CHANNEL 3 AT 7:


We are at the scene, now;
an awesome showing of
                    brute force.
What some are calling the
greatest moment in U.S.
                          history
and, some, "An example
of jingoistic propaganda
masquerading as self-
-liberation."

Whatever it is, Tom,
one thing is certain:
we will be here,
covering every second
of this gigantic American
                          moment.

"And we thank you for your fine
reporting, Lisa. Boy, I tell you,
the President is making a huge
mistake with this act."

You have got that right, Tom.
We, as Americans, cannot
allow this to happen. We have
to ask these people if they want
this to happen -- and, then, we
need to enforce, what we consider
progressive and better for their
well-being, to them. These people
are like lost puppies, Tom.
It is our responsibility to make sure
that they do not respect their religion,
their culture, or prehistoric way of life
they have become accustomed to.
If we ignore the issue, of their
third-world existence and third-world
values, then we will have lost as
human beings; and the United States
cannot lose whenever it comes to this.

"Lisa, bathe me in your words,
because nothing has ever felt so
clean and right. You're absolutely,
100% correct: we need to guide
these poor, helpless people and
show them what is right, when
it comes to culture, identity,
among other things."

Agreed, Tom. And thank you.
To make things simple for
the viewer at home, you wouldn't
buy a puppy and expect it to
**** anywhere it wanted?
You have to show it where to ****.
Heck, you have to show it what to
eat, so the **** can be a good ****.
To sum things up, these people have
been pooping incorrectly, for a long time,
and it is our responsibility to show them
the **** inside of us, and how we aren't
going to mix with them, but, instead,
show them how they can get a nice,
firm ******* that we all but
take for granted.

"Couldn't agree more, Lisa.
It is our duty, as Americans,
to help these people who have
been de-humanized, and show
them how to handle this and
the world, especially during
a time like this for them.
And let us not forget,
this is their moment."



MAD MIKE IN THE MORNING:

Hello folks, and welcome
to the Heat Zone; a place
where snowflakes melt
and where liberals sweat.
I, of course, am your man,
Mad Mike O'Leary and
boy, do we have some
serious stuff to talk about.

Our fabulous leader,
whom we shall respect,
has made our nation great,
as 195 countries --
excluding our's, of course --
citizens now have American flags
drilled into their skulls.
As an act of kindness,  
Our fabulous leader,
has given each of these citizens
the choice of keeping or removing
the flags. Of course, if one were
to try to remove the flag,
a tiny explosive would detonate,
as one can never be too sure
if a citizen would use the flag
as a weapon -- and, of course,
there is no promise that the flag
wouldn't touch the ground,
so Our fabulous leader explained
that flag burning would be an
acceptable method of removing the
flag from this plane of existence.

Here, today, we have political pundit --
or political genius; you decide --
Ryan Tomlinson to discuss this radical
new way of life, we unfortunately have
to endure. Ryan, what are your thoughts
on the controversial method of discarding
the flag: a symbol of our strength, love,
                                          and freedom?

"Well, I'll tell you Mike: you think you're
the mad one, you should ask my wife
about my reaction when I learned about
this atrocious tiny explosive destroying --
yes, destroying -- our great and mighty flag!"

Haha, is that right, Ryan? I bet Nancy got
the Rowdy Ryan I've met on Nickle Shot Night.
What were her thoughts on your reaction --
better, yet, what was your reaction, Ryan?

"Well, I can't tell you exactly how she
reacted to my reaction, because I wasn't
really listening. But, I tell you, ever since
He Who Shall Not Be Named left the office,
Our fabulous leader has had to adopt some of
his wild and, frankly, immoral methods --
which would include the burning of our flag."

You got that right, Ryan. It reminds me of
when my oldest left for college, leaving behind
some beers that little Matthew ended up drinking.
My point is,  He Who Shall Not Be Named
has left some stains that still need to be cleaned up,
but I am confident that Our fabulous leader will
scrub those right up; if Matthew can do it, so can he.
To move on, here's an issue I have
that no one is really talking about, Ryan:
Not only are you detonating this flag -- a
flag that millions of men, God Bless Them,
have fought and died for -- but you're also
covering this symbol of freedom in the
blood and gore and scalp and guts of
these dangerous people who would love
nothing more than to see our symbol destroyed.

"You hit the nail right on the head, Mike!
These people don't understand what it is
like to be an American; to deal with their
oppression and policing of our values.
They already have succeeded in dividing us
when it comes to this whole flag removal
method. You can't reason with these, people.
You can try to offer them a Benjamin;
you can try to give them tickets to Transformers,
but these people will never respect us or our
way of life. And these liberals are right behind them!
I'm not sure what the liberals plans are, right now,
but you can be sure they'll use this whole flag thing
to exploit something. Hell, they're already talking
about how we should teach these people to **** --
what if they get to them, first, and teach them to
**** on the GD flag?! The liberals are helping divide us!
That's what they do!"

