This is the story of the Central Park 5

Background.
5 young black boys who were picked up in Central Park 1989, after a white female jogger was ***** and left for dead. They were among over 30 youths in the park that night, they were also the youngest.

Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana - All under the age of 16
And Korey Wise who was 16 at the time and who only went to the police station to keep his friend Yusef company.
Other than Corey and Yusef, they boys had never even seen each other before the night of their arrests.

The boys were coaxed into signing a Miranda card that waives their right to representation,
They were bullied and coerced during interrogation, into signing false statements, without their parents or any guardian present,
Corey, who remained in the station for Yusef, was later pulled in by detectives who needed someone to make the story fit. Suffering with both hearing and learning difficulties he was the perfect patsy for the police to force into a false confession.
The boys were all found guilty despite the lack of any DNA or physical evidence placing them at the scene, All but Corey were detained as juveniles for 5-10 years, whilst Corey was tried as an adult and sentenced to 15 years in an adult prison.
he spent the majority of his sentence in isolation to escape the beatings and abuse for a crime he didn’t commit.

Injustice -
When every bone in your body is screaming out your innocence,
yet the world has you on mute.
The hope that tortures you everyday, waiting for someone to hear you, believe you and
set you free.
How long before that hope fades, how long before the last glimmers of light extinguish , how long before you sink into the dark places that you can never fully come back from.

“Their story - My words”
Written with love and respect.

It’s the narrative that leads the pack,
Change that - and watch them stutter,
A verdict is more addictive than crack,
Whilst the truth melts away like butter.
The lies and scheming  - leading us screaming,
To a sentence we didn’t  deserve,
An innocent teen can ever be seen,
If justice has lost its nerve.

Politics reign over the rules of the game,
The scales have lost their balance,
Democracy has taken flight,
With  innocence in its talons,
It’s never about only us  in chains,
Not of prejudice and pride,
Our fathers and mothers,
Sisters and brothers,
Are imprisoned on the outside,

What have they created,
Other than hatred,
The voice of what’s right sounds so wrong
Our downfall is imminent,
They lock up the innocent,
The resistance to change is too strong.

There’s no adverts for convicted,
Our fate was predicted,
No Vacancies found for the lost,
They created us guilty,
It’s their hands that are filthy,
But they’ll never know the true cost.

So what are we supposed to do,
We’re free for sure - but free for who,
We can’t escape the stares or guilty whispers,
No matter where we’re always seen,
As guilty kids from that tragic scene,
We’re a haunted story played out in tainted pictures.

we can never be like you
We’ll always be last in the queue
We’ll never get to leave this social prison,
Victims of forced circumstance,
A twisted chance  of happenstance .
They took our chance away so none would listen,

What’s done is done - they’d made up their mind,
Irrelevant of what they’d find,
Once started they never turn back,
So our story is thus -
That when they see us,
It’s the narrative that leads the pack,
—————————-
Corey went up for parole several times, but part of the process is the verbal acceptance of your guilt for 5e sentenced being served. Corey wouldn’t confess to the crime he didn’t commit. After several rejected hearings Corey stopped going.
In 2002 Corey and the 4 boys were exonerated after the confession of a fellow inmate ‘Matias Reyes’ stated that he acted alone. DNA backed this up.
Corey was released and the 5 eventually won $41million in damages,
To this day the 5 men acknowledge that money can never give them what they lost.
Justice took them from themselves, now they must spend the rest of their lives being who they are.

CHAPTER ONE

My geographic movements during the past year could be called “A Tale of Two Couches.” So as June draws to a close, I assume the position here again on Couch California. I am back in Hemet, the place the smug among us call Hemetucky--as if there was nothing a couple of Mint Juleps and a **** of Blue Grass wouldn’t cure. It is the year of our Lord, 2014: so far an interesting year for women. There was a woman who wore socks to bed. There was always my long-time, here today-gone tomorrow, long time companion, currently teaching somewhere remote on the Big Rez, a southwestern Navajo concentration camp near the 4 Corners.  Next, there’s my current object of affection, that fine and frisky lady from The Bronx by way of Bernalillo--currently at home in Laguna Beach, Orange County. Trixie: my main squeeze at the moment.

