I lay to rest and shut my eyes
What dream shall fall before I rise
I doze off into beauteous sleep
Oh 'I pray the Lord my soul to keep'.

Next I feel impending harm
Awe-stricken gaze peers to my arm
I watch as bugs crawl under skin
They journey in, oh journey in.

Maggots and worms and crawly things
My cries form sheer, horrific screams
My body decaying, a death-colored rot
My end be the only thing that I sought.

I woke up startled, scratching skin
Worried intruders had found a way in
Hours have passed, the feeling has not
Lord, in my mind, may my senses be fought.

Arthur's kingdom, bright, so clearly shines
Among the grassy knolls of Briton
The Round-Table knights patrol the land
That Ol' Winter has clearly bitten.

With poor peasants freezing in their shacks
Their love for Arthur keeps them smitten
They don't remember the last they saw
Of the Almighty King of Briton.

The Round-Table knights now carry guns
And your tales have all been rewritten.
Oh what must we do to summon back
Our old sleep-stricken king of Briton?

The world is different now, my Lord
And in new tales may you be written.
With sword in hand, Lord please striketh down
The ****** New-Rulers of Briton.

Start slow, deep breaths, shallow steps towards an end, means wrapped in chains and gasoline, the smell of fire itching its way up your nose, the taste of blood tickling the back of your throat, take off running, the forever kind of running, the dead set straight ahead hell bent full body immersion in a fever, pray for your wake, pray for the ones left behind and not for the ones ahead, the journey is holy and nothing, nothing is sacred, let the wind tear holes in your jeans let the cold slice your chest into portions, you are born whole and spend the rest of your life in grieving for that feeling, you search for it everywhere that veins ache and hearts bleed and spirits wait and debts go unpaid and lights stay on, all the time, to ward off ghosts, you cry for it, you write for it, you scream and you pound your fists and you take up arms and you become, in this way, enemy of everything - other, mirror self, target in crosshairs, mugshot, *******, and you fill your days of rage with buckshot and sawdust, while your nights of lust kiss prophecy onto window panes and cheeks and alley ways, read this, understand this: The fury is the only language you have that can't be used against you, no one will ever correct the grammar of your fists, no one will ever tell the barrel of a gun it has misspoken, and when it speaks there can be no mistranslation:
*******, understand me
When I leave I will take this sky with me and never return,
When this burns down I will never think about it again,
I might be full of hatred, but I ain't no god of war
I will throw this feeling away and I will forget where I buried it,
I will make a home in the ruins of something greater than myself,
I will make better from worse or die trying,

I cried when Barack Obama left office, and I cried for Joe Biden too, as though I'd lost parents of mine,
But Mike Brown and the others had it coming, they were probably resisting arrest,
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

I go to pro choice rallies and I chant about female anatomy,
I retweeted a #blacklivesmatter tweet once, I think that's just as good as a protest
But don't talk about revolution, that's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered Bernie on the whole way, but eventually settled on Clinton,
I would do anything for free healthcare and education, as long as my taxes aren't too much more
I love all the minorities too, as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

The people who voted for Trump, should all hang their heads in shame,
I can't understand where they're at, John Oliver should set them straight
But if you burn an American flag, I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me love me I'm a liberal

I read Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone too,
If I vote it's a Democrat with a sensible economic view,
But when it comes to rioters in the streets punching nazis, there's no one more red white and blue
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and my heart bleeding, I bought every Coexist bumper sticker I saw,
Even marched alongside the socialists, thought I could bring the system down with the power of love,
But I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal
Love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

0.
Friends, lovers,  co-conspirators, criminals, junkies, artists, vigilantes, killers and heroes and the ghosts that haunt all indiscriminate, I write this in your blood, for you alone,

I.
I saw you each to each pressed together in a crucible, growing callouses in a garden of fire, fingernails black from digging the harvest of ashes, and when the lord came near you boarded your windows and cocked your guns because you could no longer hold stock in a strangers promise of love, not since your father branded his name into the tender skin of your back and told you, you are only as good as what you own in this country, and by covenant you belong to me now, some nights you still see his face in clouds of smoke when the cold chill of predetermined destiny kisses the back of your neck, other nights you watch the sky and wonder which parts of you will be left when the birds have had their fill

II.
Mercy and desperation,
Concentric circles divided by zero around a sacrificial pyre,
Something here cannot coexist,
Something here has to break to fit,
In longing the martyr dies never knowing what for, and in sacrament he is chewed up and spat out
In longing the basin fills, and in sacrament it breaks to flood the earth
In longing I carve out my insides, and in sacrament they will call me a museum
That is to say, the difference between a museum and a graveyard is a still beating heart

III.
Lear looked among his children and saw only sharpened knives,
Castro looked out over the ocean and saw only crosshairs,
I look out over the city and see only cupped hands,
Our grandfathers could level nations to prove a point and our grandmothers could only cower before men of such rage and power,
Make no mistake, these streets have witnessed genocide and remained passive,
Driving fast down these empty roads after midnight, you can almost make out an apology from the wind,
She says,
You have to understand what it's like to be gutted in appeasement,
You have to understand what it's like to become deadly against your will

IV.
In dreams a vision of Ginsberg, playing chess with his demons on the fifth day of a three day psych ward stay
Vision of Plath setting fire to her own head rather than have its contents laid bare,
Vision of Wolfe watching trains roll by paralyzed by fear of the future and his own hand in it,
Vision of Van Gogh unable to express love in any way other than to destroy himself
Vision of Virginia atop the lighthouse demanding payment for the transgressions against her
Vision of the poet as a saint performing miracles after death, vision of the poet as the archetype of madness realized, vision of the poet as divine mouth and unholy ghost, vision of the poet writing his own obituary and praying for silence

