We lived in a haze
as nicotine coated the sky that summer
and you were coughing up cacophonies
creating caustic clarity
until you were smothering me.
Lamenting our subtle insanity
we were burning up from our fingertips
without ever moving an inch.
Berating concrete jungles
laid out in strip malls.
We dropped whispers in beer bottles
and manifestos in ash trays.
As snide judgment sneered through slitted eyes
and snakes gave way to tongues.
We built an empire in disintegrated misery.

So write this down:

Blame not the tabloids.
Blame not the patriarchy.
Blame the generation.

As they are blissfully jaded
and they are propping up our pedestals.
As they crown us with misguided jewels
in awe of our fortress.

But then the smoke thinned
and the air bit our skin.
My ears burned with antipathy.
It was dripping off our pens
as your words turned black against the fire.
And my mouth grew numb before me.

I could hear the choirs songs as they rang from the steeples
and that morning the pneumatic frequencies of those opalescent voices
left deeper scars in our hill sides
than the gunpowder ever dreamed.
Carving up the sockets of our youth,
I could feel the restraint of their hands
as mine were freezing.
Offering me only your body as salvation
I was drowning in the thick stench of nicotine
I used to cover your unfortunate forgiveness.

A forgiveness that tapes tongues to cyanide walls
A forgiveness that leaves a thick coat of bitterness on the throat.
A forgiveness that I can no longer stomach-

You're coughing up cancer
and I can't choke it down fast enough.

Hail Mary.
Hail Mary.

Mother to a war between pews,
and a mis rendering of youth.

They said blame not the miss loved boy
but the gun in his best Sunday suit.

Artificial hums lit the wasted brilliance of hand picked history
and carved out the bells that burned through every blinded skull
and marketed the body to a stranger's choice
and drowned in the ecstasy of a makeshift American dream
and repented of their mandated sins
as the city gems burned electric
devouring the unwashed eyes of a lover believed dead
catatonic to the bloodied river water
graying to the hums of an innocence they sold

My father told me they were starving out there
It wasn’t until now I knew what for

She said she needed it.

She needed it the way a panic attack needs to be rocked in the corner with its knees to her chest.

She needed it.

She said black was her favorite color
because it went with everything.
It matched the way her thoughts catapulted through the polluted faces on the street,
it covered her.

She said it tasted *****.

It tasted like the lies that dripped off the tongues of every pair of lips who ever thought they were close to her.

It tasted familiar.

She needed it to forget.
Forget that she could watch the mountains devour the skies and still feel nothing.
Nothing but the pavement burning through her heels
as she choked on the noose that we call humidity.

She needed it.

It clung to her skin like needles
prodding at the ***** clouded eyes that washed over her and the stains on her skin.
She needed it.

She said it helped her to number the days.
The days that she had left before she was nothing but the ash she flicked off the ends of her fingers.

She needed it.

I
You came to me that night with singed thoughts
spinning wildly around me as you questioned-
the universe.

I could only watch as you carved madness into scraps of paper.
While your skull met my bedroom wall
again
and again
and again.

Only for you to run into the street and set fire to your findings.
It was then that you spoke to me for the first time that night

I need to go to the hospital.

II
Folding my self into the chairs of the only emergency room I trusted
I counted my breaths.
As your mother counted the ways that this was her fault.

Until they unlocked the maze of doors that lead to your sterile prison.
But there were still no answers,
only therapeutic needles to the hips meant to mute the mania.
But it could only stun yours to sleep long enough to be moved
to a bigger behavioral prison

III
The next three days were a series of
waiting rooms
phone calls
safe words
and locked doors.
Waiting through a supposed 72 hour hold.

But in this world weekends don't count.

And once again I found myself folded into a waiting room
as I met your grandparents.
Immediately forgetting their names
because all I could do was wonder,

If my sanity was falling just as fast as you were.

IV
I found you barefoot in a new pile of paper madness,
careening in a suicide proof wasteland.
Your eyes seared through my sockets as you whispered to me-
I want out.

But your blood was polluted with experimental drugs
and your fingers were twitching for a nicotine fix you couldn't get.

You some how managed to silence your body long enough
to convince them your mind had followed.
And that for you weekends do count.

V
You came back to me no longer singed but burning.
They eradicated your sanity and pretended to send it home with you
in a bottle of pills.

I watched you piece what was left of it back together.
So now we could wade through the remnance-
and wait

for it to all happen again.

I’m pinching on dimes because the penny’s not worth much these days.
we’ve turned over all the copper and burned through paper just the same
they told me “money don’t grow on trees fool”.
And the powder littered streets are eating through the scalp
my dear sweet freedom I’m dropping quarters on your shell shocked eyes.
While slipping through asphalt on your thick, thorned, thighs.
My drowning city swells before **** battered boots,
as denim rusted suburbia smokes their own noose.
I cried for you that night as the acid burned my face-

So where’s your white picket fence now??
Because last I saw it was splayed across a homeless mans back
as he carried it to his cardboard hell,
Muttering “please, just your pennies will help".

Gaping mouths and glassed eyes absorb the pixelated revelations,
breathing hallelujahs to disillusioned senses,
sinking their skulls into the pavement/,
crying
HOLY HOLY HOLY.
To the stairs leading them to a make shift heaven,
laying daisy’s to their skin and ash to their feet.
They barter the revolution to their unmoved complacency.
Self named artist that barely cover the buildings,
filling in the gaps with smoke and half-hearted pleas.
They’re burning alive.
They’re burning everything they touch.
Screaming to spite the yuppy ****.
screaming to spite the war on youth.
screaming.
SCREAMING.
SCREAMING!
Into a concrete grave with a kiss so faithful it consumes them.
Chained to the unforgiven it consumes them.
Beating the blasphemy in their gums it consumes them.

It consumes them.

A thousand washed out hallelujahs drown the sewered streets
as the homeless are arrested for their burdens,
dying in their cardboard graves.
A generation sings,
sings of their lust for an un-abandoned indignity.
Hollowed protest carried only by listless tweets
and insatiable delusions of grandeur are used to spike their drinks.
they’re spiraling forward with catalytic fury saving only ashes from the hell fires started by their own torch.
They stand before you screaming-
LOOK AT MY NAKED BONES.
You open your eyes and there’s a band on their chest who’s songs they don’t even know.
With eyeliner so think you can’t see their iris to know if its blue or gold.
You wouldn’t know naked if it peeled your skin down to your bone.

They left skeletons in their closets
that are crawling out and into their ash rotten skin.
Inked in lies they never meant,
I can still smell their smoke in the mountains.
Crawling through the suburban streets.
Can you hear me?
Where are your screams?
Silenced in nicotine and poetic beats?
Your hymns are drowning the blackened skies that you use to light those eyes
and your sin is still soaking in those mirrors.
I’m not sure what we should be more afraid of,
the demons writhing in my head?
Or the ones rolling in your bed?

As abandoned psych wards ring with a generations penance-
as corpses pledge their grace to the living-
watching their breath fold into the highways, the hilltops, the sewers devour them. Contracting their waves through the disembodies minds.
Where is your savior?
Where is your king?
They spilt blood at your feet!
And you weren’t even listening.