April 23rd, 2016, 3:00 am,
Still picking through the aftermath,
Hearing pieces of perspective drifting in through cracked doors, windows open so the smoke will not linger, sleeping off demons in unmade beds, while our mothers speak in tongues in different rooms, always worried about the way things have to end, I'm always thinking about the way things have to end, thinking if I drove on through the night I could watch the sun rise off of the water Sonewhere Else, somewhere where the rivers never  catch fire and the songs of birds don't haunt my acid flashbacks, where all I can think of are the choruses to rock n roll songs and the future I read between cut lines of powder and tarot cards that have seen too many miles, but wherever we go we are forced to consider what our names are worth, the contents of our pockets, the next time we will lay our heads to rest, whose hair we will find on our pillows in the morning, if we want to make it without selling out We Are Running Out of Options
When I think of endings, I do not think of death, at least not my own
With a working pen I can live forever,
The phantom poet in a fever dream, a message to Run and Never Look Back,
With enough gasoline, I can live forever,
A ghost whispering sweet release from highway lines, something barely audible over the hum of the engine and the cries for mercy from the radio,
I can live forever
Light another cigarette, hit the gas pedal hard, turn the music up loud, **** it all,
I can live forever
I can live forever

When we keep the bandages on, we let the trauma become identity,
When we rip the bandages off, we bleed out
There is no space left between us and the things we have come to fear for the skin to grow back
But they will never forgive us if we do not try

Level out, breathe in smoke, exhale fire, level out
Balance, restrain, restrain, restrain,
Now let it out
**** what you heard, this is everything
This is the gasoline heart of the human machine, the Hallelujah chorus that hits as you crest the hill, watching skylines shatter into mirrored versions of themselves, bearing down on the horizon like it has hurt you one too many times and you are not going to take it anymore,
Never let up, never take your eyes off the ******* for a second,
Let it out until the knuckles bruise and the fingers bleed,
Let it out until the fire dies, then *** a match to start a new one
And when the sun rises on the river, consider what it means to change from black to golden
Cast a stone to the water for every love you've surrendered,
Visit the graves you buried your old friends in, leave roses and a still burning cigarette on each one, even the dead must have vices,
Look West with the right set of eyes, try to understand the feeling Robert Plant sang about,
Drive fast across state lines, try to understand what Springsteen was running from,
Carry this burden of understanding until you collapse,
And when you do,
Listen, take to heart when the city speaks to you in dreams:
"Here in the obituaries, they paint us all golden"

When we see breath in April,
We get nostalgic for the days we still smiled with our eyes
Where we come from, the summer ignores all of our prayers,
She will deliver us, when she is ready
She will leave us begging and bleeding, sitting up nights in spaces vacant save the glow of streetlights, picking up each other's pieces after one too many exploded mornings, smoking until empty packs signal our forced surrender to sleep, with nowhere to go and nobody to impress when afternoon comes to revive us,
And we will still believe she sets us free
We never had to learn to connect,
We had to learn to keep up, and quickly
To be down for whatever, whenever
To never grow complacent, because the feeling can strike anywhere;
To run until the boots tear, to drive until the gas runs dry, to sing until the neighbors join the chorus, to **** until the blood of the demons we exorcised stains the sheets, to fight until the pavement resembles our favorite paintings, to say everything that's ever crossed our minds only to forget come sunrise, to chase the sunset to the edge of relapse and leap with faith and conviction into the abyss that rises to greet us, to let it out let it out let it out LET IT OUT, to watch the sky until it spells out the message we wanted to hear, to break and be broken, to destroy and be destroyed, to **** and be killed, to be reborn under stage lights in the arms of brothers, to be reborn in back yards under Midwest stars in the arms of sisters, to be reborn on city streets in the arms of lovers, to be reborn under no force but your own will when everyone has given up for the night -
I wait up, I listen for the heart of my city to wake and beat the blood back into our limbs,
I count the phases of moons that have felt pity, I play back the words of angels that spoke to me in warmer weather,
I receive no calls to interrupt my sleep, I do not sleep regardless
I consider the act of hibernation as a commitment I never asked for,
I dig deeper, I pray as much as an atheist can
All cycles must reset,
All stories must rise,
Any grave is temporary,
Any hell is nothing that can't be driven straight through,
I will not stop for gas,
I will not stop to rest,
We will get there, when we get there, don't you worry

It is the last moments before dawn, and I watch the crescent Ohio moon be swallowed by clouds, but not without a fight


It is the devil in blazing June back when we still thought our heroes would know better, when we saw each other in the first sparks of growing fire and knew we could distill divinity to its most basic components, when we ****** and fought for every breath we drew and thought we would eventually deserve it, when we sang, every ******* night,
"EVERYBODY WAKE UP" til the cops came,


It is the last ashes from the infernos of August that blanket the trees when we should be asleep, my brother tells me we've come back to where we started, as it was, again, over cigarettes we shared when we couldn't afford anything else, the subtext of which read: "We will talk about this, when we are better men", and we managed to inhale enough smoke to believe each other one too many times,


It is the way we were romanticized, or at least wished to be, the build up to full collapse happening over months of binges and talks about anarchy, of doors left open and un-entered, of long drives where I envied people who consider the journey to be the destination, because they didn't have to be so ******* nervous about how to act once they got there,

It is the moments of tension that precipitate the release - this is true in regards to punching your best friend in the face as well as ***

