I – Rain Over the Dying Empire
The Weather Forecast looks grim today
This mess won’t clear up any time soon
So button up your jackets and turn up your collars
And mark up your calendars for a time of grey skies
There’s a storm on the way
We’ll all be blown away
The reign will never end
Until we’re washed clean off the map
But don’t you worry darling viewers
Just find yourselves a shelter, you’ll be fine
Don’t go scrambling in the smog to find hope: it’s always there
It pains me to be the bringer of bad news
Oh! Dearest Public I always pride myself in saying Tomorrow will be a brighter day
But oh! My friends I also promised I would never lie to you
We have serious weather warnings on the way
They will ravage your livelihoods but don’t let them take your souls
We stand strong against the tide of the oncoming gale, the hail and the thunder
If they weather away each tiny bit of all you hold dear
Raise your fist to the angry sky and scream for what is right
I promise, one day, sunshine will be legal again
I’ve tried to make you laugh and I’ve tried to make you cry
But it’s difficult when describing the movements of cold air across the land
If you ignore the hot stuff blowing out of parliament these days
It’s possible to force a smile: a fraction of happiness for hollow promises
They know nothing of how to save the world, they just want to escape
They’re harvesting the strong so they can find another home
Sure, they bejewel their guillotine as it hangs above your throat
Because they think that you’re impressionable but my advice is let them think so
Because Nature wants out of the pact she made when God abandoned us here
And they just want revenge because she’s stronger than they’ll ever be
The Mother they used to love, that they cast down, has come to kiss them with her poison passion
She won’t ask for their forgiveness as she beats them down, begging for hers
I’ll leave you with my darkest secret since you probably won’t see me again
As they surround me I want to let you know it’s been incredible
Striding through the desert carrying you upon my shoulders
And so I’ll thank you and blow a goodnight kiss to you
If there’s anyone they’ve left alive
They have finally come for me
Goodbye

II – The Broken Figurehead Speaks
We interrupt this broadcast with a message from the high command
Good evening noble people, please ignore what you have just heard
And keep on working for our greater good
For as we all know, it is better than theirs
Regrettably, my tolerance is thin for behaviour like that of our darling Weather Reporter
And my mercy is negligible for those who stand against us…

III – Martyrdom for Sunshine
As I stand above the ocean, with the army at my back, looking out at this sunset
It feels like the first time I have seen such beauty
Though waves gallop into the cliff below there is a malleable peace
It penetrates to the deepest corner of my heart
As they load their guns and prepare to fire, I think of the others who they have killed
And how privileged I am to have the sun as the last thing I see
If God will have me I’ll happily join his angels now
I look down the crippled rock face to the water, miles below
What have I got to lose?
I’m going to learn to fly…

what should i wear today?
should i be dressed in white?
or should i mirror the passing night?

should i be in green?
but of life or of envy?
or should i be in purple?
but of royalty or of poison?

should i choose red?
for red is the color of love
but also the color of rage

or should i go blue?
of calmness or of sadness?

what should i wear today?
who should i be?

"Man not the less, but nature more,"
saith not the lowly, but the lord*,
and I, not at all, and nature only,
rather clutcheth thorn of poison forb,
then remain on path, remain lonely,
prefer their canine tooth to absorb,
then the leash that walketh,
would ask Belladonna for a kiss,
then ask for wave from jingling pocket,
instead of between their signs that hiss,
stroll by ticks and toxin in hemlock forest,
and as I sit high atop glaical till,
inbreath nature--exhale ill.

today you hurt me
and yesterday and tomorrow
i hurt you
you whispered
that you never meant it
though you did
at the time
and the courage
to say such a poisonous
permanent
thing
is stronger
than any kind of love
you had for me
at the time
but i guess
i just have to forget
because my love for you
is too weak
and far too tired
to hold up restraints
and build walls
against your
careless poison
you’re the clots in my blood
the scars on my wrists
the tumour in my brain
and the salt on my cheeks

WE'RE ARCHBISHOPS OF MISERY, BUILT ON ENDLESS LIES, CORRUPTED POWER AND STATE OF MIND. FEEDING THE POWER-HUNGRY WITH CATHEDRALS DRAPED IN GOLD. WE LAID SILENT FOR YEARS, BURIED IN A TOMB OF DUST. WE WERE REBORN, RESURRECTING YOUR TRUST, AND LEFT YOU DEAD IN A SEA STAINED THE DEEPEST OF BLOOD REDS. STILL YOU PRAISE US, RAISING YOUR CHILDREN WITH OUR MISTAKES AND CRIMINAL NATURE AS THEIR SCRIPTURE. GO FORTH AND POISON THE EARTH. WE'RE SERVING AN IDEA WITH EMPTY FAITH, DEEMING THE SINS AND MORALISING THE OBVIOUS. SERVE US, PRAISE US. SPREAD THE WORD OF GOD.