You are so, so right, Ryan. This country is full of
the wrong ****; and is going down the toilet.
Well, unfortunately,
we have to go to commercial, but you can bet
your keister that we'll continue this important
discussion that involves your liberty,
your job, and your soldiers.
Mad Mike in the Morning, with special guest,
Ryan Tomlinson -- be right back.
Don't go away.

Leaf spines do their damnedest
to hold onto broken branches.

"These people -- if you could
                      call them that,"
the old man's shoulders pinch
his bubbling neck, "*******,
******* -- these opinionated
women; my god, I have never
seen the like, no sir."

Mother, why have you left me.
I can smell you on the freshly
                           salted roads.
It is so cold here. The snow
may never stop. The wind
has been picking up. I'm
afraid it may ******* away,
somewhere your direction.

"You see, the thing is, this
country -- no, this world --
has changed so **** much.
It's struck me, fearsome, of
what may stay; what may come,"
he runs his thick fingers through
a rather handsome silver patch,
"I wonder if what I mean to say
is that people scare me?
I don't know what that says
about me or about people."

Father, you sit and you drink,
dying in your work boots;
dying in the arms of my dream;
becoming a man slowly razed.
Your eyes are pale hazel
and they grow apart, as your
tongue pushes out, gone for
a few hours; soon missing.

"Mmm. No sir, I suppose this
world ain't for me. Virginia is
hardly the place I once knew...
You know, my wife, she found
the good in everything -- swear.
Found the good in me.
I envied her, in that one way;
she'd see the good in the *******,
*******, and these women who
just, well, don't know their place.
She'd know. But she ain't here.
Hell, I'm hardly here, tell'ya."

And all my anger I harbor for you,
my mother, I give to the women
I sleep with; the women that
break my heart; the women who
love me forever.

And all my anger I harbor for you,
my father, I try to forget, for you
are my idea of God's love, and
I desperately scratch at your surface,
excusing your roughness injuring my
fingers; forgiving you for covering me
in your blood and everything else you.

I've always lived this way;
used to wish for other
                         ways to feel.
On a tidal wave,
with white walls and
           a body made of steel.

And I'm drinking,
      in the sunlight.
Wind whooshing by,
says I'm James Dean.
I can't fake it,
because I'm so uncool.
Better make it
to an ivy-league school.

I've always lived this way;
always running to get closer
                       to how I feel.
On a tidal wave;
not enough money
       or looks to buy a meal.

And I'm standing,
  before the teller,
       and I tell her,
to close my account.
There goes my religion;
well, the one that isn't
       west coast bound.

I've always lived this way;
watching people on t.v.
communicate how I feel.
Wanna be a slave,
with the screen as my
                      new shield.

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.

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.

He bounced around
from town to town,
never becoming whole.
'Cause in his parents' eyes,
he was a parasite, hiding in
a hole.

And he let his friends down,
with promises and hopes
that deluded and destroyed
him.  Throwing his words a-
-round, never slowing down
to enjoy the beer and bodies.

He bounced around
from heart to heart,
gathering sympathy
like gold coins; hoping
that he could, if they
really would, stay and
cope a little.

And he let them down,
like his friends and his
parents. He thought a-
-bout dying and writing.
He thought about his
brother and every girl
he thought he loved,
trying to understand
if he could love if he
could not love himself.

He bounced around
from key to key,
writing about nonsense.
Or maybe it was important
and he minimized it, because
that's how he coped; or that's
how his father talked about
his son's accomplishments.
I guess his son would have
to ask himself if he ever
accomplished anything worth
making his dad proud.

And when he went to
the ward, Chestnut Ridge,
that was three years ago.
I guess he's still around,
working hard, New Yorker
something, something, something.
Dad is proud, likes Bojack Horseman
and The Walking Dead; all of this stuff
is so ******* irrelevant.

My dad is proud.

Jazz women clap in unison, black.
All the boys in the club move
way, way over, for your health,
sister.
Some bartenders smoke ****
while polishing glasses, big or
small.
Cartoons play on box t.v.s
while people look at hubs on
smartphones.
Some gruff guy points at you
-- and, yes, it could have been
me --
we have a phone call, I think.
Who uses a payphone, any-
-****-more.

Choir children double for choir
mice.
Helicopter parents hover their
hands above their juniper drinks.
Gesturing at poorly dressed kids
has never been this in fashion.
Be perfect for the camera;
this moment will be captured
by synthetic eye.
Moms and Brads turn to
  look at us laugh.  Which has
always been in poor taste.
They say my poetry is bad
and your music is **** -- but
I guess it's nice that someone
  gave us those views.

