When great grandmother died they salted the land down south, I suppose because some burdens aren't worth carrying alone, or because they believed the harvest wouldn't taste like triumph anymore, or maybe it's just that sentiment still holds as much weight as grief in some places, either way, this is a story that begins at a funeral and ends in a grocery store


When grandfather died they gave him full honors, thanked him for his service in the rain, as if this place is any cleaner for all that pain, as if the war hadn't carved the heart from his chest and left broken bottles in its place, I think about how ceremony can make men out of monsters and back again, on the drive home I wonder what they'll say about me

When the angel of death appeared to me,
He said,
"If you're willing to believe this isn't the end,
We shall have no more to discuss tonight"
I closed my eyes then,
I've been feeling around in the dark ever since,
Afraid of what comes next

I dreamed of Yuri Gagarin straddling an atomic bomb,
I dreamed of grace and annihilation weightless and atmospheric
I dreamed of gravity as the tyranny of man

I dreamed of a view of this world from the sun, ashes in a cosmic crematorium
I dreamed of ice and fire, winter and war
I dreamed of mutually assured destruction, eyes watching the sky

I dreamed of watching from on high, all glory hallelujah and twinkling giants
I dreamed of falling back down, arms spread in unbreakable faith
I dreamed of Yuri Gagarin, alone among the stars, saint of that great abyss, smiling as he met God, and asking him in a calm and reassuring tone, where he's been all this time

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

We are a broken
Hallelujah
We sleep uneasy we dream of running as far as hell will take us towards
Hallelujah
We forget to call we forget to write we forget to medicate we forget the name that we once called
Hallelujah
We dig in we arm ourselves to the teeth we can't trust we can't remember
Hallelujah
It is not safe here, we are drawing battle lines across the block we are marching the neighborhood we are holding hands to stop the shaking
Hallelujah
We know that alone we can be killed but together we are immortal
Hallelujah
All we have is each other and a clear picture of who our enemies are
Hallelujah
Our enemy is death and he is fear and he is afraid of the strength of our
Hallelujah
We'll take the streets and hold on
Hallelujah
We'll take the power and hold on
Hallelujah
We will endure and we will overcome
Hallelujah
And we will all sing
Hallelujah
And we will all sing
Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

What can I add that isn't already there?
What have I said that really needed to be?
What drove me to write poetry outside of Steinbeck, Ginsberg, and you, Thomas
I have seen endless rivers
I have had my fill of stones leaves and unfound doors
My roots are of a shallow depth
My branches do not reach as yours did
My inspiration is a well run dry
My words are saliva on sidewalk
Is there a fate for me in California?
Is there a place more kind than home?
Is there a life for those who seek angels made of stone?
Thomas you saw an America I never could
You reached great heights I may never touch
But Thomas your legacy rests in my heart
I will never forget you
Angel child of Asheville
Wild man of words and words
Pages and pages
Thomas the river will always welcome you home

I haven't written in weeks
And when I did before the words read empty
As they tend to do
Again I find myself sitting alone
A table for one facing the wall
Lost in the sea of a college campus
Hundreds of miles away LRADs blast away  protesters protecting sacred land
Stock prices unthinking and unfeeling
Are obsessed over by men in suits who won't have to worry about if they get to eat tonight
On my arms I carve the words I learned in a women's studies class freshman year
"The personal is political"
Personally I am desolate
Disillusioned with anything I've ever had to say
Unable to bring myself to say more
Politically I am livid
In my veins are the Sacco and Vanzetti electricity
So I spit
Look to the ground
and walk
With a look of righteous anger
And I read
Collected works of Huey Newton and an article about Marxism and Class

When the personal and the political meet I feel hopeless
Disoriented and disillusioned
Not two halves at war but two puzzle pieces desperately trying to fit
I think of a heaven after I die
While advocating for a heaven on earth for everyone
I want to stand and fight
While I feel uncomfortable speaking up in class
I don't believe there is freedom in a free market
But what do I really know about it anyways?
Freedom and hope and art and love
Words that swim around in my head
They lack solidity
I can't grasp them
The meaning drips out of my ears as if they were bleeding
I can't fall asleep at night because I keep coughing
I think about Woody Guthrie
Singing about the powers of the working class and dreaming of what America could one day become
I think of his better world and I can console myself with the ringing of guitar in my ears
I think about Pat
Looking for times worth living in whatever car or house he lives in
Breaking windows to redemption if not freedom and holding on with all that's left
I think about myself
One year of poetry under my belt
Still struggling with what I want to say
Centuries of politics in my head
Still struggling with who I want to be
Personal and political are more than just words to me

He says,
Boy, you fill that page until everything inside of you is gone, gut yourself for the poem and the poem will grant you a swift death, you will be fast asleep by the time you know you are gone, you will dream of the summers of childhood, when you buried your face in fields of flowers and they held you like you always wanted somebody to, you will live forever here, you will wake at the center of everything, a black hole ******* in all light and keeping it in your chest, you will be the angel wheel in gods chariot, you will blaze across the sky in streaks of revolutionary red, you will be the harvest of promises made to the soil, you will come home wreathed in the laurels of glorious victory on the shoulders of your friends,
He says,
Boy, this may be killing you, but it's holding the whole **** world together
Boy, let them drink of your blood and be sated,
Boy, let them eat the contents of your soul and grow stronger for it
Boy, let them remember you in marble and gold
Boy, let the flowers grow over your grave
And when they hold you, don't ever let them go

