I, the capitalist war machine,
I, the magnificent static,
I, the bomb shelter peace,
I, the twenty four hour news cycle, the rise, the relapse, the detox, the retox, the crucifixion, the rebirth, the disgrace, the continuation of the theme repeating ad nausea towards annihilation,
I, the caged ******,
I, the black boy bleeding to death,
I, the rioters in the street,
I, the Wall Street gallows,
I, the old money militia,
I, the yuppie **** appropriating culture from the scraps of endless genocide,
I, the shock value mockeries of conventional moralities dumbed down to be digested,
I, the blood spilled on sacrificial altars on holy ground,
I, the celestial body ignored, passing back and forth endlessly through peripheral visions,
I, the madman howling at the moon for some ******* peace and quiet
I, the pill popping siren choking on adoration,
I, the mass hallucination shared and reshared till it loses all meaning,
I, the Pantheon collapsed,
The downfall broadcast,
The television unplugged and still playing,
I, the crushing realization,
The devastating grip of ruinous apathy,
The movement monetized,
The victory shallow,
I have built this tomb with my own hands,
I have changed the channel one too many times,
I have let this consume me
I am guilty
You are no better
Lie still
Let it consume you

People I only knew in passing-
Lovers on a hotel bed, lost in the feeling of controlled chaos, ******* until the sun signals surrender, the stars burning holes in their memories that cannot be pieced together again,
Brothers in different hospital rooms, two halves of one whole engine praying for a spark, to be able to stand on ones own, IV drips trickling down dreams of a brighter morning to collapsed veins and broken synapses,
Sisters in opposing time zones, living out play acted scripts of the same drama in various adaptations, the first act the divine comedy, the second act the hellish tragedy, we all tend to fall somewhere in the middle with these types of things
I don't know where I fit into any of this
I once thought I could piece together the story from the fragments I am left with,
But they're nothing more than points in a vague interest, clean surfaces for drugs, nothing to write home about
Have you gotten thinner? Has your hair gotten longer? Have you slept recently? Have you left your house today? How long has it been? How many cigarettes? How many inches of rain? How many sunsets? How many phases of the moon? The last time you spoke to a ghost what did he say? Did he mention me?
I am living seance, forcing questions into spaces they have no business,
My art is the hand that murdered Absalom, the hand that cuts the lines of pills, the hand that slits the throat of the hydrogen future
The cool, slick ******* sitting wide eyed and high in supernatural pretense, in eternal condemnation of the enemy,
Don't you know if you're broke and suicidal you can just blame it on the alignment of the planets?
It could all be so easy

Sweet dreams, milk, just like honey, ashes, lipstick, ever growing haze of marijuana smoke, violins swell, hallelujah chorus, gospel singers in a session band, guitars with distortion pedals, flower petals left as reminders on passenger seats, getting comfortable on hardwood floors, kissing through the night into the sunrise, clothes arranged on floors like exhibits in museums, pages of grandmothers bibles, hearts double time kick drums beating blood back to cold limbs, trauma sewn into denim like warning signs, cars left running, grass stains on backs, hands clasped tight around a moment, dogs howling, pale skin bruised golden by teeth, blood fresh on hands and tongues, I love yous spoken in triplets, words that never rhyme, reflections on themes, reflections on nights spent in awe, beauty as viewed through fogged glasses, present and future tense love, sweet dreams, milk, just like honey

Oh sweet communist,
Sweet communist daughter,
How they loved you, and how we let you die
A ration of bread, a ration of water,
A Tokarev SVT-40 rifle tucked like a poem between your shoulder blades, telescopic sights trained to deliver angels to Earth from the safety of Heaven,
A parchment neatly folded and tucked into your pocket, 309 tally marks for dogs who didn't deserve their names,
Sevastopol sleeping uneasy, singing all through the night in reverence to the Fathers that sent you here to draw their blood on Motherland soil,
Sing to us, sweet communist daughter,
We must be made to understand,
We must be made to hear,
Send us to sleep, so that we might learn who our enemies are
Send us to sleep, so that we might hear the music breaking through the clouds
Send us to sleep, so that we might dream of something beautiful at last