V.
We are blessed with the ability to tear down our monuments when they no longer stand for us,
We are blessed because we can justify anything we destroy
When Jacob's time came they carried him to Canaan and the Lion of Judah went on to fill its stomach with the blood of anything innocent it could sink its teeth in,
I take this to mean that there are some hungers that can only be sated by devouring everything you believe in
But what do I know,
I am a crown without a king
I am not much for devotion
I pick up the pieces of the monuments that once stood here and I sanctify them in hopes that one day this will mean something,
And if that day ever comes,
We will live again inside of something everlasting,
And until then,
I will carry this with me wherever I go
It's the least I can do

The night they shot Dr King, Stokely Carmichael  pulled the pin out from the grenade in his heart and made ******* sure the world knew he and his brothers would never be weak again,

The night they shot Malcolm X, the liberals shook their heads, clicking tongues about how "violence begets violence", and sometime later they put his face on a stamp, taught his corpse to dance, taught their children that this is the fate of a man who never gives up trying to change the world

The night that Missouri burned down they sent in the tanks, steel goliaths prowled small town streets looking for anybody black, or angry, or conscious, or any combination of the three, and every time their guns went off a new revolutionary was born in rage and desperation

Who are your comrades gonna be when the cops kick down the door?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the drug raids come?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the crowd control rounds turn to live ammunition?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the talking heads condemn the martyrs to hell on a twenty four hour newsreel?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the streets split open and the riot swallows everything in its wake?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the prisons crumble brick by brick?
Who are your comrades gonna be when it all burns down?
Who are your comrades gonna be when we rebuild this world from the ground up into something beautiful?

When they tell you, "Do not resist"
Resist
When they tell you, "Your methods are too extreme"
Tell them, "By any means necessary"
When they tell you, "This is the way things are"
Change. Everything.
When they tell you, "You can't change the world alone"
Tell them, "Solidarity, forever"

Another late night I'm left to sit here alone and pretend I understand what it feels like to be complete.
If you made any effort to understand me you would first realize that were not so different.
We're all monsters wearing this fragile skin, traveling the world and sewing up holes in our disguises so the demons don't pour out into the streets.
But no
Not you
You're perfect aren't you?
It's so sad that you dont even realize youre broken
You disgust me
How am I supposed to quite down the screaming in my stomach if no one else admits they feel it too
**** it
I'll feed them vikoden and ***** and maybe one day it will all go quiet

Over and over again, I don't know if it's you're frail identity or my knuckles crunching.
Go ahead, look at a mirror.

The fight is how we express divinity in a way that is comprehensible:
Steady, heel pivot, throw your shoulder into a punch, laugh in the face of a Hell that was never frightening enough to hold you back, bail down the alley, run to the edge of the world, spit in the face of a Heaven that was never there to catch your friends who didn't make it, catch your breath somewhere warm and safe with the ones who did,
All we got is each other, after all
And in the middle of it all, in this America, in these ****** sinister times,
That will take us farther than any president ever could
And so we fight to get by,
We jump in cars and hit the highway with home at our backs and a promise to never go back,
We lock hands and sing one loud for the dead, and another even louder for the living
We love what we can, because we can
Our words will burn, our cities will freeze,
And we will take as many of the ******* down with us as we can

Sleepy eyelids,
Fall into slumber,
Fall into the dark,
Fall into my arms,
Fall into my heart

You were so wonderful,
Everything about the way you were,
It was all so wonderful

As perfect as a spiderweb,
You worked so hard to build your spiderweb,
Pacing and repairing the wounds carefully, hoping maybe this time it would stay,
Hoping maybe this time he would stay

They never seemed to,
They were always mean, too,
You held your head high, but they always kept you so low,
Maybe it's better if we do this thing.. solo,
Maybe it's better this way,
Maybe it was better that I didn't stay,
I held you so high,
I swear I never would've let you slip, although it wasn't my time to get a grip,
It was known since the day I loved you,
This would never last and eventually I wouldn't even know you

This is the worst because I can still hear you,
I can still feel you,
Your long brown hair being twirled in my fingertips,
Your mouth, a loaded gun, pointed straight into mine,
When I go back in my mind, when I pull the trigger, all that comes out is flowers,
It's like all of this was made in the dirt of my mind to begin with,
A perfect angel, heaven sent, with a gown of gold and a crown of rose,
Nothing hurts,
Nothing hates you,

I can still see you, I can still look into your eyes,
I can still see that silly little grin you always made when we cracked stupid jokes at one another,
I can still see the tears falling helplessly from your eyes,
I can still feel your fast heartbeat, panicking whilst your body collapsed into mine,
They were always after you,
I hope they never caught up,
I tried my best to keep them occupied, I promise,
I will always love you, I promise
Nothing knows love like you do,
Nothing hates you

You packed your bags and left a letter in the back of my mind,
You never kissed me goodbye,
You left without even telling me,
It's been months, but I'm still too scared to open that letter,
I'm too scared to know why,
I'm too scared to understand,
I'd rather stay drugged up in your absence,
It's better for me this way,
It's better this way,
Maybe if I keep telling myself this, it'll make sense to me,
You never seemed to make sense to me,
Maybe that's why I was so in love with you,
Maybe I'm just rambling now, I'm just running circles around you,
The feeling is familiar; you always ran circles in my head
I could run circles for weeks, I would still feel nothing,
Nothing hates you

I haven't heard from you since back then,
Just know that I'd rather you be alive than dead,
I just hope, to you, I'm not dead

In the hole you left, there is nothing now,
Nothing hates you, but I cannot