Columbia and Harvard
seem like distant planets.
But that's where we'll be,
supposedly.
You with your Guinness,
me with my Tito's.

The old man sits in the dark,
fire by his radio, listening to
John Legend sing about his all,
which I guess is a lot since
he goes on about it for
four or five ******* minutes.
I sit here and think about all the reasons
I hate 13 Reasons Why. I sit here and
smell my candle, to my future.
I think about Miley Cyrus *******
and wonder if she feels pleasure
  like you or me.

I don't know what kind of creature
  is out there.  I don't know
how  to  feel  about  the  world.
My bedroom door may be paranoid
for me,   and I have anxiety over
  knocking that may never come.
Or maybe it will come and I'll
  be ordinarily unprepared for it.
Unprepared for it, as I normally am.

Visions of Japanese women
  dance on the ceiling, like silver
statues in garments of gore.
Or maybe they're not Japanese
and that I am a racist or under-
-educated -- which is most likely
the  same  ****  thing.
  They dance on my ceiling
and I stare, no longer wondering
if I'm rude, if they're real, if
the house I live in is current-
-ly losing value. These type
of things just happen, swear.

My candle is burning bright,
reaching towards the hugging
  blinds; smelling like sea salt
and an ocean I will never touch.

The roads spread throughout
  and past the city, like
the reaching veins of
  my body.

Scabbed trees, **** and
smashed by my
    high-beams,
remind me of the time   I
  sat on the riverbank,  my
cousin receiving oral ***  
  from this gypsy girl.

You don't know the moonlight
  until it's all that touches you.

I don't remember her name
but she posed on motorcycles
and had *** with her uncle.

She was nice
  and the product of
a sad environment.

The thick earth around me,
smothered by nightsong;
it's getting so dark;
the light is escaping.

****** almost killed
  my true love.
****** kills everyone
  around here,
around just about every-
-where. This long dark;
  this nightsong.

She painted her nails
some shade she hoped
reflected her personality,
and she thought it wasn't
  honest that they weren't
chipped yet.

Her parents sat on a couch
that slumped around the
  middle, gathering the mass
of her parents,
  maybe the mass of her world.

And they yelled at this
boxed television; a t.v. so
******* strange you had to
  swear, swear, swear
you were stuck in 1997.

1997, our year of Jordan:
a unisex name that bled
'I am the same and name of
some place I'll never go;
so place I'll never be big as.'

And our Jordan looked
  at her nails; and she
looked at them again, walking
to her campus, thinking,
"It's not honest that these
are not chipped."

But she had dreams, or
something close to what
a dream used to be.
She didn't want to admit
she had the American Dream;
a dream that millions had,
because the odds of compet-
-ition didn't intimidate her;
she was bothered by the thought
  of sharing something with
millions of people she would
pass on by, asking for nothing,
not even the acknowledgement
  that, yes, we are all in this
together, and to **** each other.

You see, this isn't a normal thing,
Jordan Racer-Cameron would
throw-up all over the waves
bouncing towards the ears of
those girls -- you know -- who
sat around the edge of standard
  cafeteria tables; those girls with
perfect nail polish; those guys that
would write **** like this.

"You see, this isn't a normal thing,"
she vomited out, holding her phone,
"It's cracked but I am not. Every one
will think I am damaged -- but I am
so, so, so not ******* damaged.
I am not broken. There is no way
I can be broken. Ah, no; I wanna
live in Los Angeles. I don't want
to be some broken, fake wolf."

When she flopped home,
passing perfect green squares
surrounded by perfect white teeth,
she tripped, kinda fell, and kinda
  caught herself.   Raising her hand,
on her knees, under a coal dust sky,
she rose her hand before the burning fire,
smiling at the blood splitting her finger;
smiling at the middle nail's fragmented being.

She ****** the blood off,
feeling free of the prose,
found her home,  
and greeted her
   potatoes of parents.

Some wolves mate in the glow
of a satellite so slow,
can't see it move -- not to
  the groove.
And music plays,
  from a radio, retro.
Gotta spill some blood
and add a cigarette
to my silhouette.

American Spirit for
my american spirit;
gotta tweet my thoughts
because my friends
don't hear the words I say.
  Ah, no; wanna live in
Los Angeles,
  Ah no; wanna live in
New York City.

Oh, no.
Oh, no.

Some babes in the hay;
laying in a pile, so deep
  cannot find my body;
cannot fall asleep.
  Random rambling to
what my media tells me;
cannot find my mind;
cannot fall for this.

They look like thumbs,
throbbing at me for
  my attention.
Yelling over each other;
yelling when
  I'm not allowed.

Ah, no; wanna live in
Los Angeles.
Ah, no; wanna live in
New York City.
  Wanna be
validated by the wolves.