And now, completely out of the ******* blue this afternoon, my cell phone rings and it’s ******* Juanita--my all-time favorite woman, Juanita Mi Favorita de La Quinta--a Coachella Valley town and desert wadi, extending its lucrative winter tourist season to become a significant, year-round retirement venue and a robust service economy feeding off it.  Juanita arrived there in the late 80s, in middle of her early forties.  She was unemployed, homeless, just a suitcase to her name and a two-year old toddler in tow. Her parents were there, as was her Aunt Peggy.  Juanita was always Peggy’s favorite niece, her favorite child, actually, Peggy herself being childless, never married.  Aunt Peggy put her maternal instincts to work on Juanita Rodriguez, her Sister Rosalia’s second favorite twin daughter.

Maria, Rosalia’s first favorite daughter, Juanita’s twin sister—MARIA: lives in Newport Beach and acts as an extra in many commercial ads shot in southern California and elsewhere, an irony never without sting for Juanita. “Que lastima!” Poor Juanita: as her would-be Hollywood Movie star aspirations disintegrated over the years, along with her unrealized lower expectations to be TV star, and even those semi-glamorous modeling gigs at trade shows and fairs—the elephant’s graveyard of the acting profession—failed to materialize, and now her celebrity habitat shrunken even further, to that sporadic but consistent mockery of stardom, I refer to any would-be thespian’s ignominious one-celled visual protozoan: The Extra Call List.  And—*******-- what happens next? Juanita’s sister Maria starts getting these parts, starts getting hired by filling out a ******* postcard, starts getting paid to look good in the background. *******: no professional education or instruction, no agent, and no need to **** off both the producer, the producer’s cousin Morey, the director and the director’s wife’s huge Golden retriever, Genghis--actually a mighty handsome animal--or needing to spill $4K on that Derma-brasion, Juanita inflicted on herself last year.

Juanita, as you already know, was the second favorite daughter and the second favorite twin of the family. She became the third favorite child in her three-child family upon the arrival of her slick baby brother Nico-- the Golden Child, who grew up to be a glib Merrill-Lynch stockbroker, office and residence, Beverly Hills 90112.  (Enter forcefully into the narrative, His Nibs himself, Sir Nicodemus of Hollywood, Juanita and Maria’s baby brother Nico. He speaks: “Excuse me, stockbroker my ***, as it says in a 11 point Rockwell Boldfont, right here on my gold-leaf embossed business card: Senior Large Capital Investment Counselor.”)

No, Juanita had a hard time just treading water in that Cleveland shark tank. And though she lacked nothing in the cuteness department, she had this one fatal flaw, namely, the gift of ***** and sass and a reflex to speak truth to power. Juanita: rejected by Rosalia as a threat to her hegemony as Boss of the Girl’s Club, was cast adrift on a tempestuous childhood cruel Montserrat sea, out there on the briny deep . . .  
                

                                      



High Seas: where many a tuna has a Sorry Charlie moment: “Star-Kist don’t want no tuna with good taste; Star-Kist wants a tuna that tastes good.”

Finally, Juanita is rescued, taken aboard the Good/Soul Aunt Peggy—that wayward bark Elisabeta Rodriguez, home-ported in Southside, Chicago, Illinois—the rescue at sea performed in classy, rather low-key manner; no Andrea Doria drama, but understated:

{Camera One, Helicopter above, zooms over turbulent ocean surface. Peggy, an oasis of calm, aboard the raft Kon Tiki with Thor Heyerdahl and his crew, floats by, whispering, “Going my way, Honey? Climb aboard. Have a homemade oatmeal cookie and a small glass tumbler of Jack Daniels.” Okay, no, that’s not fair. Sure Aunt Peggy drank, but never got round to offering you a drink until you were well into your 30s. Let’s just say she offered you a warm glass of milk, the mother’s milk deprived you by your mother, her sister Rosalia. Dear Aunt Peggy: a seasoned survivor herself, flawed by early childhood deafness and grotesque speech.  Yet, she had refused to settle for life in an asylum. She made a go at life.  She learned; she prospered; she flourished. And when the time came, she was there for you in the Coachella Desert, there for her feisty niece Juanita Ann.  Aunt Peggy: a loving spirit personified, became Juanita’s special confidant and counselor, her personal cheer squad of one. Juanita, of course, a former cheerleader herself--an early hint of greatness to be sure, a highlight, perhaps the highlight of her life, shown off every Halloween, still celebrated at American high schools each Fall. She is the Principal’s secretary at a huge suburban high school in Indio. Each Halloween, if the date falls on a school day, Juanita arrives for work wearing that scrupulously preserved, vintage 1966 cheerleader uniform, looking real foxy still, snug now in all the right places. Eternal Truth: Juanita has always and will always be good looking. Life with Juanita is perpetual “ooh la-la.”

