Before you were alive
Magnolias blossomed
Rain fell
And young men died in trenches
In cotton fields
And in Jallianwala Bagh
British soldiers opened fired on unarmed civilians
Killing at least 400

Before you were alive
Algae or cyanobacteria
Found their way into fungi
Created photosynthetic mycelia
(Lichen)
And life as we know it followed after
Including
At one point very recently
You

Before you were alive
Europeans killed all of the passenger pigeons
Made mountains of buffalo skulls
Starved the Nehiyaw
Fell in love
Tried to offer their children a better life than they had

Before you were alive
The place you now live was the floor of a sea
Was buried under miles of ice
Was a forest
Had drinkable water
Even badgers
Badgers!

Before you were alive
Other beings lived
And died
And your Hydrogen
Your Carbon
Your Oxygen, Calcium, and Phosphorus
Were a part of them
And after you die
Your Hydrogen
Your Carbon
Your Oxygen, Calcium, and Phosphorus
Will no longer be yours
They will be a part of someone else
A part of very many someones else

Before you were alive
An infant girl held her hands up to the rain for the first time
Said wow
And her mother was bayoneted by soldiers
As she marveled at the water that fell freely from the sky
And when the soldiers tossed her in the air she laughed
The way she laughed when her father tossed her
And caught her
Tossed her
And caught her
And she was still laughing
When she landed on the muzzle of a gun
And somewhere in Poland
A little boy and a little girl
The only survivors from a boxcar full of frozen corpses
Tripped and held hands as they fell face-down into the earth
Before a gate that declared: Arbeit macht frei
Where the dogs tore them to pieces
And the grass was just beginning to rise from the soil
And on the other side of the world
Three kids the same age
Set out from a residential school
In the heart of winter
Temperature: -42
One with no shoes
But all with enough courage and certainty
That they never wanted the priests to touch them again
That they almost covered all the miles home
Before freezing to death

Before you were alive
Dinosaurs walked the earth
And the comet that ended them
Was still millions of years in the future
But one hundred and eighty million years is a pretty good run
We’ve only been around for 2.5 million years
And look at everything we’ve done

Some days you feel so sad that it confuses you
Are you still so sad after all you’ve been through
It’s not like this is the first time
Or the second
That you’ve been hurt
And that you’ve overcome

Some days you think you are invincible
If you could just get enough sleep
But the sleep doesn’t come
And the breaks are more like pauses
Than times of recovery
Like coming up for air
Instead of getting out of the deep-end

Some days you’d like to know
Just what you can and cannot do
And where you need to grow
And where you need to let go
And what fights you should fight
And what’s too much for you

Most days you want to be a good person
But most days you know that that is more
Than just one person
Alone
Can do

It’s not so much that I stopped believing in god
As I ran out of things to say
To someone who never speaks
Or at least not in any kind of way
That we would consider essential to a healthy and loving relationship.

But really the idea that the creator of all this
Would somehow desire a personal relationship with the tiny part of this that I am
Is kind of like suggesting
That I should or could somehow have an intimate relationship with subatomic hadrons
Who live for merely 10^-23 second.
Only that comparison actually vastly overestimates
My significance
And vastly underestimates
Any so-called god.
And maybe Christians need a 6000 year old earth
So that their god will be small enough
For them to be noticed.

But as for me
I worship the fungal networks
Who distribute food equally between all the trees of the forest
Otherwise each kind of tree
Would only share
With their own kind.

As for me
I worship the Influenza HA gene
Which has evolved for evolvability
And which exhibits codon bias
Within the amino acids that make up the HA1 epitopes
And in this way
It constantly gives rise to sudden, novel, shocking, and enduring forms of life.