It's dark and the light leaks out
like the change in my pockets;
like the blood from her nose;
like knowledge from my head.

And I can feel myself being
  swallowed by this systematic
long dark. I cannot remove myself,
  a gut-worm in the lower-mantle
belly. Watching video-cassettes of
  my birthday. I don't know what
happened to my birthday video.
  I don't know what happened to
my parents or what I did to happen
  to them.

The light leaks, again, and I
choke on my celebri-thoughts;
mentally-******* to the
waves I'd give on a book tour
or studio lot. Talking about some
movie that made some money,
somewhere in Santa Fe or L.A.

The news is channeling my president:
a swollen man that is the physical representation
that a lot of American people are parasitic;
lovers in racism, xenophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia,
homophobia; scared of everything except the 'straight-talking'
magnate they put in office. Not playing president; playing God.

I'd hate to get political, though. I'd hate to ramble on
and on about something I don't know enough about to
**** myself over. I can feel myself picking up steam.
I can feel myself getting redundant but embracing the
bruised ego and poor technique. Loving the entrails
spilling out of the splits of my fingertips;
more beautiful than the brains I bashed on the sidewalks
of old Morgantown. Morgantown, a town so kind you
are gently destroyed by its over-crowded masses,
dying to be different or drunk -- I suppose that's not very
different than most places.

But let's get back to these trees that I haven't even talked about.
Let's get back to the kitchen table with the hollowed hard-drive,
with wires and cords flopping to the sides, like a
gutted spaghetti eater with poor stomach acid.
How terrible. I'll never forgive myself for that last line.

I feel so rudderless. So cynical with a touch of cliche.
I keep pushing back that age for success, thinking
that I have the luxury of choosing. My vocabulary is
limited. My intelligence is assumed; probably a void,
where delusions manifest and asian **** rewinds and plays,
  rewinds and plays.

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.

Your pretty face,
all scattered in black,
back to the steel --
that's how they
disappeared you.

My emptiness is
measured in rust;
drenched in the rain
that'll soak your dust.

I've wrapped you in
the red wind-breaker
I've never owned,
hoping it'll change some--
--thing, anything at all.

That'll soak your dust.
Please, Please, tell me
you won't leave me be.

There's your voice
an ear-worm in my --
I wish you'd come back,
my little guy.
I'm such a degenerate
with you off of that
tight-rope I've found my--
--self on. Why'd you gone,
Where'd you gone, my son.
Where'd you gone, my sun.
Where'd you gone, my son.
Where'd, Why'd you gone.

That'll soak your dust.
Please, Please, tell me
you won't leave me be.

If you wanna be the same,
be the same with me --
I swear we’ll always
blend right in.

And when you say
you don’t like Jaws,
I'll still be a Peeping Tom
behind your books.

When you lie, Maggie-Pie,
about the movies you’ve seen,
it makes the Tom Waits you like
seem contrived.

Degenerate drug kids,
too high to be a star,
in love with moments.

Give me my moments,
my lifeless promise
to always have a car
and insurance.

If you wanna be lazy,
be lazy with me --
I swear we won’t
ever do ****.

And when you bop
your head to Kendrick,
I’ll watch you melt
underneath the strobe.

Place your finger on a globe,
tell me where you think
you could be, then tell me
about your perceived
self-worth.

Degenerate punk kids,
with more ink than squids,
and a tip-jar future.

Give me my future,
my hurried ten years;
you know my twenties;
you know my reason.

Give me my reason,
give me my reason, give me my reason.

I go back to Hampshire
to pretend I have old friends.
I drive around the mountains
to look for an end
to the violence
that's been breeding inside.
I've been a god ******,
god ******, god ******.

There's a dying wild
surrounding this town;
a girl limping with her mother,
holding ****** hounds.

You can consume it,
the blurred out dreams,
that these rubber-lovers
hung in Christmas trees.

There's a sense regret
amongst the ****** chic;
a romantic degeneracy
not lost on the teens.
Push in the fate,
to let something out.
I'm such a god ******,
god ******, god ******.

And I blot the ******
remnants of the past,
fire a cheap cigarette
and cut myself on the glass
of the car I drove into
the bank of your dreams.

To get out, to get out,
I've become such a ******* fool.
To get out, to get out,
I've hurt everyone that thought I was cool.

Dragging a baseball bat through the alley,
old-fashioned stain, auto-signed by some
body that used to inspire, you know how it goes

And, of course, it's raining a type of
slippery sludge that gets on and under
regenerating skin, born today, dead today
forever and ever a boulder pushing life

It all stings, oh god, it will accurately burn
the way that a forgotten face trips into smoke
before the mind's wandering, hazardous dare
Then, before it was ever known, you break
into the breeze, a tryst of truth, floating

Where he stands is so close to where the
bat meets the flesh, bursting under babble
Swinging with the explosion of repressed
rage, stolen memories summoned into a
frenzy of freedom and self-imprisonment

Violent before the new world,
breathing into a rumored hollow carcass

When our bones rub softly,
I can take my teeth out and
shine them like skin cutters.
A yellow-bird dress you wear;
the same matchbox socks
that you wouldn't bother.

