Indomitable like the sea, she rises and falls with the moon
Kissed by the currents which brought her here
To a sleepless fire escape night spent exhaling her immortal soul in to Cincinnati's open embrace
The liquor has run dry but the grass is truly greener on the other side
And it's a straight shot back up I-75
To the football field they thought they could **** her on
The first few times at least
And the prom night she spent spitting ash in haunted houses
Laughing loudest of them all
Drifting across the country
Across the lonesome west grown crowded with ghosts
And the Ohio River grown placid with complacency
Medicine angel in the mist with eyes to the stars
Because ******* she misses them back home
Not this home, the one she left her heart in
At low tide she's back on the road
To lead the skyline in harmonies sweeping up to heaven
And she may not move the stars to wake
But she will laugh the loudest of them all

An old man on the street corner proclaims
"The End is Nigh!" with a cardboard sign held high
And he's stockpiling ****** and ammunition for the coming of the nuclear winter
He builds a bonfire of his welfare checks,
Because what good is welfare when you've got no government?
And he killed himself with a strychnine laced cigarette
Watching the apocalypse party on a Tv in the department store window
His last will and testament was tagged on a tenement wall in black ink
Notarized by the gutter rats below
To the President he left his shotgun
To the Pope he left his bag of pills
To the pilgrims who forgot where Mecca was and dropped to their knees wherever it was convenient he left his compass
To the pagans he left his lighters
To the street youth he left his clothes
To the witches put on trial, and to the witches in the wild
He left his body to be used as they saw fit
Provided they burn it when they are done with it
Because to the wind he left his ashes,
To the earth he left his soul
And to the protesters he left his fortune
$2.27 , enough for a train back home
His tombstone is in the subway terminal
And they leave flowers every day

The stars rained down Hellfire just across the boulevard
While Galileo turned the world over
Once, twice, three times in his hands
Then set it down, to light a cigarette off the sun
And there were young girls on the front lawn
Singing along to an antique radio
That called to them by name
And they kissed in the dark with intangible grace and whispered,
"Lord I never loved another heart like yours"
The halls are silent round this time at night
Save the generator buzz of angels
And the sky outside pulsed electric indigo
And laughed just like a child
The city is either haunted or blessed
And it is so strange that anything is anything at all

Waking up from catatonic states
In another catatonic state
Held aloft by razor wires
Attached at the arms, the legs
The back of the head
I float through acid clouds
Mingling with the ghosts
Of the maniacs who hit the gas and drove off the overpass, their screaming families in the back seat
Of the maniacs who overdosed searching for the American Dream in a cheap hotel room
Of the maniacs who put guns in their mouths and blew the demons out the back of their skulls
I am surrounded by maniacs
God, America looks beautiful from above
The city lights like fields of stars and planets
But this planet is foreign to me up here
America, I am a ******* alien
America, you are a ***** beneath me now
Gliding o'er all
Gliding o'er the blind, the deaf, and the decaying
But America, could you be beautiful?
Could some of the wretches below
Truly lift their mad gaze to the heavens
And cry out
"God is dead, but we can rebuild him!
We have burned down all the mega churches and TV prophets
And we have built our own churches in ourselves,
Wild temples where love and beauty still hold power over ignorance and hate!
We haven't given up on you, America!"
And Hallelujah, their cries came to my ears
In the ******* loveliest melody
I descend from on high, to better observe what I have heard
And oh, what a sight
I see a generation that is sick
I see a generation that is rotting
But I also see a generation that is growing
I see a generation rising like a tide
With flowers growing strong in their bones and fire burning rampant in their hearts
The devil and God are raging inside all of us
In all of us are Nazis and cannibals and politicians
But we are all ******* heroes
And we are all ******* Gods
And we are all ******* saviors
And we are not all ******* lost
So God bless you, America
I've never felt so alive
So God bless you, America
I will howl no more at the sky
So God bless you, America
Dearly departed no longer will I be
So God bless you, America
You've finally set me free
I will find my broken body
I will make myself whole
I'll be your hero, America
I'll pave your streets with ******* gold
Again I feel my chest begin to pound
And the old ache sets in my bones
I'm wide awake, it's morning
And it is the most ******* beautiful day I have ever seen