As for me
I worship the Hydrogen
Which was born in the moment the universe burst forth
When nothingness orgasmed
And said that it was good.
And now this Hydrogen makes up approximately 10% of me
It is infused with my consciousness
It is infused with its own consciousness
We now share a consciousness
And when my body that I am rots the Hydrogen while rise
And some of it will exit the atmosphere
And some of it will travel
Back and out and down the Milky Way
(Or what the Navajo call Yikaisdaha—That Which
Awaits the Dawn
And what in Sanskrit is called
the Ganges of the Sky
And what the Anishinaabe call Jiibay Kona—the
Spirit Path)
Perhaps some of my consciousness will go with the consciousness that this Hydrogen
Has had since the dawn of time.
Because where is the line between the “I” that I am, and the “I” that the Hydrogen is?
And if it seems odd to suggest that Hydrogen has an “I”
Surely that is no more odd than saying the same of me.

(And Influenza, too, is both an “I” and not an “I”—it is so adept at adopting various genetic sequence clusters, playing around with its own genes, taking over genes from host cells, and from other Influenza virions that are present in a host cell but who have come from a different strain, that one cannot even properly speak of Influenza as a species but must refer to it as a quasispecies wherein various clades become more or less dominant but wherein there is not enough shared genetic information to be able to speak of Influenza as a proper species—and I think that the “I” and “not I” that I am, composed of so much star dust, so much bacteria, so much archaea, so much gas that has been around since the dawn of time, so many elements that have passed through innumerable other life forms, so many quarks and muons and neutrinos and positrons, that I think perhaps I, myself, am a quasispecies.)

But, anyway, as for me
I worship Jessica
With her fingers in my mouth
And her sweat on my skin
And her hair falling across her breast
As she parts her lips
And breathes.

Listen, children, I’m going to tell you how the story really goes:

Once upon a time, there was a woman named Heiltsuk and a man named Gitxsan and they lived together in the forest. Heiltsuk was an artist, a gift-giver and a boat-maker and, where the forest met the sea, she made large boats that could sail for many days and nights out on open water. In the summer, she would harvest food. In the winter, she would dance and tell stories to Gitxsan. Gitxsan, himself, preferred the mighty river that ran through the forest to the open waters of the sea, he was drawn to the animals and plants of the river valley—the frog, the eagle, the wolf, and the fireweed, all of which he would carve onto long story-telling poles. He felt most at home fishing when the river mist hovered over the water.

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He laughs and smiles quickly
the way that people do
when they want you to know,
at the core of your being,
that you’re lovely
and it’s going to be okay.
All of it.
No matter what you say or do.
You’re lovely and it’s going to be okay.
That’s how he smiles at you.

It took me several years before I began to realize
the scale of his pain.
I think I missed it
not because it’s so small
but because it’s so vast
and with pain like that,
well,
what’s a fellow to do?

He had a mother once.
A father once (of sorts).
A wife

just once.

And at night his heart departs his body
and follows deer-tracks to the underworld
Where he wanders like Orpheus, Lynda
Lynda
Lynda, where are you?
And where am I?
And can it be that I can be where you are not?

His children (of sorts) know that he is wise in the way of fools
who know that wisdom is overrated
so he might as well just sit and listen awhile.
I sit beside him as he doodles.
I watch him paint.
And when we parted at the airport in Los Angeles, I kissed him on the mouth.

I.

before you read any further stop
and breathe
and breathe
and breathe
do this as many times as necessary to still yourself so you can listen
(because I want you to read this aloud to yourself to your lover to your friend)
it’s okay
I’ll wait

II.

listen
we are those who search for words—me
the writer and you
the reader who hears my words in your own voice
in the voice of your lover
in the voice of your friend
but what we hope to find is more than words
(more than letters more than phonemes)
and this is why poems are always written anew
because all writers are failures
but all readers are not
writers seek what they cannot find
but readers find what they cannot be given
so read on

III.

an inability to find what you seek
is not evidence that it is not there
perhaps it is so vast
that you can ever only glimpse it sideways
take a year to travel around it
and even then at a great distance
so that its closeness does not swallow you up

IV.

or again
perhaps it is so vast
that you can ever only glimpse it momentarily
through cloud-breaks
or clearings in the overstory
as you ascend

V.