Sometimes, all the time, I
shiver in the gelatin lake
and what a faux-shake
it would only take
to make you care.

Baby, maybe, you
could love your child
like the sultry sandman;
place them on pinkish pillows,
and pretend your stories are
as real as your lashes.

And what a lamb,
kneeling in the Irish grass,
drinking all that is in her glass,
before breaking it over a wet stone,
and holding it to her throat, singing,
"I've always been surrounded, but
have always felt alone."

My country is full of people
too violent and dumb to be anything else.
We value money, bodies, and your stuff
because it is not ours yet.

My flag is wrapped around some
white-trash hick's *******.
You look different than us and
that is ******* terrifying;
please leave while we stay
in your country,
'protecting you'.

My country is home to
religious freedom, as long
as the religion is Christianity.

My country is the world's
greatest melting ***, but
we'd prefer all ingredients
to be the same or die.

My country is a joke,
thinking it's the standard
the world desires to achieve.

My country is the world police,
creating tension, harassing you,
hating you, taking from you.

Poison ivy spreading all over my skin.
I brushed up against death and
never want to do it again.
They say with time it goes away,
but I can still feel it all over me.

The clock doesn't erode
the way I can feel inside.
I dance with the hands
but am, really, looking
for some place to hide.
I've used a neon bible
ever since she died.

And when she couldn't move,
the sirens blared,
she said it'd be okay,
but I felt so scared.
Maybe it's all in my head,
as the roof took rain.
She said 'I'm going far,'
I said, you gotta stay,
you're just in pain.

I'll never show her
what I am capable of.
I was in The New Yorker
and I'm not sure if
she even saw.

There's a paralysis
that comes with love,
related to every coffin drop
that sings from above,
and I wish you knew her, too,
as well as she knew me:
I am twenty-three and
covered in ivy.

I rejected the art crowd
like a hipster on parade.
I lied to a pale face
because I was too afraid
to be myself; oh, to be myself
is to be naked among the winds.

FADE IN.

Mama, come try to deliver me;
I've been a rubber baby
since nineteen-ninety-three.
Father, come try to educate me;
I've been your no-good
since I turned thirteen.

Please, Lord, find the redemption in me --
I've grown weary of the way worry
boils, brews, and eats me slow.
See, friend, I can feel, too;
I used to let you down because
that's all I thought I knew
what to do.

Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada
Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada

Sister, angel, become bloodshot
at the way I hang; swaying
from the bedroom tree.
Sometimes I mistake my
bad brains for rotting fruit;
mushy peaches, doused in
fishbowl alcohol and
worries I can't shoo.

Good God, Lord,
what am I to do?
Good Lover,
what am I to say?
Good Brother,
I've failed you so.
Good Father,
I'm sorry I'm made this way.

I'm just a young boy unaware
of the stretcher
I think is a bed;
Bad brains make the
star-kid in my head.

Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada
Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada

FADE OUT.

I once was a kind of smart man;
pretentious to the bone --
I took a pill for the thrill
of masking a part
I thought was gone.

Something, Something
College Dropout
Something, Something
No Good Son
I took a drive to stay alive
because I swore I
was once someone.

I once was a good American;
dollar bills on my bones --
I fell in love with the glove
that covered the debt  
that made me feel alone.

Something, Something
Godless Monster
Something, Something
First Born Waste
I bought a gun to
have some fun and
thought I'd have a taste.

I hope I'm a loving father
and don't vanish in the dust.
There aren't many thoughts
that bounce in this head
I find I can trust.

Something, Something
Standard Loner
Something, Something
Find Me When I'm Gone

Something, Something
Where Am I
Something, Something
Am I Someone

And I think I should say
I did not find God, today.
I'm being told that my mind
isn't considered right and that
I will always lose the fight
that is life.

I think I should melt away
with the tangerine dusk;
float away with the
copper-colored dust.
And I shouldn't be mourned
or become a chore to the
people I should have warned:
I am a Godless void, ruined by
my own mindless self-indulgence.

For what it's worth,
it no longer hurts or can
be mistaken for
something bigger
for our Lord.

Maybe I should find a
Texas hole to melt inside;
a place to rest my burden,
fall apart and die.

Tonight is for peanut butter
and blue dreams,
soaked in ***** blasts.
I feel okay but my friends are
dead and it will always last.
Don't count on me
to care too much.
Don't care for me,
because you can't
count on me.

