This is a robbery
  of what makes you,
makes me.
This is my honey;
  I fit inside of you;
you-you-you-you.
  This is melting.

Our malls are fiends
  and our soccer fields
are growing stronger;
  our sports are growing
trophies our children
  could never be.

This is daddy's blood;
  our hero, our stud.
Working hard to
  help the factory.
This is poverty.
This is you and me --
               a robbery
we love to applaud.

This is blood, blood,
            blood.
This is you and
         this is me.

On a long and simple gallows tree
a god and dollar bill I see --
and I've never felt so happy;
no, never felt so happy.
I walk around and brush the bush
and think about all the ants I mush,
just want to make a cent or two;
what else am I supposed
                to want to do?

And on the laundered sky I spot
a furious eye over a shackled lot
-- but I'm told it's just the sun
                               that blinds;
   destroying all the ants it finds.

I don't think I understand,
my god, my wallet is full
but my life ain't worth living.
God, you're like a bird in my hand:
something beautiful, always squirming.
     And I wish I could let go.

The trees outside my neighbor's house
cover shame like my neighbor's blouse.
And the yard, oh my god, so perfect;
so, so, so suburban you could
stay safe, forever or however long it feels.

Her porch encloses her dying husband,
breathing out of a tank, or with a tank,
as if living with assistance is anything new.
And I think, well, I know she was once
married to a semi-famous musician;
some guy responsible for some important
'new sound' during the fifties'.

As the sun begins to sit, on this Virginia
horizon, I swear I am as lost as my neighbor,
digging around in her yard, trying to fix up
the place before darkness falls. I guess we all
are trying to fix stuff up before darkness falls.

The birds are chirping or screaming -- you decide --
under the coal dust sky, searching for something
but, probably, wandering around and around,
hoping that something makes sense or
presents itself. I don't know how birds work,
but this is where I say something; something
that we can all relate to. Something that really
hits the nail on the head. But life, like poetry
or teenage boys, or bloodied noses, or nonsensical
stares from that girl in 8th grade you regret being afraid of,
is unstable, meandering, even pointless. Oh so, disarmingly
  pointless.

We ride bikes
to parks in our heads
and pedal our bodies
to safe-ish places
  in our beds.

We spend cash
in eight minutes,
that we worked
eight hours for.

We talk about
our ceiling
but are content
at our floor.

We experience
suicidal ideation,
on a day-to-day stasis,
and insure our
  troubled vessels,
on a six month to
  twelve month basis.

We ride bikes
alongside trainless tracks
and wrestle, naked,
on our backs,
smothering the grass,
muddied past our feet,
we ride our bikes, incomplete.

I had a God; he was a
good God. Keeping me  safe
with money, image, and  time.
Blessing me, solid;  
until my waist grew as thin   as my wallet.  
Buying all of your time.

I want to be on t.v.,
but not just any t.v.
I want the ratings to rise
  with my celebrity skin,
my trending name,
  commercialized sin.

I want to be sold   separately
and told that I'm desperately
giving my body to a   image heavy God,
sleeping on the skeleton of Malibu,
drinking dreams with a celebrity dog.

I want to be  on t.v.
I want to be  every  thing
and  more.

I had a God; he was a good God.
Played me his songs,  wrapped
  in his time.  Kissing me goodbye,
tel  ling me to sell shirts; telling me to
keep up with the trends.

She wore a windbreaker as red
as her parents voting habits,
and smoked American Spirits
as rough as the next-door
skateboarder's hands.

At 18, she was bored by
teen-aged touch,
and looked towards the
thirty-five year-old avant-garde
painter, who meandered in his
sun room, like a soul
pretending to be lost.

At 20, her parents told her
to go to college, to go to
'some place other than here'.
So, she went and had skinny,
Greek fingers with chipped nail-polish,
dip down and inside of her, without
judgement, without thought, and,
with this touch, she felt free.

At 24, she was an undergrad with
an apartment and a guy named 'Blake',
and Blake said Brown and she said State.
And when Blake left, she felt complete
despite losing something meaningful.

And when her story started to go on forever,
her body spread across the pavement like
seeded jam on burnt toast, scraped thin,
without image and without future, lost
inside crevices and cracks, a memory
or thought, wandering nothingness.

There's a reckless wind
whipping 'round the
frayed ends of my hair,
its exodus from the sides
of cars blurring by.

Jazz drummers cycle
flurries of taps and nods.
Twitching wrists for dollars,
their cornflower blue suits
rising with the street sound,
becoming a tent for sweat,
reaching for the dangling dark  
held up by clouds and the
screams of horns and the
chimes of chatter.

And here I lean, inside a corner
between an entrance and an exit.
My dreams are starting to
last as long as these cigarettes,
I probably spoke into the chainsmoke --
being pretentious and afraid
under the spill of streetlight.

And here I am, harmfully hoping
my friend comes back, that he
didn't suffer, that he is with god,
that god exists, that I grow into
something that would make
him proud, my parents proud,
make me proud.

All the pretty girls trot the walk,
like surreal thoughts with
white converses and high-waisted
jeans holding the eyes of the few
guys and girls going home alone.

There's no proper way to end this
besides for raw ***, real violence,
and more money.

My government only cares about me
once every four years.

My bank account controls me.

I can't buy anything unless
it wants to **** me or love me.