We don't drive nowhere without the radio on,
We are too naive to know better,
We are too crass to care,
We have been graves waiting for bodies to fill them, we have been half inscribed tombstones itching for an expiration date, but those days are in the rear view mirror, still just barely visible over the sticker that reads "What Fresh Hell", but we are lucky enough to have forgotten the way back, we have bled out every drop of retreat and we are going to drive all **** night regardless of whether or not we actually get anywhere, we are urgent, we are emergencies that cannot stop at red lights, we are a 911 call away, we are the angry heart of the river illuminated in burning flags and cigarettes and grand halos stretching the distance between bridges, we are Born to Run turned up loud enough to drown out alarm clocks, we are the ****** cataclysm that explodes into a new dawn, we are taking this one hour at a time, we are living like this until it's all ashes floating downstream, hit it again, one more time, in the dead of night, call me an ambulance, I'm not slowing down for anything

Elegy for a life of war,
21 guns of Brixton firing an all night salute, the bitter irony not lost on anybody, as the very last gang in town tucks switchblades back into leather jacket pockets and decides that violence just can't pay the bills anymore, our brothers and our sisters and our fathers and our mothers will be expecting us home and we will carry our scars back to them with pride, we will talk about this fight for the rest of our lives, where we went wrong and where we really made the ******* feel it, and maybe one day we can win, but we have lost so much blood we owe ourselves a night of sleep at least, in the morning we will be powerful, we will be crass, we will be unstoppable, we will light cigarettes as the flames engulf London and creep across the Atlantic to tickle American nightmares, we will watch all the young punks in their new boots line up itching for the damage and the energy, we will kiss them each and every one as we send them off to die for the cause
I heard your rallying cry coming through the radio when I was a kid, and I want you to know that I will be ready any time you call, and I will come armed to the teeth
And Joe, when the riot comes, I will save you a place among the chaos

Blessed are we who have fallen from The Tower
Blessed are we
Scraping fingernails ****** on the glass ceiling,
Licking at the heels of heroes with broken knuckles who tried to bust through to heaven,
Burning sage for the sake of all the dead spirits waiting around to come alive,
Contemplating reality through thick rimmed glasses wreathed in flame,
Counting credit card taps on tables while buzzing out of fragile bones for the next high,
Sleeping half awake in dreams of red wine and brighter futures,
Hallucinating city lights on balconies in a gin soaked haze of grandeur,
Holding out for wayward outcast brothers and sisters to come by and hear us preach revolution,
Selling burdens in parking lots for the price of a pack of cigarettes and a ride home,
Sobbing on strangers shoulders on Greyhound bus rides to ruin,
Offering confessions at the feet of angels we couldn't begin to understand but loved regardless,
Zigzagging through tree lines on another half drunk run from the police,
Searching for Thomas Wolfe's spirit in boxcars and jazz records and visions of once romantic America,
Cutting deep in to the veins of holy purpose to stain canvasses until they resemble dreams,
Climbing bridges to taste the salt in the air and violent change on the wind,
Breaking into cars to search for an escape from our fathers' rage,
Painting nails black as we pick poems from every strand of young girls hair, trying to remember to feel blessed to have the privilege of so much feeling,
Coming home wreathed in the laurels of our stories, to be met with roared laughter from friends and vacant stares from our parents,
Picking flowers to sweeten the smiles of lovers with the only beautiful things that do not come from our own hearts,
Talking all night in circles until the cops come by to remind us of the world we live in,
Smoking *** on nights we want nothing more than to recapture the feelings we lost, and drift away in a fog of some old glory
Falling in love with rivers and the people we associate with our memories, working up the nerve to kiss them under streetlights in driveways where birds sing too early,
Forgetting the phone numbers of the people we used to call every full moon,
Leaving messages on the walls hoping someday someone will come by and comprehend the nature of the disease,
Tasting death on our birthdays and throwing up the sins of years past, comforted by the sins of years to come,
Shooting for the stars from the hip and blowing violent holes in the roofs of the places we called home instead,
Living indefinitely in the crawl spaces between endless Purgatory cycles of rise and relapse,
Blessed are we sleeping restless in the suburbs,
Testifying to the suffering in Dayton,
Swimming strung out through the Cincinnati streets,
Robbed blind in Columbus,
Hoping to leave Louisville fast enough before our ghosts drag us home,
Erasing memories of Lexington by way of moonshine and therapy,
Praying the South  might take us back if we just said we were sorry
Blessed are we who have fallen from The Tower,
Blessed are we who still have so much farther to fall