I've remembered the neon signs;
all the life I've left behind.
It's not easy being lost at twenty-three;
my bark is hard but I'm
a rotting tree.

The strands hanging from her Selsun Blue scalp
like pasty, jittery children's legs;
beyond buckwheat, before bottle-ship shoulders.
And she's so kind with her philosphy books and new diet,
I think back to when she was four and where she believed in me,
for the first time.

Her jawline is made up of alien angles,
she has tattooed forearms;
peach fuzz skin decorated with cheap, olive maps,
pointing towards a choreographed heart,
towards a neon mind.

And she has one thousand paper coffee cups
discarded across the urban earth,
spilling out onto the asphalt jungle,
much like every chance she gives.
Bloodied and twenty-four,
an abstract thought in a lonely existence.
I've never known.

And beyond the Marlboro clouds,
a God so violent and true,
there is a shriveled, purple stare
prefacing the burnt orange fog.

Where felt-up boys and girls
go to play, a perfect Devil, watching,
boundless in carbonated memory,
drunkenly gazing at trauma, fire --
celebrating each skin-sticky melt
that happens in each razed brain.

Vanished on top of an green-spread hill,
******* in the damp Irish air,
a neutral party does emerge,
taking in the tumblr wave,
witnessing water-logged Amazombies,
bruised with ambition.

Laying on a sheetless matress,
day-drinking until bottled spirit dry.
Loveless in a ghost's nest,
never believing I
could be something more,
something from a Christmas card.
Take the long neck, smash the body
and fantasize to the shard.

I have taken
her shimmering body
and have made her
believe it's dull

I drank in the steely woods, fragmented to all within;
a manger boy without his Godly toy, swallowed by the sin.
And without the gaze of the zombified masses,
scraping their plates, buying, then christening their glasses,
I realized that I was the fire that I had always feared;
a pretending son of something other than what I am;
a shimmer of a crystallized storm, smothered by shame
and tortured by the resent of recent rain....

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah
A desert-dry painted scorned
Ripped to shreds by hell-gate thrown
Forever summoned to grated life

You know what I think is sad
I used to miss the way you would curse
I missed every lie you said,
even though your lying was the worst

The tapes in your bag said it all;
the discs you spun said 'whatevs'
or 'I'm deep and loving'
I betcha you thought people heard The Smiths
and didn't think you were bluffing.

Your poetry was garbage, too --
I don't blame you for scrapping your work.
You lied about cutting your legs,
the pain under your pale skin,
you exhausted every quirk,
and wished for more within.

I betcha you're sitting somewhere
twenty-something and super-bored.
Probably still choking on your cigarettes
against your matress board,
criticizing people thinking differently
I hope one day you read a book
and ask who would publish me

You're probably the words
stuck in some other's throat;
resenting you and the
****** Mountain Goats.
I never liked to criticize
the way you looked,
but your teeth are the
second most crooked
thing about you

The roaming rebels smoke their pipe-dreams
by the eroding wall.
Their pockets are as empty as their hearts
and they know it, and know
that you know it.

Her hairspray is a mist around her
beige-caked face --
and she swears she used to look good.
She swears that things used to matter;
that words once made sense;
that her boys won't forever stand by that wall;
that her boys won't forever stand still,
swept by the grains of time.

And you, in your desired attire,
in your calculated speak,
will never know that they know you don't know.
And you, well-adjusted and forever fluent in their inability to be temporary --
in their heartless self-awarness, with no ambition --
will sigh with sympathy
unneeded for the ******.

Chipped, cherry toned toes, pressing
across the cheap, linoleum flooring,
She's wearing nothing but an
over-sized sweater from a college
she's never, ever been.

And her hands hit her hips,
her grin leaves **** those
smoky-stained calcium cuties,
wrapped by chapped pythons.
In which, you have to admit
that 90's bob bouncing is
as killer as cancer.

Coffee table eyes, glancing,
gliding between every take,
she lifts the bottom of that
balled-up, decade-old sweater,
revealing a tuft of brunette hair;
a place where you can touch her;
where you can escape and stop
lying to yourself, you nihilistic nothing.

II.

Breathing the cold, in the murky-dark,
she, laying on a decadent country,
huddled in my authoritarian arms,
we stared at stars, streaking across,
waiting to escape like them, instead of
relating to those already dead beacons.

What to buy, Who to be
This is a harmless harmony
First comes love, then comes trust;
A defenseless memory in the dust
And what could I, so ever in motion,
could contribute to this ocean
that I call Earth and you call Here --
my eyes are a farmhouse portrait,
far and near.

With and without, give my E! take
Sometimes I feel like this hunger
is my and your mistake.
Withering windows give view to past,
give mention to something through
alliterative glass.
What could it be, When could it throw
my life and your life in a redundant television show,
where the laughter is canned, the love staged,
the buying and dying of products we have caged
ourselves in, in bulk, ourselves in a religion of none.