I learned how to love the same day I learned how to run,
Cigarettes make the first part easier and the second a hell of a lot harder
So on nights like this where we run out of breath, for one reason or another, we make **** sure that the radio tells us what we wanna hear;
Kingdom come in somebody's eyes, a straight shot up from the highway into the stars, a kiss from a red haired girl with the sweetest melodies,
A place to run to, a place of our own, a place where we can know what freedom is and not just what it isn't
Our dead friends in the passenger seat for one more ride, alive and electric and singing loud enough to wake heaven and let 'em know what they're missing out on,
Our dying country stretched before us like a Norman Rockwell painting while we live like characters in a Springsteen song, wild and desperate and without a home to hold us back,
Our lovers waiting for us somewhere between the sunrise and the B side of the album, all open arms and 4th of July lips to kiss clean our worn and ***** souls and deliver us from our evils,
So on these nights where we suffocate under the tremendous weight of living,
We still have each other, and we still have the radio,
And we can still remember how to breathe a little easier

Can you have decent political opinions and still be a bad person?
I'm asking for a friend
How much theory does it take to build up the courage to stand in a protest?
Does a bandana covering your face make you a coward or does it make you careful?
See my friend knows which side he stands on
But when he looks in the mirror there seems to be a different person on each side
The most direct action he takes is sitting alone reading Marx
He's never left the sidelines long enough to understand the front lines
Dignity and freedom are nothing more than dictionary definitions
Liberation is too hard to grasp
He wants to know if it's ok to be timid when the marchers pass him by
If it's ok to doubt his own strength  

My friend spends too much time driving around singing folk punk anarchist hymns
And not enough time living the lyrics
Deep down inside he is still afraid of what people will say about him
He hates that he can be so self centered
He usually doesn't wash his dishes
My friend talks about shedding chains when he never really had that many to start with
He asks if anarchists are allowed to watch shows about cops
He wants to know if anyone will ever truly see him as an ally

Every night I take a moment to tell him not to be so afraid of taking the stand
That what he thinks will only go so far as what he does
My friend wants everyone to live in a better world and he wants to be a better person
I tell him that no one will hear you until you yell loud enough
I tell him that the there's no better place to stand than where he is
He knows better than to give up
He knows he is enough

"You are my drug, I'm addicted to you"
Says the poet, immaculate, grinning his way through juvenile metaphors and picking his teeth with the bones of the dead horse he's been beating, Slick ******* on a stage locking eyes with every girl in the room, cocky enough that he thinks he can make every single one of them think that this poem is about them, and that they'll just -get it- , that it's just a -metaphor- of course he has no experience with drugs, he's never watched anybody wither away to nothing, he's never had an itch that took his body hostage at a cellular level,  he's a real -stand up guy- he's just -sensitive- he's a real ****** honest to god artist standing before them and from there it's all but too easy to ******* his way into some casual ***,

"It's always someone nice who gets killed, it's never some toothless ******"
Says the comedienne, immaculate, laughing into television cameras, and everyone gets the implication here,
The ****** is not human
The drug addict does not deserve life
If you made the choice you should pay the consequence
Stop breathing while people who actually deserve it are dying
Don't talk to me about the socioeconomic climate that breeds drug use
Don't give me statistics
Don't you dare send those rats to rehab, if they're going to live they should do it behind bars, locked in a cage like the vermin they are

"I thought I could stop this time"
Said my best friend as I wrapped a blanket around him,
He is weak, he is ice cold and still sweating, he is on three day withdrawal and he will relapse tomorrow once I have left, he will have been dead for nearly 4 years by the time you hear this poem, and the silence that follows will take shape, and it will whisper,
"Good"

A crushed, half smoked pack of cigarettes
Three to four empty coffee cups converted to ash trays,
My grandmother's Bible, seams torn by the Great Depression and the backs of children's hands,
And maybe thirty dollars, some change,
All I have to my name,
I am 15 and I am setting fires, busting out the windows in abandoned houses with my skateboard, spray painting anarchy signs everywhere I think will send a message, growing my hair out, reading Ginsberg and Karl Marx in detention every afternoon, I am angry and I have fights to pick and a system to overthrow,
I am 16 and I am driving fast late nights down backroads with the headlights off, I believe I do not fear death, I believe I welcome oblivion, I believe every word in every song I howl the words to, I believe I will die a martyr and they will hold parades in my honor, I believe we are fighting a holy war, I believe that we can and we will overcome, I believe that I believe in nothing but my leather jacket and the switchblade in my pocket and whatever punk song is on the radio,
I am 17 and I am speeding out of my mind off razor blade lines on end tables, my bones ache to destroy, my veins pump gasoline to a nicotine heart, I shoot guns all night pretending each bottle is a cop and each round hits a politician right between the eyes, pretending that if I can do enough damage I can free us all from our chains,
I am 18 and I am voting as far to the left as I can and I am still bitter because it is nowhere near close enough, I am singing dying songs for friends and pouring my heart out to strangers, dancing around fires, making blood oaths to never surrender, telling fortunes for beer and dreaming of open warfare,
I am 19 and I am getting ****** in parking lots, tattoing my heroes visions into my arms, trying to save my city by shouting at it until it wakes up and takes to the streets, burning my home to the ground in hopes of a glorious revival, passing out before I can convince anybody of my beliefs, cursing my enemies from the porch and seeing how many puffs of smoke I can get out of a night before I become just as greedy as the rest of the *******,
I am 20 and I am drinking alone
I am tired and I have lost my voice,
The prophet of my folk punk day dreams slipped away, into the night with no explanation and no destination
Erik, I will honor your memory the best I can,
I will carry you into battle everyday until I can no longer clench a fist,
I will scream your words until there are holes in my throat,
I will build you a funeral pyre of my love and rage,
And from the ashes, I will rise again, and so will you