Drunk Preacher

When I was a child

It was a Baptist Church that dictated our lives

A high-ceilinged building that looked modest on the outside

Yet was imposing within

Filled with pews of stained wood, sewed over with cushions:

Stiff, and made up of a fabric that was a nondescript shade of blue

My parents were the Bible 

And thus my head was filled with grotesque scenarios

Of demon possession and Satan rape.

A friend 

Who went to a prestigious university in Boston to study neuroscience

Later explained to me that my childhood fears were a heady combination

Of an overactive imagination

And something called intrusive thoughts.

It was one of those balmy summer nights in the middle of college

I had spent most of the evening wasted out of my mind

Drunk off of summertime freedom, forbidden desires

And 151 rum, a liquor so strong

It was sold in a bottle with a metal grill on the top

To reduce the intense flammability

The golden nectar burning my throat with all the force of fire

As I took swigs, filtered straight through the metallic grill

I stood up shakily on the bed, bottle triumphantly in hand

And preached to the atheists

About my fear, about God

About how much the two were intertwined in my head

My neuroscientist friend looked me straight in the eye

And said I could believe whatever I needed to

And it was okay

I can never not believe in Him

I told her

No matter what the church has done, no matter what my college says

It's been ingrained into my brain in a way 

That I don't even think the neuroscientists could explain

I'm going on a trip someday

I said

Like Jack Kerouac maybe

All the way across America

Or maybe I'll go to London

And live there for a while;

Smoking cigarettes and drinking wine

In a dirty bathtub and writing novels when I've got the time

I don't know what will become of me

But somehow God is there

Maybe someday I will escape the fear
Maybe someday I will preach from a soap box
Or a homemade pulpit or a mountaintop
Maybe all I will tell people is that God is there
Maybe all I will teach them is to stop being afraid
But that my life is worth living because I have something to believe in
Who doesn't exist in the cushions of the pews
In the cranberry juice rings left in plastic communion cups
In the cracker crumbs left on silver engraved communion plates
Or in the preacher who stares down at all of us
Looks me straight in the heart and tells me why I'm going to hell.

No, God exists simply here. And here is anywhere you want it to be
But God, God does not exist in your stiff, your bleeding, your angry, your broken, your church-born

Fear