So, I am on the couch that afternoon, reading more of Gramsci’s prison notebooks, specifically the philosophy he calls “Praxis.”  Completely out of the ******* blue, Juanita calls me on a RESTRICTED phone, as I said, Juanita, a torch I’ve kept burning for years, flaring up like a refinery flame--oil still very much in the present energy mix--hope springing eternal as they say, and instantly my mission in life is rekindling our lost love. Juanita’s conceived her mission prior to her phone call:  using me to keep her son from being whacked by the local Eme--the Mexican Mafia—that ethnic-pride social club that the RICO-squad-- using family tree socio-grams and other expensively-printed graphics, the one RICO keeps trying to convince us is some sort of organized crime conspiracy. The Mexican Mafia: like everything else practical and utilitarian in this world: THAT’S ITALIAN! And, if you are starting to sense a bit of ethnic chauvinism on, between & below the lines, you are barking up the right tree.
                                                           ­     
      
                                                            
(AUTHOR’S POST-SCRIPT EDIT: And, an ad for dog food right here? Not the best choice of sponsors, perhaps, at the moment. Juanita was far off from the ****** ***** that start looking not half-bad at 2:30 in the glazy morning, not anywhere near those beasts you find lingering in the airport bars you usually frequent near closing time on Saturday nights. No, I remind you that Juanita was all “ooh la-la.” In my next printing—and my Lord, there have been so many, haven’t there, Paulie “Eat-a-Bag-of-****” Muldoon? I will change out the Alpo ad, plugging in a spot for Aunt Jemima pancake syrup or Betty Crocker whipped cream, you know, something more apropos.)

Juanita, I really must hand it to you. You showed the greatest staying power, year after year as I moved further and further away from La Quinta, California. Juanita: you embraced what was good in me, ignored my flaws and strengthened me with your love for so many years. As far as you and Peggy, I guess it was a case of the “apple not falling far from the tree” one of many endearing Midwestern metaphors you taught me.  Peggy taught you, taught you to be kind and then you taught me. No matter what bizarre venue I pulled out of my ***, you showed above-average staying power, continued to visit me wherever I went, Casa Grande & Buckeye, Arizona, Appalachia, West Virginia, and even Italy, when I thought I’d try Europe again after so many years.  With each move, each time, Juanita renewed her commitment to the relationship. Meanwhile, I continued to test her, quantifying her dedication, undermining her sense of mission to disprove my worldview on the expendability of women. Surely, you know that one: the unreliability of women, women who disappear without saying goodbye. That old deeply etched conviction to never get attached to a woman, any woman, based on the empirical fact that women have been known to suddenly die, a fact seared into my still tender metal by the surprise death of my mother on 11 January 1962.

1962. It was already an insecure world, to wit:  The Cuban Missile Crisis. Nikita Khrushchev, in his time both Dr. No and Dr. Evil, namely the Premier whom we Baby Boomers saw as Boogey Man of All Time (Although Putin is showing potential, lately)—the Kennedy ****** (what else could you call it?). All these events scary, whether or not I got the chronology right . . . I remained on high alert for any threat to my delicate adolescent psyche.  My mother-Rosa Teresa Sekaquaptewa-died at 2 o’clock in the morning, screaming in agony while apologizing to my father for not having his dinner on the table when he walked in from work that prior afternoon. She’d already been in bed since noon, attended by two of my aunts--both my father’s sisters--who loved their Hopi sister-in-law, Rosa.  Also present was Lafcadio Smirnoff, M.D.--last of the house call medicine men--a dapper, mustachioed, swarthy gentleman, misdiagnosing her abdominal pain as a 24-hour virus, while she bled out internally for at least eight more hours, her whimpers alternated with screams, well into the wee hours of the morning.

I was upstairs in that dormer bedroom listening to her die. An hour later, Father Numb-nuts of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish teleported in, beaming directly into my bedroom from the parish rectory.  Father Seamus Numb-nuts, an illuminated Burning Bush . . . not quite the bush I ‘d conjured at other times, so many times alone with Gwen Wong, ******* Playmate of the Year, 1961, one of Hefner’s hot centerfolds. No, give me a ******* break, you momo! Whacking off is the last thing on a libidinous, adolescent guinea’s brain when his mama is being tortured and killed by God. Even Alexander Portnoy, Philip Roth’s early avatar would have drawn the wanking line at that unforgettable moment.

