It’s not what it looks like.  It’s never what it looks like. 
                                               It’s all wrong
                                                                ­          somewhere.  

Out in the Ukrainian backwoods, Chernobyl looks
like a ghost town some thirty years later.  Intact but
abandoned, vacant—hemorrhaged of humanity.  Like in mass
everyone left the city to buy some milk and never returned.  
Life in the standstill.  Lights left on now burnt out.  Meat
thawing on the counter now mold on the counter.  Laundry
half folded on the bed.  The bath water
ran and ran and ran until the well dried up.  

You wouldn’t know that the soil and
                                                                    the cats and
                                                  the dogs  
                were radioactive
unless you held a meter against it to measure the roentgen.

The hermit crab soft underneath its hard shell.
The mold growing around the core of the shining red apple.  
The asbestos hiding in the insulation.  
The lead in the paint on the crib.  

Sometimes, the things that look the most fine can **** you.

April showers
bring with them atomic flowers,
strewn about Elena’s hair,
her forest painted
the colors of Red Square.
Children play in the fun zone
where radiation particles
are active and windblown,
forming flakes on rosy cheeks,
floating down toxic creeks.
The smell of graphite burning in a kiln
makes the nostrils flare,
what’s this metallic taste in the air?

Clouds drift over weddings
and Ferris wheels,
rain falls black and surreal.
Mother goes about her routine
humming dirges like a godless fiend.
36 hours to figure the science,
past time to evacuate
a city in brisk silence.
Brides scream and children cry,
from the fall-out they mummify.
Pripyat’s dying metropolis
they euthanize and lay to rest
in a sarcophagus.

And atop her shallow grave,
deep within the exclusion zone,
sit the sickened stems
and decaying fragrance
of nuclear flora over bone.
Here in the jackal's sanctum,
a capsule car on the lifeless
pleasure wheel
swings like a pendulum,
over a wooded lot with not a soul in sight,
only fresh morbid blooms
that glow in the night.

he is wearing lynx africa and i have a war playing out inside of me / i ring him / i tell him i have no money left / i say “i'm sorry you couldn’t **** the gay out of me” / he laughs like it’s his fault / i say it's fine and then i hang up / i think about how there will never be enough air in the atmosphere for me to breathe / my skin is infinite / i don’t have edges / it’s difficult to expect to not get touched when you live in endless skin / the air is hanging low tonight / lower than ever / i go to ring her / to tell her she is a gardener / a hospital-clean being / i don’t have her number anymore / i have to tell her about these hands / these old hands / how i think they caused chernobyl when i was someone else / i have to tell her that every word was a mistake / they were all just really bad spellings of her name.

Every lie incurs a debt to the truth,
Oppression runs down the cheeks of our children,
For what is greatness when built on the foundations of weakness,
What is progress when it’s cost is greater than its accomplishments,
Every domino accelerates the damage,
Voices are silenced,
Honesty gets mistaken for betrayal,
The sacrifice of one can save the lives of the many,
But are you willing to be that one,
To leave a grieving wife,
For your children to grow up fatherless,
The sacrifice of the one - is a sacrifice of many,
What is the blind perseverance to never admit mistakes,
It doesn’t show strength or determination,
Only arrogant denial at the cost of a nation,
And even when the castles crumble,
And their walls lay waste in the seas of time,
Even then those responsible take no responsibility,
Even then the red blood of the innocent stains the steps of their red sanctuary,
Even then the world looks on in wonder,
What is this lunacy we call law and order,
When the orders are given by those that create the law.
I apologise for the daily desecration of my people,
I look on in hope that a brighter day will come,
And I pray that somewhere there is a justice,
For all of this.

You cannot control the power of the sun
Far less try to hide it behind lies
And reassurances that everything is fine,
While it burns into the retinas of thousands
Who thought they had jobs for life.
The sunsets just don't lie, our life giving
Star sent messages to it's progeny
Writing out the truth across the sky

Pripyat holds the secrets of the apocalypse
Now we know what happens when our world
Ends, nature carries on, regardless, unperturbed
Even after we have done our worst, we go
The way of the dinosaurs, leaving a vacancy
For the next apex predator to ***** up
The world will never stop, but we will
And I think you'll find we will not be sorely missed

Just because one man broke the rules
Causing a reactor to blow it's cool
All so the 'Woodpecker' could listen in
A wall of surveillance powered by nuclear
Fission, now it is a tourist hot spot, everyone
Can go to visit the moment this world stopped
But will we learn from the devastation that's left
History says otherwise, you can't fix stupid