It is the ghosts of the fires we set, the drugs we took, the arrests we avoided, the people we ******, the kisses we couldn't connect, that still come for me, dumb and insatiable as ever

It is the fever that sets the bones to ache, the sickness that doesn't leave you in the morning, the love that you cannot **** no matter how kind you are; this is the story that follows the stories of all those nights you hear waxed poetic about,


For what it is worth at least I am still able to recognize irony when I write it

It is the way we talk now, only relating to each other through the same few stories of the same nights we all lived through, the stories that haven't killed us yet but haven't stopped trying

It is the way I still fill in the harmonies when I sing those same songs alone,
It is the volume **** turned as high as it allows,
It is Your Favorite Weapon cutting through static, forever 18 and invincible, yelling
"EVERYBODY WAKE UP"
It is the dream we lived for, given new life when I drive too long, asleep at the wheel, not ready to move on and not able to remain,
It is the promise that we never made but will all hold each other to -
We will talk about this, when we are better

This is about the world as you might hear it in a Springsteen song,
The long road ahead stretched like an invitation to some unburdened future - the freedom to make it in America without selling your soul,
the dream of every man, woman, and child to land upon these shores,
This is about the politics of suffocating that dream,
The last few blinking seconds of light before the quiet dark consumes,
The great surrender,
The resignation from both sides that the fight was fixed from the beginning,
The process of accepting that the reality you are in now is post-hope,
You cannot live on and you cannot die,
You are the true silent majority,
You unnumbered purgatoried masses, you incarcerated brilliant souls, you who thought you could stay honest, you who thought you would recognize your moment when it came, you who cannot remember what life was like
BEFORE. ALL. OF. THIS.

This is about how to recognize when your way of life has failed you.
This is about how to recognize when history repeats itself.
This is about how to recognize that your system is ready to die.
This is about ******* that system.

Step one:
Step outside of the things that you believe
Step two;
Start over

This is about the shadow of Nixonland as it darkens the American sky once more,
About the mourning mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons,
who can not live through this again,
This is about knowing when it is time to let go,
For you are not the captain of this ship,
You are under no obligation to go down with it

When the President tells you that you have nothing to fear,
you do not believe him
When the police officer with something to prove asks if you have anything to hide,
you do not tell him
When the father who wanted something more looks through you,
you do not reciprocate
When the angry kid with no outlet and an audience of his peers throws a brick at you,
you strike back,
one shot,
closed fist,
short swing,
straight to the jaw,
you do not continue,
You had a point to prove and you proved it,
The blood is its own reward, dripping down your neck to burn the words,
"NEVER AGAIN"
into your newly forged spine,
When they tell you that you are ugly,
You rip out the page in their dictionary that contains the word
"Beauty"
You staple it to the insides of your wrists and you call it a poem,
This is the first of many times you will do this,
By the end your arms read like Gospel, your hands pick Revelation from between the lines left blank by the ones who came before you,
And all they ask in return is that you tell your story where theirs trails off:
Yours is a story of war.
Metaphorical war.
Literal war.
War of the self versus the ideal, the means versus the ends, the culture versus the capital, the tyrant versus humanity,
It is a tale as old as the streets you stumble home on,
You cannot expect love to work like trickle down economics,
You cannot expect trickle down economics to work at all,
If there is love still to be had it bears its colors on the front lines,
Armed to the teeth, and hungry,
It is the only weapon you have that cannot be regulated,
And when the revolution comes you will let it burn those ******* where they stand

When they tell you that revolution can not be ****,
When the chains of expectation drag you into the dirt,
Shake the dust,
Pull yourself up by your newly forged spine,
Prove them wrong,
As many times as it takes

Under these streets runs the blood of the promises we made, with gold plated markers placed every few feet to remind us of what we lost:
The dream of the beatniks - a needle in the railroad veins of America,  the grand old night skies illuminated by the halos of the restless Benzedrine angels circling overhead with thumbs outstretched for a ride to Somewhere Else,
The dream of the old folk singers - the hatred of tyrants surrounded and forced to surrender, with liberated love and the joyous hymns of the workers filling the cities in equal measure,
The dream of the punks - a Molotov inferno sending politicians from coast to coast running for cover, and everybody able to get off a few good punches before it's over,
The dream of the hipsters - to hit the bottle running and black out before anyone knows they were ever there, to let it all fade out in distorted chords until everybody has to leave and they are the only ones still clapping,

As with all things, there is a story here if you are willing to listen,
For the ghosts of waves who crashed the shores of lakes long dried, destined to rise and crest and break and crash again,
For the muffled beauty of a young boy listening to his favorite record hoping no one is close enough to ruin this moment,
For the faint but distinct sounds of ripping fabric as he discards the days miseries, folded up and prepared to resume come morning,
For the hesitant snip of scissors in another room as he accepts the terms of surrender, followed by the rustling of hair and dignity falling into trash cans,
For the indignant howls of desperation that divide each night into portions,
Those who feel and those who are numb,
But the feeling is only treatable, not curable
And once it is there, one eye is stuck forever watching the horizon waiting for bombs to fall,
The other studying cracks in the foundation waiting for total collapse,
Both know that this has to end one way or another,
And the beatniks sing,
And the old folk singers sing,
And the punks sing,
And the hipsters sing,
And the ghosts all sing,

We either get there or we suffer
We either get there or we suffer