And at last when I emerged from the crucible I found myself,
Forged anew in the heat of,
Realization, and all the phantoms of,
Youth sang hymns for what we had,
Lost and all the dead friends,
Rose from their pews to lock hands,
And we walk together back into the light of being,
I in my warm blood and beating heart,
You in the grace of forgetting,
And by now I am,
Saint of all these small deaths,
This endless parade, of eulogy and,
Flowers, soil and silence and the stillness,
That can only lead to this, resurrection,
And when I had found reason once to,
Leave this world, I dipped my head,
Beneath that cool and holy,
Water, and was baptized, again,
Alive, again

Is it worth it, then,
To sin, if only to be forgiven,
If the burden is lifted, transmuted,
To the crucifixion of a stranger,
What is it you seek if not,
Punishment, a sentence fit for a,
Ghost of a crime, created somewhere,
Between your mother’s vacant bed,
And your father’s hands, Father,
Was the first name you learned for regret,
I met you swinging rosaries burning,
Sage for the spirits you said you needed,
To be purified, something,
Was haunting your bedroom, hanging,
Around long after the party,
Ended and the confession began,
When you said quietly but surely,
I will live forever, I will live forever,
There is a place where I will rise again and,
****, when we last spoke your eyes were all,
White like you were looking for some kinda,
Light somewhere you might’ve missed,
And I didn’t know how to go,
To your funeral, couldn’t meet your father’s,
Eyes, couldn’t cover up the mark that brands me,
Beast, just like you, just like the,
Feeling you were always running towards,
In my dreams that night we were in a,
Eucharist, drinking the blood of a,
Fever that caught us once when we were,
Young but had since died,
You broke a loaf of bread in half and said,
This is but a step forward, a new path which I must,
Face alone but you can always find me,
Wherever you need me to be,
And I woke into the silence of the church,
Through the stained glass I could’ve sworn,
I saw you ghost walk across a burning sky,
Resurrected and unafraid, untouchable, and
I walk to the end of the world and I ask,
The sun to return your body to earth and she says,
Sweet child, this is all that keeps you warm,
Some day you too shall serve as,
Kindling for the endless fire but,
For now, bask in it, keep it close,
To your heart and always in the faith,
That whatever savior you believe you need is,
Just above you,
Waiting to come alive

Who did they name savior,
At the ****** church and was it,
Your father, priest of desire and,
Fulfillment, how he scratched,
Every itch the neighborhood ever,
Felt and they built altars on every,
Street corner in south Louisville where they,
Still got stigmata, they still drink the blood and,
Pray bowed heads into the wind,
The last party I saw you,
Break your body into pieces and,
Nobody went hungry that night,
Not like they been starving every night since,
In the light of cold morning you were,
Crucified a martyr, and nobody knew,
How to dig the nails out,
But you did, three days later,
You got down off that cross, and you said,
I did this all for you, and that no tomb,
Ever built of stone or marble,
Could hope to hold all the light,
Burning through your veins,
And this is how I first,
Learned of the art of resurrection,
The congregation named you a heretic,
But I know by now,
The difference between a parlor trick,
And a miracle,
I saw you,
Rise from the grave, and into the sky,
So I’m lighting candles in a,
Deep midnight mass, waiting for a,
Rapture, or another resurrection,
All I want to ask is,
How you did it, and if there is a place,
Somewhere beyond heaven,
Where we are free of death,
Where finally we might,
Laugh, and mean it,
Where we shed our mortal skin, and become,
At last, a hallelujah that never ends

Easy
It is so easy, to fall into something larger,
a mouth, more monstrous than the one you were born with, separate flesh from blood, become energy for some terrible purpose, get too real on the come up and dissolve entirely on the comedown, it could all be so,
Lucky,
It is so lucky to be anything, to solidify, crystallize in your own body, connect to all points in time and hold a note, beautiful enough to be sustainable at last, to reach some higher place, some understanding outside of your own context, and isn’t that what it means to be so,
Free,
There is nothing so free as this, the art of disappearing, a release of expectations, submersion in a feeling, blurred images of self and dream self, fingertips meeting at the mirrors edge, escape from wanting, desire’s vicious processes, dead as the night, just alive enough, to cherish what remains