Time to blister with imagery, A delicate, bouncing light
traveling across a sea, moving towards me, moving
towards you, across the darkly shimmer of a reflector
blue, and the denim drugs and t-shirt ***,
the Fat Elvis rock in your lap, Nationalistic paranoia:
the red, white, and blue on your hat, fading, fading
among the shards of air, warm and vibrant,
Terror-Freedom clarity spittle-lip cat bath,
and my laces around the neck of the sound that skips
lids and rids of hipster brains and howling barks
from trees and boys with new noise, killer and robust
in the teenage, young adult, serial defenseless dust.

In a valley down by the danger,
surrounded by silver-naked-trees,
there is trust and there is dust
on plaid blanket, pressed by knees.

Where the orange orb floats through darkness
as midnight and finite as deathly intentions,
they surrender, known pretenders,
**** and pink, among green-glassed drinks,
living as common competition, in a silicon city;
living as voices-of-a-generation, in the pretty gritty.

I gave my car insurance
but myself none
Living in a bed sprung by money
and covered with a loaded gun
If you want to ****
then ask to be mine
We can be smoke breathers,
tossing our leftovers in
eachother's freezers.

I've got America's chewing gum
stuck to my vintage tread.
Viva la sell me myself
before I'm dead.
But my hair is knock-off foaming cream,
and you have to ignore it in my
wanna-go-far movie star dream.

My nails are splintered with dirt
from twisting the skirt
of my reflection
and I feel so deranged
because my whole life is staged
and I don't have enough
money to watch it.

Chainsmoking menthols,
creating clouds on parade.
Living in the dark;
frenching hurt that I've made.
There's a sadness in my comfort
and a comfort in my sadness.
***, fame, ******* down
commercialized madness.

I don't dream of pornstars
as much as I dream of clothes.
Videogames to escape it all,
carbon monoxide through my nose.
Too good for this and that;
entitlement at an all-time high.
Doing television to help me live,
or maybe to help me die.

Spotify for the masses
beating in my brain.
Youtube and pornhub
to make me feel the same
as the lost I compare to myself
and the celebs I want to be.
I want to be on edge, rich, validated;
I want to live in a fractured harmony.

Techno-blurts bleed between neon corners.
And she walks among the flashing lights,
an illuminated epidemic.

His name is Arthur Brunswick,
or so the rumor goes and goes.
Art. Artie. God of Death.
With a hand on a gun,
the other on the pulse of America --
redundant --
his eyes slide up and down
her shimmers of symmetry.

If there's another place, somewhere,
he said bedding tobacco behind lip,
Let me know. Hell, let yourself know.
There would be no greater shame
than becoming a mystery,
even to yourself.

Whether or not she is nameless,
she strutted around body of the room,
untouched by the God of Death.
Stopping, her stare turned towards his,
Your name isn't Arthur Brunswick.
I know this, you know this.
Whether or not, you say my name,
you know who I am.
No matter who you say you are,
I have known what you are
since we were created
to be in this room.

They both turned their heads towards the ceiling,
waiting for the author to acknowledge them.
But he couldn't -- wouldn't -- for whatever reason
he told himself over and over and forever.

He grinned, Arthur of course, before saying,
This may not be entirely original, but you
cannot, will not be saved. Even by him.
There are a thousand girls like you,
nameless, an object of a wanna-be
pseudo-provocative, pretentious, poem --
Too many P's, big guy; let's tone it down.

Listen, this ******, he said as he pointed up,
wants to be David Foster Wallace;
all soft-spoken, trying too hard to be smart --
which came effortlessly to Wallace, not him --
but I can tell you what he doesn't want to be:
The person that saves you. Your messiah.
Are we using any words correctly, yeah?


Either way, he doesn't want to save you.
You are meant to die -- you're going to die --
know how I know that? Because. Because he...
He, Arthur pointed towards the ceiling,
He is telling me what to say, and these words
are leaving my mouth. You die, I die -- **** --
I die... I don't want to die, but we die.
Maybe you could have all of this dialogue,
but it's common for his males to, well,
you know, be interesting and somewhat developed.

Her body, pearl and on the verge of objectification,
had glimmers swim across her moon-crater-pores.
Looking up, as she had throughout her
line-by-line life, she asked the creator what next.
And, before she was given another breath,
the neon of the lights dissolved into her skin,
burning her alive, eating her alive;
her body falling apart, disintegrating.
Fatty rain drops of blood, bile, and memory,
gathered at the danced-upon tiles.

Arthur, frozen in the now disco heat,
swung his face towards the stripped away ceiling,
a lava sky staring back at him, waiting to choose.
He said *******, He said Just ******* do it,
and, at first, he was to live, out of spite,
but the temptation of choosing death over life
was too great for the author.