I knew a man who binged on poetry
the way others binge on food cocaine or alcohol
the way the lonely binge on empathy
but emotional intensity
can only be sustained for so long
and even the most violently traumatized
eventually fall asleep

so stop
breathe
and listen
breathe and listen

VI.

I knew a man who looked for the words
That would make his body remember all he had forgotten
of innocence
beauty
hope
he wanted words to touch the heart of grief
which he could never find
or uproot
although he felt it
everywhere
he wanted words to say I love you and
I’m sorry and
I’m scared and
I’m tired
in ways that would make others listen and say
me too oh my god me too

I knew a man who wanted the word that would put an end to all our speaking
endless pleading endless noise
prevarications arguments
explanations concepts theories
he wanted the one word he could speak
so that having spoken it
he could forever after be silent
and disappear
into wonder
by which he meant
contentment

VII.

everything
every nothing
every(no)thing
no
no( )thing
in the space right there
the space between the thing and nothing
the word is there
( )

VIII.

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Introduction: Jesus and then Christianity

[L]et everyone who can, smite, slay, and stab, secretly or openly, remembering that nothing can be more poisonous, hurtful, or devilish than a rebel. It is just as when one must kill a mad dog; if you do not strike him, he will strike you, and a whole land with you…

For baptism does not make men free in body and property, but in soul; and the gospel does not make goods common except in the case of those who, of their own free will, do what the apostles and disciples did in Acts 4. They did not demand, as do our insane peasants in their raging, that the goods of others—of Pilate and Herod—should be common, but only their own goods. Our peasants, however, want to make the goods of other men common, and keep their own for themselves. Fine Christians they are! I think there is not a devil left in hell; they have all gone to the peasants. Their raving has gone beyond all measure.

~ Martin Luther, “Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants.”

I confess that I have had some strange bedfellows and traveling companions over the years. I’ve kicked it with Evangelicals trying to spread the so-called gospel on University campuses, I’ve chilled with old men drinking cooking sherry in back alleys, I’ve partied with “low track” sex workers, I’ve attended charismatic big tent revivals, I’ve visited real estate millionaires in penthouses overlooking English Bay (in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish territories—I was friendly with their coke dealer so I sometimes got invited along), I’ve studied Greek and hermeneutics at Bible college, I’ve been a regular at many a dive bar, and I’ve participated in ceremonies with self-identified shamans and witches (psychedelic plants may or may not have been involved). Suffice to say, it has been an interesting ride. However, in all these interactions over all these years, two things have remained constant: an abiding interest in the early days of the movement that coalesced around Jesus of Nazareth in the first 60 or so years of the first century CE, and the constant friendship of and rootedness within communities of people who have been oppressed, abused, abandoned, and left for dead in the cities of the territories occupied by the (illegitimate, genocidal) Canadian state. Along the way, I came to the following conclusion: more often than not (far more often than not), those who have no upbringing within Christianity are much better equipped to easily and intuitively understand who Jesus was and what he was about, than those who were raised in some kind of Christian home. I remember as my perception of Jesus slowly began to transform based upon my studies, experiences, friendships, and allegiances, I would share ideas or thoughts that seemed “radical” to me (as a post-Evangelical, post-Christian person), and friends of mine who had no experience at all within “the Church,” would respond by saying, “well, yeah, that’s kind of what I always thought Jesus was doing.”

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I was meeting with Ruby and her teacher yesterday and so I gave you the house keys and you went home alone and let yourself in. Sometimes, during the lunch hour at school, you and your friends walk to Pizza Hut before racing back to beat the bell. This is all occurring so nonchalantly now, even though only a minute ago this kind of activity seemed unfathomable to me. You’re a boy now—no longer a little boy, you’re a boy boy—silly, and playful, and thoughtful, and kind. We banter now. But we still get our cuddles in. The other night I stroked your forehead and lay beside you in bed awhile. When you were sick with the flu last weekend, I wrapped you in a blanket and held you in my arms until we both fell asleep on the couch. You snored. I might have, too.

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