No, perhaps what I’d had in mind was The Burning Bush Golf Course where so much of Fletcher Kneble’s political mischief and government shenanigans got cooked up. You remember his books, some of the Cold War’s finest: Seven Days in May, Vanished, etc.

Or better yet, perhaps the greatest political slogan of the 20th century: “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” Thank you, Jesse. “Thank you, Reverend Jackson,” I slip into my Excellence in Broadcasting mode, my very own private Limbaugh. Announcing my on- air arrival is El Rushbo’s unmistakable, totally recognizable bass line bumper, courtesy of Chrissie Hynde’s Pretenders band mate, guitarist Tony Butler: Dum, dum, dum-dum, Da-dum, dum-dum-dum-dum-da-dum-dum. Single, “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders
Rush Limbaugh Song– YouTube www.youtube.com/watch?v=SScW9r0y3c4

I become Reverend Jackson. I emerge from the vapors, an obscure abyss of deep family pangs and disappointments, ever-diminishing public relevance and fade to black (no pun intended) and media oblivion. The only thing left is that line:  “STAY OUT THE BUSHES!” You will always own that line, Jesse--true political genius (to wit: Rainbow Coalition) Jackson that you are, despite El Rush-Bo’s virulent anti-Black animus, his predilection to mock you, Al Sharpton, Corey Booker, Barack “Hussein” Obama, and any other professional ***** in America. Isn’t it time someone came right out and tagged Mr. Limbaugh as the Father Coughlin of our time.

Meanwhile back in The Bronx, enter another man of the cloth:  It’s Seamus Numb-nuts, making one of his many well-documented spectral visitations, his splendiferous miracles and wonders. How much longer will the Vatican ignore this humble Bronx priest, this epitome of Sainthood; this reverent man, lacking only the stigmata for a unanimous consent vote? Quote the Numb-nuts: “God Works in Mysterious Ways.” An old standard to be sure, but a lovely, all-purpose bromide for explaining why evil exists in our world. Needless to say, I was underwhelmed; I lost God at that moment, consequently shooting myself in the foot--metaphorically-speaking-condemning myself to an unshielded life, life OUT THE BUSHES!  I went forth into the world without God, without that handy divine crutch, that Andy Devine metaphor for when one’s legs grow weary: a puff of smoke, a reverb twang and a nasty frog croaking “Hi-ya, Kids. Hi-ya, Hi-ya. Hi-ya.”

   Andy's Gang - Pasta Fazooli vs. Froggy the Gremlin - YouTube
► 3:55► 3:55
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H35odPm7b3w Aug 8, 2012 - Uploaded by jmgilsinger
Froggy the Gremlin -Tuba ... Andy Devine (Aug 24, 1952)

Life for me became lonely and purposeless. And probably explains my susceptibility to military discipline and a subsequent career in clandestine government service. In 1968--the very day I turned nineteen, September 25th of that year—that fateful day when I should have shot myself in the foot—literally not metaphorically--earning that coveted 4-F physical rejection, a draft deferment to be desired, that 4-F classification of unfitness for duty, a necessary loophole in U.S. conscript service law.  The Draft: last used during that great commonwealth Cold War purge, that culling out of the unwashed, uneducated children of immigrants, that cut-rate, discount, lower socio-economic ***** bank—the only bank where after you make a deposit, you lose interest, to wit: most Black, Hispanic and Poor White Trash parents.  We were cannon fodder, many of us got to be planted at Arlington and other holy American shrines, still wrapped in black or olive drab leak-proof body bags, doing our generational bit to strengthen the gene pool left behind. A debt, some would say, we owed the country and, given the sorry state of the global wicket, increasingly an obligation to the species. And if I had to predict an outcome, Fascism in America will arrive riding the white horse of the environmental, anti-nuclear Bolsheviks. One could argue that Communism has moved so far left on the political spectrum that it’s now the far right.  Concoct a legislative policy goal, accomplish it legally as the bill becomes Law, signed by the President, endorsed and blessed by The U.S. Supreme Court, the highest court in the land.

