I believe in god our father and god our mother;
I believe that the gods have long ago cast their children from their home;
I believe in the masturbation of the gods
and the pornography that is human life;
I acknowledge the symbol and the metaphor;
I rest in the cannibal’s chalice;
I believe in the union of the apostates,
In the community of the believers;
I believe in a brazen honesty,
In the courage to be and be less than a shadow;
I believe love is fairy dust and with it we can fly;
I believe in intimacy our savior and beauty our redeemer;
I believe in an art that expresses both;
I believe that art can give our lives’ meaning;
I believe that falsity chains our wings;
I believe that falsity elevates our souls;
I believe that everything has its silenus;
I believe that rapists pattern themselves after the movement of the heavens,
That child abusers perform to a choir of angels;
I believe in the mysticism of words, in the power of language;
I believe in the child who gives language a playpen;
I believe in image our brother,
In thought our sister,
In poetry our children,
In the bohemian nursery rhyme;
I believe in the family formed from acceptance and trust;
I believe in the broken window and the vodka,
In the prostitute and the cigarette,
In pain and laughter, in fear and joy,
In the semen spilt and the eyebrow’s sweat.
I believe in the broken spirit,
In the holy catholic tempest
Of the least of saints;
I believe in the nirvana of a kiss and the ubiquity of the spirit;
I believe that through creation we are gods,
That through destruction we create,
That we are no more than
a creation of colors and
autumn leaves and
the wintry snow;
I believe that poets are magicians
And magicians are accursed;
And I look for the resurrection of the apostate,
And the life of a spirit yet to come.
Amen.