The alchemy of liberation,
a violent restructuring of the self, upheaval of desire and history

We speak truth in the lexica of negation, subjugate our demons and project them onto the sky, phantasmagoria of dreams and nightmares, visions, fetish, reality consumption,
And this, too, is a god state, an architect of *******,
altered chemistry and planes of being,
Assuming total control over synapse and viscera, sublimation of cells and holy organs,
Feed the burning engines of will and achieve a greater porosity, togetherness,
Free flowing energy between bodies and burdens, from hearts to hands to fists,
Passed down generationally through endless struggle,

Ghosts of a zeitgeist,
spirits of spirits,
hang restless like guillotine blades thirsting the flesh of something weak and divine, to be profaned, chewed up and spat out into the grinding wheel of industry,
god machine reaping soul machine,
conscious machine chaining freedom machine, naturally occurring fascism of the mind

Place your hands on our everburning turbines and turn your face towards brilliance,
Unsurrender hell, be carried to purpose on the shoulders of devils who once enslaved you

Forge in the crucible of uprising, a new identity, of steel and bomb shell casing,
A new language, born of rope, instinct, survival

Enter the twisting vortex of feeling and emerge as your own father, with all the trauma and fresh pressed suits that implies

Melt down that which oppresses to its base elements,
fear, rage, alienation, loss, want
transmute them into air to breathe,
water to drink,
earth to build,
fire to warm,
or gold to share,
In this way we shall grow rich off that which once killed us,

Make your misery a hammer,
And set to the work of reconstruction

Transformation, altered state and revolution,
All heads bowed at the church of violence, vicious men worshipping the shadows of their fathers,
No one speaks a word,
Our language holds no words sacred enough to name our dead living and i know this, but I will catch myself meeting my own eyes in the mirror at midnight,
Letting every ghost that slipped through my fingers fall from my lips, dance a slow burning waltz around my bathroom, and collapse into my bed,
In this way death is not solid, it is a fluid parade of transition, a transfer of power,
The clocks will not stop for me or anyone,
The scales will level out

When I was young I was told the Holy Ghost lived inside me so I opened my wrists, to let the light out, return God to the sky and dull the Devil’s fangs,
I call this a ritual, but anything that drags the demons from the body and forces them into conversation can be called an exorcism,
I listen and I hear the Father scream,
I hear the Son weep,
I want to find out where it went wrong

I want to release the pressure,
To be adored, neurotic saint of the suicide machine, hung up in a museum adorned in my finest clothes, the site of every pilgrimage for every lunatic ****** artist this side of hell,
To spread my caged ****** blood like a plague across this land, to father a generation so jagged and broken that all they know to revolt against is their own survival instinct,
To become first flesh, then blood, then ash, then spirit, then eternity

But what do I know, I’m nothing without this,
I authored my own fate and lost the plot,
I can’t speak for you or your blood,
I don’t know what it sings for,
I don’t know if it aches or howls like my blood,
All I know is, when we are drained of it,
When the light leaves our eyes,
Our graves will be the same size

Don’t you think I look so,
Beautiful?
My skin ******* in knots, tight enough to hang from,
A skeleton hollowed out, meat stripped from bone and taught to dance,
In the right light, you might even love me,
Yeah, in the right light I might swallow you whole,
But I don’t do that anymore, swallow,
So you have nothing to fear,
Just listen to my bones bend and scrape together, until they shatter under all this weight,
I carve my chest out with a hunting knife, trace the patterns of relapse on my stomach with blood and steel,
I’ll make a masterpiece of this yet, I swear I will,
Don’t worry about me, by the time you open your eyes I will already be gone,
Withered to so much dust,
And it’s better this way, you will forget this like you’ve forgotten every dream before,
And I’ll be nothing but particles, reflecting all the light of heaven in a dazzling display,
At last, bright enough to be seen for what I am before I dissipate with the wind,
Yeah, I guess what I’m saying is,
I wanna turn to the side,
And disappear forever