Arthur's skin flew across the room,
in differing shapes and sizes,
clinging onto the lights, revealing
the God of Death: the reader,
the absentee father, the scarred brother,
the crooked teeth heart-breaker,
the author, himself.

The pearl girl woke up, next to the author,
in a place in a space in his head,
telling him that she had the strangest dream.

I'm an Amazombie in denim and fog,
Black and blue, and twenty-two:
a millennial with an oppressive blog.
***, money, and hipster brains --
condomless, rudderless, token.
I like the way you like the way
when I'm completely broken.

She said that biting my nails was a bad habit,
as she pulled a puff from the lipstick stained cig.
Habits, I can tell you all about them, she croaked this,
Men, War, Love -- Forgive me for being redundant.
I shook my head and released a laugh that seemed to
float past her, with little acknowledgment, little care.
Men, War, Love, Drugs, *** -- I've had it all inside me,
I've witnessed it tremble through and pass, with gradual
recklessness. I've seen and felt it all, but I wonder if I've
experienced glimpses or the entirety of what life has had
to offer me, bad or not, true or contrived. And this, this
wonderment is my most terrible habit; it will destroy me,
through and through, until nothing is left but a smoldering
foundation; a shell, burning through cigarettes and life.

Her hair is buckwheat, straight,
hanging with the ease of
an assisted suicide.
And the smear, red and from
ear to ear, shows what she cannot:
that beauty is fluid and that we've forgot.

Sun-freckled and speckled
with cheap, off-brand gloss --
she is the monologue of
an anxious man across
the girl in the catalog, who
wore the Fall before the fall.

I focus on my bank account
and not feeling alone.
The man in 1080p repeats,
'Where has my America gone?'
Fifty or sixty, and billionaire rich --
I guess I'm his working class *****.

Voting on how to
delude myself best;
I am part of a
dollar bill nest,
where I get to see
but don't get to touch,
where I get to give
but don't get too much.

There's a jukebox,
in my mind or yours,
and it plays my song --
or, maybe, it's for you.
And it says what I
never could say, which is
that I am very sorry.

I thought of how I was --
or how we were --
which was not as good
as we had hoped for.
You protected yourself
from remorse and I was
fearfully unapologetic.

You were, and, probably,
still are a cold *****, and I've
been a ******* for years.
Your nose was so crooked,
it could run for office, and
my head was -- and still is --
really big, which is fitting,
considering my ego, and
ironic, since I'm borderline
mentally-*******-*******.

There's an eroding jukebox
and its so confrontational,
due to feeling inferior,
unrecognized, and without
a responsible purpose.

The music from the machine
flows like rushing thoughts,
and the thoughts say:

I sit and write,
I don't mind you
when I don't know you.

Some people are roots,
meant to help with stability,
but you are a branch,
meant to offer a new view,
but also meant to fall off,
maybe, killing whomever
catches you next.

I've seen you disappear, before,
into the contents beneath my floor.
I've watched you undress
in the public's eye,
just to distort the
perception of a guy.
I've viewed you in
a thousand different ways,
in the span of a couple days.

We shared diseases
going sixty-five,
on a dirt road we
were too high to drive.
Listening to pop
of the present
and the past,
we smoked cigarettes
that never seemed to last.

I turn on the radio
to the station you
like the least
and turn my
balding tires
to the east.
I would have loved you
no matter how often
you were not there,
since you adored me
when I didn't care.

Somedays I don't feel like writing
and it worries me because
'Writers write everday --
real ones, at least.'
I fear being ordinary,
which is tasteless because
maybe being ordinary
is what I need.

The appeal of snapbacks
and hipster haircuts
is starting to make more sense.
Blending into a crowd
might suit me better;
to be invisible but
to no longer be insecure.

Rap lyrics make more sense,
even though I can't relate;
these words are my sedation,
these clothes aren't armor
but marketable camouflage.
My words have been said before,
but that might be okay because
I'd hate to torment myself
wondering about my relevance.

So, to move on, I write,
and I write, and I write
to pander and to conform.
Substituting thought for
appealing diction and
strong imagery, afraid
to show myself because
maybe you're too much
like me, which, surely,
would eat me alive.

Neon lightning reaches around the room,
pink, leaf, and aqua -- 1. 2. 3.
But she kneels in the corner,
aware of herself, however myopic.

And the rain roars, vaguely,
asking to be found through gunmetal vents.

The floor; a cloth, having the
lint of light bear-trapped among the
blood black tiles, escaping to
faux-fur rugs of an alien beast.

Still in the inks of foster wolf disparity,
her eyeliner paints her pearl cheek,
asking whatever, whenever -- 1.2.3.