raise my hands tensely over my head like a man beaten. And with tears in my eyes I say to him, "this is all just electricity in my brain!!!"

But I'm glad God makes you so happy Sara.