My generation is sick
Rotting inside long before the expiration date
Walking around like the dead men they saw on TV
Looking for God
Between the lines of a ****** romance novel
With some protagonist who teaches them that your life only matters
If somebody loves you
And dies a martyr
Or in some silver haired, silver tongued figure
Spewing second-hand reassurances that their anger is justified
And their voices will be heard
And a return to traditional values is coming
An open palm in the air, while the other itches to drop the bomb
Or on a tiny screen injecting radiation sickness directly to their brains
Mesmerized by idols dancing like marionettes on vile strings
Spewing filth and mindless drivel
Taught that ignorance is trending
Taught to hate by the hollow blonde shell of some Ubermensch
Recording himself vomiting obscenities for their amusement
Looking for God
Everywhere except the ******* heavens
Where shooting stars and celestial bodies
Pass endlessly through their periphery
Ignored, leaving a generation of wishes unfufilled
Buried under glittering detritus
Rotting to be accepted
Rotting to be trendy
Rotting while their parents give them the world
And they can't be bothered to glance upwards
Squandering fortunes on popular hedonism
Awash in a narcissistic sea
Where the lowliest wretch can gain more disciples than Jesus Christ
A generation of men
Devolved to beasts
Who will pounce at the smallest hint of exposed flesh
And cry out injustice because the prey asked to be devoured
Who will equate chivalry with chemical imbalance
Tattooing false hearts on their sleeves
On their knees begging to be loved
& A generation of women
Content to be objectified
And content to objectify themselves
Hearts bleeding for the plights of the lowly
& beautifully, blissfully blind to their own
The harlots & the sinners
Projected larger than life into the subconscious of
Children with no larger ambition
To sacrifice themselves, and be reborn a cheap photo copy
Full of style and confidence, and devoid of essence
Angels that burn like neon lights
Extinguished quickly, to lie dark and dormant forever
Hell is full to bursting
With all the souls sold for social media
& a forged prescription for Adderall
The madmen are the brave ones
Howling at the sky
That none of this means anything
And none of it is okay
Howling for some ******* reason
Howling for some ******* peace
Howling because nothing else makes any ******* sense
Our society's ship is anchored
And still the current drags us back
Endlessly, and forward again
Repeating history
And our Captain is dead, we've murdered Him ourselves
And of his flesh we made a feast
Of praise and adoration
For the blind, the deaf, & the decaying
And there will be no bleeding hearts
And there will be no expanded minds
And there will be no saviors
And there will be no promised tomorrow
The once glorious future is a funeral pyre
Our ancestral utopia is a ruin
Spray pained red white & blue
Littered with the corpses of the ones who died believing
There's nowhere left to conquer
There's nowhere left to run
There's no room in this Hell
& There's no room in the next
Only the madmen remain
Howling at the sky
Asking God where the **** he's gone
And the heavens shall remain silent

Drown Cincinnati, drown!
We sang from the balcony,
Give up your blood and sweat and be cleansed!
And as they drowned below they called to me for help,
But I'm sorry brothers, I have looked in to the gaping jaws of Hell and I cannot go back!
Euthanize your idols, burn your high fashion statements!
Build a bonfire of your vanities!
Your ancestors ***** the Native American people and now you bear their graven image on your T-Shirt
Oh but how they were HOLY
Holy is the slogan sewed in to the denim
Holy is anarchist ideal held together by safety pins and hairspray
Nursing at the breast of punk's decrepit corpse,
You read the eulogy, screamed "Anarchy in the UK!"
In to the microphone
Although you never left American soil

A match is dropped and the Ohio River goes up in flames
And the smoke filled up the ****** lungs of sweet little lady Liberty,
Rose scented thrift store day ream turned black
Black like the street punk's spiked leather vest worn ragged by a lifetime spent running headlong into brick walls
And red, God how they saw red!
Red like the cherry tipped death inhaled by your sunset haired dream girl in the passenger seat
Hark! These herald angels sing
Drunken anthems to bar rooms of disillusioned art majors newly reborn as kings
Killing time by means of self obsession, searching for the newest thing to be offended by
And what home have you to return to, Prodigal Son?
Climb the police blockade and cry your apathy to the skies!
Lest ye be judged by a jury of your own co dependent peers
Scratch your writing on the tenement wall with nails painted black
Black like the flags flown high on blood thirsty sails far out to sea
And tell them, tell them how you wept for art and nature!
Son of rage and love, your blessed values were imported
Leave the sealed halls and sacred corridors of your ideological temple
And turn your blood shot eyes to the sky
To witness, a manic depressive pilot writing in smoke
"Help us God!"
But then, he felt pretentious so he circled back around to replace "God" with "Mr. President"
My love, your strung out serenades will never melt Bohemia's frozen heart
Set all the fires you will
Set fire to your vanity!
Set fire to your love!
Set fire to the Ohio River that raised you up
And return to the basin of your birth