In the depth of pagan nightmares, rose the shadowed curtains of my doubt
To choke out the nonchalant sun, aloof on the morning sky
Two deaths, I died last night and a third might bring good luck
But for now I am alive and I feel like the Rapture
Tracking time through ticks on my track marked clock-work veins
While dead buildings mock me through the streets
Where has my supposed talent gone?
Some specter lingers, inverted above my bed
Number 12 in poise, but not quite enlightened
Frenzy is in my muscles, my ligaments laugh like high hell
My teeth burn like the Ohio River and I've bitten off all my nails
An atom bomb in a gilded cage
And a real tear-jerking ******
If you haven't put the pieces together by now,
Don't try

I hear the rain
From where I lay
     The filth ran off the surface and seeped into the soil
     In this way things are never truly cleansed
All the planets at once aligned
Save lovely Venus, who spun out into the black
      To dance with the ghosts of the hundreds of dead moons crumpled up and discarded
The swords of angels cauterize the crying wounds of nature
      And a ****** of crows descends on the Great Plains
      The last buffalo roared to shake Heaven and raised Hell instead
Of mountains that sighed and rivers that fed
    Mortal men shrugged at the meaning of intimacy
    21 revolutions around a singular moment, and clarity still escapes
Lie still and the sun will swallow you whole,
      If the Earth won't open up first
To **** and be killed is a dear privilege
But still there were vagrants up North, and 'round trash can fires the cities heard them sing
Father to brother to son
    Mother to sister to daughter
        Lover to loved to nothing at all
And nobody to wait out the night
Even the rain is unmoved

Conceived in hazy agony
The path to the city of gold stretched endlessly into the mountains
My father walked it once, and I think I'll stay home
There is an eternity between each of my words
And in that space ghosts wait impatiently
For me to cave in
The American South is all ablaze
And two headed catfish swim the Ohio River
Appalachia's lullabies end as bitterly as they begin
Life comes together in fragments
And ephemeral cycles reach their waning stages
God took pity just this once, and the following day brought apocalypse
An ending fit for songs that would never be sung
So glorious they never could have saw it coming
But I'll drink to it regardless

Baptize me
All lace and white fabric on pale skin
You tasted like July the last time,
And the smoke has lingered ever since
You dyed your hair and cut off the dead ends
My fingers can barely recognize it now
Your attention explodes across my awareness
Like a shooting star, because for all of its brevity
It is ******* enthralling
You made a holy fool of me once
And here I submit, on my knees
To be enfolded in the judgement of the crown
You sigh like the wind in Appalachia
And sing like the old gospel choir
And you whisper in French in my ear
You don't know much, but it's more than me

Wildlife has a way of returning to the forest once it's been burnt to the ground
The death and decay are cleansed this way
And life vindicates itself of the indignities it has suffered
It is this perfect symmetry
This cyclical harmony that nature is blessed with
Fell short, the night you burned my house down in departure
November of last year, you were crying and screaming on the sidewalk
And this November I didn't sleep a single night
The floor is littered with garbage and clothes I'll never wash again
And the shower I passed out in, let the washing machine turn the water cold to wake me up
I couldn't stand to touch the surfaces anymore
They can't ever be cleansed
I can't scrape you off the floor, or the shower
The couch, or the insides of my eyes
And the bed, where you told me to never forget
Maybe I'll crash my car again, maybe you'll come home
There's an apartment in the city I always imagined
And it's a real place, I'm sure
I'll probably never see it
With your clothes and mine on the floor
While you're making breakfast, humming and smiling absently
And I have the first cigarette of a new day
Light streams in the blinds and cuts the room in half
And I always imagined that being there
Would make me realize that it feels **** good to be alive sometimes
The winter is coming back now
I wake up uneasy in a haunted house
And last week I saw your mother
Buying groceries
She told me to take care of you, once
And she smiled sadly at me and gave a small wave
Some days it gets easier
Some days I collapse entirely
Some days I think I should burn my house down
Literally this time
I've had enough of metaphors and cliches
For a lifetime, at least

I fought the highway tooth and nail
But it always has a way of getting under my skin
The lights dragged on in lonesome streams
Hundreds of miles in any direction
Someone else's name is in my chest
And I'm powerless after all,
As a crown without a king
In retrospect all things seem just as cliche
Season unending, the smoke teased in the early morning sky
The moon collapsed as sailing ships left the bay
Again, and the tides were more or less used to it by now
But shock still sets in regardless
Expectation suffocated in the divide
Between those ******* city lights and the savages in the gutter
But the headlines read that the worst was behind
And the Dow Jones is up, so God Bless America
Everyone was beaming and the world smelled like peppermint
And it was like Disney World came to the Midwest
Or so you'd think to hear them talk about it now
It's all too much for me
I'm too nervous to look up
Or re-evaluate my priorities
Powerless again in the face of uncompromising uncertainty
I catch myself hoping that everyone feels this way
So maybe one of them can tell me how it ends

The pretense died at the foot of the stairs
On the flip side of where I stood in awe
Between ***** glass and an impenetrable divide
Locked out in the cold with the devil's company and my last few cigarettes
I close my eyes as I inhale because I can already feel him grinning at me
I know he thinks he's helping, but he's ******* everything up