To wit: “Three generations of imbeciles is enough?” declared Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., an Associate Supreme Court Justice at the time, buttressing a majority argument harnessing the power of U.S. law as a legal means of purifying the race.  When euthanasia failed to win over American hearts and mind, the Federal Government played the war card again and again. Vietnam: undeclared and therefore unconstitutional--except for that Gulf of Tonkin ******* resolution. Vietnam: a cost-plus eugenics project, if ever there was one, although responsive, of course, to the needs of the Military-Industrial Complex.  ******* Ike: he warned us against Fascism in America. As usual, we ignored the man in charge.

Eugenics? Why didn’t the government just put all the retards on the stand, as John Frankenheimer did in Judgment at Nuremberg, a crafty Maximilian Schell humiliating a feeble-minded Montgomery Clift?  Why not, make everyone face a public tribunal, forcing all of us to testify in court, exposing our many substandard and borderline substandard cerebral deficits?  Why not force everyone to demonstrate just how ******* dumb we are, using some clever intelligence test, something l

it's the morning of Tuesday
June twenty fifth, and the fog, again
rolls in against lima and listlessly scales the escarpment
and Dana (like I) high on ******* and circumstance
has gone with Chris and Cameron, to watch from the cliffs
(this time something loose has shifted, and I hope they kiss).
and Corey is here
asleep to my left
tired from a whole day of travel and
Dana calls her an insomniac but
I think she's at rest.

And an empire is how she took off her shirt
and gold is the way she doesn't object
when I trace maps in her back and put an ear to her chest.

because I don't know who this is or why
my fantasies fixated here, but they work, unbidden
behind purposed eyes
buena vida es buena ficion y
good fiction is impossible to expect.
like when under your skin, New England, dunes
drift and dance to the hand at your neck.

because I have everything I could ever want and for
me in my figured out life, these flighty daydreams aren't problems but
more like preproduction films to maybe see, to get lost in, given breath and a bit of sunlight.
because I have never heard Corey complain or object and until I do I
will continue to give to her everything I have, will continue to
try to understand the invisible hairs at the base of her spine.
try to reward what goes unrecognized.

because we're all bent up patchwork machines, and
I'm sure Corey crumbles inside as much as I, but
when you fly to peru and lay with certainty your head against mine,
into a stranger's neck, and lie still
when you could struggle to explain but don't even try
when you are beautiful, but keep on going still...

the ******* can't what my hands will,
in walking the staircase of her spine.
keep me watchful, and up all night,
to try in fingertips to recognize,
that you are beautiful and someone needs
to see you to sleep. to feel you to fly.

In pressing times truth oft' lies so oppressed
And falsehoods rouse to speak in joyed debate
That burdens brought to bear upon the breast
Might anchor nought but will of one testate

What courage leant upon a graven guest
Not thrift of fear in bearing of his fate
But silent as all untruths so expressed,
Except to cry with cursed tongue, "More weight!"

