In my youth, I attended non-accredited religious schools. They taught me the body was a unit without cells, and that to accept division led to hell. As I grew, all the fallacies instilled in me, well, they changed, too. I steadfastly rejected everything that can't be proved. I needed it to spit, to scream, to bruise. Time passed, and the Great Plains developed their own central myths. I was made smaller in the vast expanse of land and the dogma of countless hardcore bands. That, too, was decimated as my disappointment grew; their calls for revolution always being undermined by their sexist words, their slurs, their lies. I could never get a hold on myself. I never got a hold on myself, and when you asked, I'd say: If there's this world and another one, let's just get to the other one. But now we've fallen too far. Petitions for our security are denied. So march with me, arm in arm, O, patron saint of atheists, to the light. Now the cells that they denied existence of, rise up, rebel. They leave my body twisted, but I will fight on, still eased by the gentle looks you offer me, or your bracelets clattering as you lay out some medicine. Because you provide the antidote to both heaven and hell: A life that's worthy in and of itself. Chorus. Standing at these barricades, knowing that all symbols fade. But what they symbolize is something altogether different. Something altogether different.

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