Cold nights
               It's always Winter here.
It seems this season's stretching on all year.
               The beers are gone
               so let's get walking.
                           Grab
    your coat and let's do some talking.
Loud, through the night.
Know our strides will crunch through old snow
beneath old street signs.

                                              Best
      ­                                   bets aside,
                                    did you gamble
                                       on my days?
                               Did I waste your time?

Days come early,
nailguns out.
Walls go up and ambitions drown.
4 blocks down the street, you're screaming,
"**** the cold and this town. I'm leaving."
                     Sheetrock walls
               and paycheck borders
                     keep us pinned,
                in line, on short order.
                              Cook
                    our­ melting brains.
                        Froze in place
and broke your heart, rinsed me down the drain.

Cold nights
               It's always Winter here.
This frigid season's stretching on all year.
               The beers are gone
               so let's get walking.
                           Grab
    your coat 'cuz them ghosts been talking.
Howling each day.
Haunting all our snowbound steps and
rattling their chains.


                                          Alarms and cars
                                        and pulsing hearts.
                                               Cheapest
                                        prices paid to make
                                                our wage.

                                         The clocks in bars
                                       count tarnished stars.
                                                 Cheapest
                                         prices paid to pave
                                                 our ways.


                                              Best
      ­                                   bets aside,
                                    did you gamble
                                       on my days?
                               Did I waste your time?


Days come early,
nailguns out.
Walls go up and ambitions drown.
2 blocks down the Ave., I'm shouting,
"**** the wind and the snow that's pounding."
                     Rent check walls
               and sheetrock borders
                     keep us pinned,
                in line, on short order.
                              Cook
                    our­ melting brains.
                        Froze in place
and broke my will, rinsed you down the drain.

                                            And I'll move

                                                4 blocks

                                              next Spring...

Inspiration strikes like lightning--
Wait, no, scratch that.
I’m really trying hard not to be cliche.
Inspiration strikes like the common cold:
It creeps up slowly and dreadfully
Until I’m spewing snot out of my nose
And coughing up nonsense for a week.  
That’s actually a bit more accurate.

How often do you catch a cold?
Once a year.
Maybe twice.

Currently I am writing uninspired;
Linguistically constipated.
Maybe I’m just a bad writer
Or maybe the act of writing was only meant
To punctuate my emo phase
Because then I was a teenager
And the possibility of living off of poetry
Was only a fun idea
And not a requirement.

How often do you think about money?
Just as often as
Everybody else does.

It’s (almost) as though artists
Must continuously invite sickness
Into our lives to remain active creators.
I’m sabotaging my immune system
So that I’ll be sick enough
To see the world as a tyrant
Who can be brought to justice
Only through the power
of my martyred voice.

It’s society making me sick,
Not me,
Why would I do that to myself?
I’m just trying to make a living
The best way I know how.

Color me refuse
Mud in the underbelly
The loose form of a man shoveling **** with a plan to tunnel out and hand the sentence to my master
Lose the chain around my neck and find a plot of land to dance tomorrow

It’s so far away though

Will I tread the sea of bodies strung along the ground
between the sphinxes gate to claim the crown, that even now glimmers past the smog that attempts to fog my vision my decision to walk on tested with every sound.

Bury my pride and carry the burden in stride refuse to tarry or cower or decide to turn around
Push the pen to the page with bleeding fingers
Paint with all the colors of masterpiece until I force something out

Will I?

Or will the tar on my lungs erase me
Will I be wrung like a towel thrown in
Drunk on futility
Chasing with impotent rage
Caged in a circus of ****** on a stage cuz I can’t raise a kid on minimum wage

Furious clouds are born storming throughout luxurious tapestries torn by ******* apathy ask me if My potential still holds sway when my energy has me using my hands to stop the rain.
Torrents pour in to clear my storage of scraps and sheer force of denial implores the whip on my back to pretend it’s on my side while it slips in a crack and adores the dough made from my heart attack

Bedazzled prizes consume the whipping allies beside me
inventing new ways to cope with bottom feeding society
assuming truth’ll be derived if so behooved are the masters and their plastic constituents which I guess makes sense, but
poor judgement lends my flesh up to communion if I dare to walk in and say union.


The reagents and *** kissers call into question mindsets infected by a weakness of character
I shed my pride and inquire with an open hand the law layers of the land to relinquish a sparing of its crumbs
Spun from a singular purpose of a daughters meal the judges glaring does little to impair my will to take the help I can
and spare the child the repercussions of her fathers failure and prepare a better plan

Further choral echoing discord turns it ugly head upon the scraps in my hand and posits that if they were taken it would make me work a lot harder instead of coasting on crumbs

So when the coal baron collects his second billionth he will surely cease pursuing correct?
Not do his best to dissect
Every millisecond of labor dug from workers he’s abusing to wring another penny out.
in fact
I think I see your point
Poised to join and help detract
Back peddle over to
Destroying. Prove lying
On your belly is the easy way out. To say
Today’s coin was well deserved. And serve stout drinks to the kings sleep on a rock and talk **** to the guy sleeping in a box because I’ve been taught to think I deserve where I am regardless of my environment but c'mon man ****

Let’s play a game of monopoly
I’ll start with 80% of the bank and y’all can be my ******* when I pay to write the rules and spank you up and down the board while barely touching the capital I have stored.

I’m getting pretty ****** tired of the stale story hard wired in our heads where the moral is free market prevailing for the pauper til he’s dead and social safety nets provided to the prince instead

it’s lead us to question
Methods of distribution sympathetic to tribulations
Endured.
Solutions ignored
For the poor because a single mother with a phone
Doesn’t deserve to be thrown a ******* bone
Apparently

All hail the welfare queen
Who hasn’t seen a day without the banks banner bearers walking tall
All over legislated brick walls enveloping more then all of her vision of a road to prosperity

Make it clear to me how she’s quote "taking advantage" of the land of the free while I see that you fail to ask us
How behind a mask of nobility a trillion dollar company still doesn’t pay its ******* taxes.