Heaven’s Gate Exit Statements - a Mosaic - Rocco de Giacomo

                                                            People don’t join cults; they follow hope

I don't deserve it, but you are giving it to me. 

This is, this is, a godsend, this is the answer 

to everything. This place, it's become so corrupt, 

ungodly, polluted, so far beneath the Next Level 

and now it’s the end of the age; these flesh 

vehicles finally wear out. To stay here, to reject 

the choice to go, is suicide, the same thing 

happening again. We won't die though. I regret 

the time wasted outside this classroom, them 

helping me and nourishing my Next Level mind, 

a chance to save the part that may become

a child in our father's house. Ti and Do 

are the way and the truth and I have been 

looking for this for so long. We won't die. 

Though we may appear dead to you.

Note: “Ti and Do” are the names of the Heaven’s Gate founders Bonnie Lou Nettles and Marshall Applewhite.

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Rocco de Giacomo is a widely published poet whose work has appeared in literary journals in Canada, Australia, England, Hong Kong and the US. The author of numerous poetry chapbooks and full-length collections, his latest, Brace Yourselves – on the representation of the individual as it relates to the Zeitgeist – was published in January, 2018, through Quattro Books. His next collection, Casting Out, will be published in 2022 via Guernica Editions.  Rocco lives in Toronto with his wife, Lisa Keophila, a fibre artist, and his daughters, Ava and Matilda.