listen.
i haven't fallen out of love with you yet,
and i miss you all the time
and i want you so much i can't even make myself breathe.
but i am exhausted.
i am exhausted with not having you.
i am exhausted with the back-and-forth i've been having with my heart.
i am exhausted and i am done.
twenty four hours ago i was planning out something to say to you.
i thought i was going to sit down with you and tell you.
i was going to tell you,
"i want you to know
that wherever you are
and whoever you're with
there is someone
here
who loves you
and who thinks you are special beyond belief,
and who believes in everything that you are."
i was going to tell you,
"think about it."
i was going to tell you,
"i hope that you'll love me back, someday,"
i was going to tell you,
"i don't expect it to be
soon.
but it's important that you know."
that was how i felt twenty four hours ago.
now, though,
i feel angry and disenchanted
and i feel exhausted.
i realize, now
that if you and i were to be you and i again
i need to be stronger
and you need to be the person you're going to be,
because i love you limitlessly,
in ways that, even if i fall in love with someone else, will not go away,
but the person that you are now?
i cannot stand.
the part of your life where you can't love me,
it isn't over yet,
and i'm not willing to feel small
and insecure
and second-best
again.
when we're the people we're going to be,
that's when i'll love you.
that's when i'll try.
i'm not willing to deal with who you are right now.
right now you are a boy
who thinks he is larger than life,
who thinks that his cheap beer and his horrible friends make him alive,
who thinks he is above accountability,
above vulnerability,
above love.
right now you are in a post-high school haze,
and right now you are on top of the world.
and because i'm me and i can't help it i'll love you
and i'll think the things you do are forgivable
and i'll think the friends you keep are forgivable, too.
but because i'm me and i can help it i'll love other people, too
and i'll allow myself to be as free and as beautiful and as strong as i can be.
i'll allow myself to forget you a little bit and it will hurt, yes,
and i will fail, sometimes, yes,
but it will make me who i am going to be.
it will make me someone who is readier to love you
than the me who already has.
i will take a year.
i will leave the country,
i will live and drink and love,
i will smoke and laugh and embrace all of life that i can hold.
i will think i'm invincible,
i will write fearless stories and sing fearless songs,
i will write fierce poetry and make beautiful art.
and at the end of it all when i am where you are now,
when my life is ahead of me and i have learned more of myself,
when you have grown and lived
and when you have gotten college out of your system,
then i'll see.
i'll look at myself and i'll see if i do love you after all.
i'll look at myself and i'll know
that all the things i did didn't matter because they weren't with you,
or i'll know that i don't need you to live after all.
i will love you or i won't and i'll tell you either way.
corey, listen.
you changed my life,
and i've come to realize that i have a difficult time living without you.
but you made me small,
you made me afraid,
you made me weak.
i let you have all the power i had to give,
and you didn't mean to abuse it, i know.
you probably didn't even know
you had it.
i wasn't oblivious to loving you more,
to needing you more,
to expecting more of you.
i wasn't oblivious to your growing indifference,
but i think the ways we ended were wrong.
i think we have the potential to be more.
i think, sometimes, that our hearts are too much the same for us to be apart.
but i cannot want you anymore.
i want to learn, again,
to be confident, loud, fearless, and brave.
when i have relearned myself,
when you have changed,
when we are slightly different -
more mature,
more selfless,
more wise -
we will know.
when i have learned to love you without fear,
to open myself without expectation,
to trust things better,
we will know.
but i'm not going to try until then.
what i'm telling you is that even though you may not have known
that i was even holding on,
i'm letting you go now.
i'm releasing myself from you.
because i love you, ******* it,
i love you like you wouldn't believe.
but there are things about you that i cannot stand right now,
and i'm not willing to try.
you're an *******, corey,
and you're stubborn and self-centered and stupid,
and those are all things we have in common.
you're just a tool, i don't know how else to say it.
it's the least poetic thing i've ever put in a poem.
and your friends ****,
and frankly you ****,
and the things that have happened in the last twenty-four hours
make me disappointed and disgusted with you,
because i would like to think,
and i do think,
that you are so much more than any of that,
any of them,
and you are.
but you're not someone who acts like it, right now,
and that's okay,
but it keeps me from wanting to try.
not that you care,
not that you want me to try anyway,
not that you would probably even love me back, if you knew that i loved you.
listen.
i mean every single thing i've said here.
i've said it all,
i've let it out.
i'm taking a year for me,
for flings, for ****-ups, for whatever.
i want you to know that.
i want you to know that i still believe,
maybe naively,
that you and me could be more than what we were.
i want you to think about all of this sometimes.
i want you to keep reading my poems
and to read that letter i wrote you,
and to remember that you are missed, loved, and wanted,
but also to know that i am freeing myself.

I've been feeling out of breath lately.
My lungs don't inflate properly anymore.
Waking up is the most taxing task that I have to accomplish on a daily basis.
I've been sleeping in,
And even after I wake up I stay in bed for hours.
It feels like the weight of the world
is crushing my chest.
Like an anvil is being dropped on my shoulders a hundred times a day.
I feel like Giles Corey;
Crushed by the weight of falling rocks.
Rocks that look like people I know.
Rocks that feel like sorrow and death and tears.
Being pressed to death by demons that accuse me of wrongness,
by demons who surround my head with dark thoughts;
by demons who claw at my throat,
tell me to do bad things.
I'm constantly running from the black mist in my mind.
Trying not to be swallowed by it.
But I can feel these shadows on my back,
and what lurks in this darkness nipping at my ankles.
And the more I run,
the more out of breath I feel.
And when I turn to give in to the shadows,
I have no more breath.
I can't inhale, because I've been crushed.
I suffocate; I can feel my soul dying a little,
Piece by piece, it crumbles until I am nothing.
I am out of breath now.