A captain always goes down with his ship
There is honor in that, valor
Guns blazing as you sink, defiant to the end
I never understood where they got the courage
Found a cause worth dying for
Why not be captured?
Isn't prison better than death?
Those Lords of the high seas, they always seemed so confusing to me

I think I understand it now though
Staying attached to a lost cause
Because when you invest so much of yourself in something
It is really, really hard to let it go
So despite odds that most likely will crush you
You battle on, heels dug in, back to the wall
This love is a poison, and she will be the death of you
But you continue fighting the good fights; it is all you know how to do

Sleep deprived
Deranged just a little touch/just a little
Tip
Crack your
Knuckles work your bones
All around this town is shaking
Shiver/moan
All the ways we get horizontal
We get up to
Get down, always a little off
Always a half-second early, drop
Let it all fall off
Devolve your way to the light, little moth
We're so god damned enlightened here
Stagger on my wayward friend
Lots of beds but
None that feel like home
We get weird but
It ain't so strange
Tie your hair up in tangles like you've been had on the ground
Alley dirt on your ass
Dance your way to the front
Alternate between confident and terrified/cigarettes naked fall
Asleep alone
On some weird couch
While your best friend
Fucks your ex in another house
Forgivable, forgivable
Can't be mad at the poet/drunk but it's okay just breathe
Your way to the next day sit and look at pictures be jealous
Of the you you used to be
Shower like you're poison
Fill your car and
Head South Head South Head South

Tell me a story.
i left. She cried.
That was it.

I remember thinking love was a thing.
A package.
A gift.

It hurt to hold because of the spines
Even blood doesn't make me feel.
dont let her touch you

I know poison.
I know hate.
I don't know love.

Bitten by a spider
at the oddest hour.

His whole body throbbing
with his own pulse.

All his insides are charred
but sleep is not a willing
companion.
The eternal coronation,
death as his champion.

Sweating through a thin veil
of details, begging the question,
begging for recognition,
even the most elegant logic is an ugly thing.

In delirium, he tears his journal apart-
that's how an artist starts.
He is ugly,
he is crude,
he drank some poison
down in Greenwood.

he becomes quite faint
when struck with the
quaint notion:

that even the heavy
handed blacksmith
has finesse, and feeling too.

You will have a moon-faced child who is good at keeping secrets. She will be a piece of the the sea, ruled by the sun, and afraid of the dark. She will start to explore and never stop. More than anything, she will be frightened of being settled, getting stuck. She will say, "No, I will not", but at what cost? 

I have terrible nightmares. I dream that I am running, trying to defend my truths against immoral powers. In my sleep, systems corrupted by the complexity of control try to steal my simplicity, try to make me dirty and compliant, things I will never be. In my dreams I am persecuted time and again for things that make no sense to me. It is a feeling of choking claustrophobia, worse than any coffin. The injustice insults my soul, and I wake with heaving lungs and an aching heart.

I am obsessed with knowing myself. Maybe if I can understand that much, the rest of this will start to make sense. We'll see.

I worry. I worry about dentists. Pharmacists. Business marketing majors. The dispassionate masses. People content to do things for money. For little bits of green paper that aren't particularly attached to anything but false notions of power. I have no religion to reassure me that it will all even out on some other plane. I have here, I have now. I will not fritter and waste the hours that make up the dull day, I will not be made to be afraid.

It hurts my heart to see how easily my brothers and sisters accept the notion that we are destined to spend most of the precious hours of our existences working at jobs we don't care about just to stay afloat in a drowning economy, and how easily judgments are cast upon those who don't conform to such broken logic. It's easier to judge than it is to think. Thinking is so uncomfortable.

It makes me want to scream, to rant. Don't they see? We pave the way for each other to be lazy. We have created technology that we use to save time so that we have more time to spend on the important things, like trying to figure out how to get our hands on more money, so that we can buy more things. We aren't paid to create, repair, discover or teach. We are paid to entertain, not question. We survive by serving. And that's a little too close to indentured servitude, wouldn't you say? Planned obsolescence. Wage slavery. Stockholm syndrome. Electoral College. War on poverty. From the makers of Agent Orange, corn! And no, you can't heat up your burrito, you think you're fucking royalty? That's right baby, keep voting. You have a voice. You are free.

Our entire system is obsolete if the air we breath, the water we drink, and the food we eat are killing us because we've been so busy saving time that we forgot to remember not to poison ourselves. We create disease, and then spend lots of time and money "treating" it. Treating and treating and treating, fixing things by breaking things. Quality of life be damned, we want to live forever! It increases our GDP, don't you see?? When it's my time to go, plug me into a wall for a few years and then bury me in a big fucking box to make sure that the nutrients in my body won't feed the earth. Spend a lot of money on all of that. I will look down on you lovingly from my cloud, stroke my chin and proudly ponder my legacy. The end goal, it seems, is to die old and rich and fat, surrounded by things. To leave no mark of love on anything, not even our own hearts. It hurts my heart to see my people so removed from their selves and their truths that they think they are right.

So much of what I see around me hurts my heart.