She will choke you with goldenrod
And I will watch you get so close to death
That your body's going cold

Oh, flawed leader you were so confused
Not absolutely monstrous, just downstream
With shattered paddles. At the height of your power

You must have known - it would all burn to dust.

Blood and gold and memories made inside of a certain time and place

I'm putting all my faith
In a roll of tape
Trusting it's torn pieces
To hold my memories to the wall

Purple-mouthed idiots
We are all glass bottle drunks
And it's so funny how
A string of lights feels exactly like a human hand

Warm and wired

Write me a song
Call it
The Sound of Where We Were

There was a time you threw a party
And forgot Joanna's birthday
And went raging down the river
With your next best boyfriends
Left our baby bird stranded in the nest
Dropped acid and showed some chest

There was a time the boy you claimed to love
Had to beg for your attention
And you wouldn't pick up the phone
Even when you were carving things all alone
And a time when we went to a concert
And we rushed you home to rage with
All those new and improved mountain kids

There was a time you called me crying
Screaming songs about leaves and
For a night You Missed that Band
And through heaves you recalled
A night spent on a razor's edge
Thrift stores and throats raw
The old September
And you promised to call Joanna
And no surprise, you never did

Deities die, babe,
But I didn't dare to
Predict your demise.

There's a chill in the air
There's a ghost in my bed
There are bugs in my brain
Little infant insects
Driving me mad
Keeping me warm
I boil my fingertips
Over hot stoves
Without that blindfolded faith
Things grow scary
I'm numbing the pain
With ugly poison

In my America, we sick dogs on the Natives
No reservations
Safety is:
Same ***
Same color
Pulling an afghan over Harlem
Pulling an afghan over the Afghans
Choking down turbans with turpentine

In my America
We ignore the horrors of history
Psychology is:
A field founded on healing female hysteria
Terrified boys sitting unabashedly petrified of
The galaxy between a set of particular thighs
The ******
Lunging into the vacuum only after they've been properly liquored up
In cowardice camaraderie

In my America
We segregate within our feminism
You can march with us, but stay at the back of the riot
****** spelled backwards is:
A ***** bottle, smashed off of a fraternity stage
And dragged along the spine of a man in pastel
****** spelled backwards is:
A picture of thread in knots, tied around wrists
Of female ******* rebellion
****** spelled backwards is:
I need this
For me
Woman
Alive