I didn't know it was that deep..
I didn't know that lust was embedded into my DNA..
Until I picked up every mans battle to read
Embedded in my chromosomes
Lord change the thoughts that flow through my dome
Inside my mind is like a flood, braking the Hoover Dam..
Gods grace is efficient
I am married but my mind is still fishing. .
This lust is a killer can I get a witness
I know I am free but I am use to prison..
Yes I am a ex-con
Reruns play back, my mind has my ex-on
Lord erase the tape..
For marriage to have *** why didn't I wait..
Will this sin seal my fate .
Should I throw in the towel and embrace hell..
Stop fighting and stop thriving for heaven
I have been dealing with lust since a year before seven..
My life a combination of fighting and embracing.
Lord you know all, did you know that this would be what I'd be facing..
Running hard but falling just escaping
The clutches of Jason..
I did this to myself after I realized it was damaging and kept watching...
I kept choosing lust like you didn't give me more options
I knew to study the Bible
But I choose naked models
Lust has became an idol..
Lord save me from time that is idle...
Tattoo my heart with your undying truth..
Deep in my heart I want to be like you..
Is it my heart to have choose ****?
Is it my heart to desire a ****?
When she lost and need to be fired and I too
Satan is not the boss..
My body is flesh.. Death is in every part
So my heart must be spiritual
Like you
But I cannot be fearful of what spirits can do..
Your all powerful your might is true..
So I should be a warrior through you..
Like hand me the sword of the Spirit
The belt of truth
The breast plate of righteousness
Show these demons what fighting is
Slice a jugular vein
Attack a demon I am not insane..
They shoot arrows Lord I need my shield of faith
Angels are friends and demons are enemies they are not fake..
I will not walk around blind ..
Lord let me see what you want me to see
What you want me to beat
The helmet of salvation..
Run in head first I am not bluffing
Cross that line then  guts exposed disgusting
The shoes of the Gospel watch me walk on flames..
Not by sight but by faith Lord direct my aim
Whenever I choose something outside of your will I am the one to blame..
I deserve flames
Yet Jesus took it all
I am forever blood stained...
Lord will I ever change?

As Captain Jack kisses of the last roach
Lavender's in the boathouse window shouting that she's grown wings that she's gonna fly
over Old Casey's boat above the painted lake past where the music surrounds
permeates with the pulse of noise
Green Hat pulls me over says my name is Corey
or Kelsey
Kelly's a **** name I tell him back home people call me Blow
Enter Tennessee the cinnamon sipping reds smoking sonofagun
Are you Kevin?
I ask the fingers that familiar flight of touch leading me
down and
down and
down towards our game
"Never have I ever" howls the young Indian chief, scarf draped in madness
the fearless warrior Peepeeohpee
Someone has trapped the moon behind the window the house on the hill someone has fed the fire with its secret light
This stranger this enigma this Laura I am her cousin
and everyone I touch is Kevin
Then with the sun Tittas steps off the boat as Jesus
sacred palms slashed from last night's ritual
Bums a cig from Drew or Not Drew with the thousands out west and the lotus flower arms
Floats on her back French exhales
As I look at our feet stained red with ink all slow spirals soft wind ***** flowers
then to the shore the fireflies still dancing through the dawn
Flying high
Secretly praying to each outshine the fade

Fluorescent messiah born in a haze of marijuana smoke,
Baptized in stale beer basins to be sacrificed to the hallucinogenic sunset
Half blinded by the stars like iridescent angels swimming in the reflecting pools at the edge of periphery
And of their blood and body the people lined up for miles to make offerings,
To pay tribute at the feet of the once and future king of the wasteland
One by one by one the wisemen wept and the shepherds sang blind hymns to the flock
And the Sphinx was the only one brave enough to ask the question,
If the form is blessed and the essence black, should the Son be blamed for what the Father lacked?
Swept up in a tidal wave of holy disgrace and blissful in deranged glory
Hallelujah, he is Risen!
Like the flag hoisted above embattled Eden
Kicked in like a broken door by savages on the prowl for petty victory worthy to hang above their mantle
But indomitable still, even crucified, martyred on a cross of felonies
And on the day of Last Judgement, when the Second Coming is at hand
Will Paradise echo the elation of the believers?
Will the kingdom of the Most High relive it's former glory?
Will the wasteland know peace again?
Maybe, brother
Maybe Eden is for the birds, and Paradise is better off burning
But the faith, and the love, are not so easily destroyed

Be there life after death
I shall look for you there
If not, then there too