The brutality of the progression,
Dividing lines on highway asphalt ground down to salt & star dust and I am awoken to some form of mania,
Where I watch my hair grow and life rise from the holes in my skin and I’m trying,
To strike a balance,

Dead eyes locked behind clock faces, the time is come & gone & returned & returned & the time is & the time is

Waiting room noise, stop motion Holy Ghost, a short fall to the bottom of the sea, signal fades and curtains fall and the act is finished and the next begins and begins and never stops its beginning,

And maybe this is what they call the desert of the real,
Where spectacle ends and material begins and the radio holds one note all night and I kiss my lovers hair and pray she wakes up and in the East every star is a pillar of smoke and in the West history has ended and we’re here and we’re waiting for the clocks to tick again and the balance to shift back and the men load guns in the land where guns carry men back to the homes of their mothers or the churches of their youth and everybody everywhere is afraid that this might be the time it really ends and if life returns will we remember how to live it and will we remember who we exalted and why and what colors the sky turned when morning came if it does come, and if it does come,

and if it does come, who among us will be left to stand in the light?

It has been a century and some change, since five rivers opened their mouths wide as heaven on a crisp late winter morning and swallowed a city whole,
and ‘round the campfires of my uncertain boyhood they used to tell stories about how the bones still rattle under the floorboards, how you can sometimes catch the ghosts of mothers swimming down the sidewalks calling out for a child,

but what they never told me is, how six months ago I would catch up with an old friend and he’d be coughing up water,

how when the rain started coming, it would never stop,

how every time a storm rolls in I’d have to name it after whoever got swept away and didn’t come back,

they never tell you that there’s only so much in the way of higher ground,

eventually there is just too many bodies and not enough salvation,
and it will always be us in the undertow,

they don’t write histories about it anymore,
like revelations already came through here and the believers returned to the sky,
like I didn’t meet a boy last year who disappeared before he finished writing down his phone number,
like we didn’t all come from an entire genealogy of vanishing,
like the morgue ain’t all full up and spilling into the street and nobody knows how to be surprised anymore,

sometimes death is biblical and sometimes it is quiet

walking the block past midnight and all I see are bodies floating, twenty feet in the air, weightless and anticipating,

the moment when the moon will call the tide back to claim them

And the record ends on a ballad, the long slow unwinding of a spiral, the needle calls out to be reset, the silence begs to be filled,

And one by one, we step outside our bodies and slow dance around empty rooms, our skin the last temple to be desecrated and abandoned, and yet we knew this day would come,

And I think that,
If I knew how to write about anything other than dying, and the dead,
I would’ve left here by now,

But here I am, idling in the remains,
Becoming attached to smoke and,
Leaving memorials everywhere I go,
What I need you to understand is,
The light here is so polluted,
That there are only so many visible stars I can name after the dead,

And if we can’t find what we’ve lost in the sky,
It’s only natural that sometimes the ground opens up,
And swallows us whole,

And by the time anyone thinks to ask,
Where we’ve gone, or why,
There is nothing left to bury but needles,
Ashes, and those dreams that came in the night,
And were gone come morning

Ascension,
Pillars of smoke rise like trees in a garden of apocalypse, the distance between us could **** us all,
And I remember my birthday, my head spun concentric circles around a room all white and ruin and,
There is only so much to live to regret before apologies become your signature and,

please, I’ll sleep this off and be clean come morning,

My brother sits across from me on the path, we run parallel and never meet, I am a reactor ten years past meltdown and he is a haze that never dissipates, and there is freedom in his eyes yes I see that now,
And I think what it must be like to answer only to your vision,
And how close id walk to the edge without jumping,

I recognize this for what it is,
The call of something infinite and slow, a peaceful transition to a resting stage, and I step back, I feel my muscles tighten, my veins light up electric potential and I have,
So much left to do

Twilight of the gods approaches and these streets, cursed
As they are with porosity,
Still weep the blood of yesterdays riots, the gentrification of bodies,
Breath and space,
The slow complete death of a complex entity,

The endless parade of generations, hand shakes and pride,
Timeless progressions of intimacy,
Regality, photographs in frames, a certain fondness in closure,
Clarity of vision and purpose,

Creation and black coffee,
Art by denigration,
Could this yet be a church of healing?
Intimacy and open casket funerals, a deeper connection with the spirits,

Intertwined souls on impossible trajectories, come, roll your way over these promised lands,
You beasts of pilgrimage and sacrifice, I love you and your ceaseless hunger

and I put the needle down on No Closer to Heaven and I am learning to mourn before I learn to speak,

When I was young I knew all about the soul, like I could place my palm on my chest,
And feel it burn my fingertips, all that divinity,
Burning to get recognized and carried, to
Someplace higher and kinder where there was,
A song that hit,
Every note I needed it to hit,

And by now the Midwest is nearly emptied,
Of its living, winter came ‘round and exhumed our dead and the air,
Is thick with spirits, hanging around,
Passing time and begging,
For another shot, I swear,
I could make it this time if you only,
Believe in me,

Outside the show a younger boy tells me,
He loved what I had to say and it meant a lot to him,
Reflected in his eyes I see a savior,
Behind him, on the walls,
My brothers shadow dance at the gates of Heaven, illuminated,
Only by the spotlights

And I’ll be,
Sober,
By the time I reach heaven, I’ll be,
Humbled and on my knees,
Father can you,
Will you absolve me,
One last time

Fading out,
Awash in red,
And blue lights and a,
Car crash outside and a,
Language I don’t understand,
But I understand the divide,
I understand what it is,
To be awed by the velocity,
To bow out, and be passed by

Quiet lightning on an overload trip,
Wasted on electricity and the potency of memory,
And I think about how I got this way,
Spark without flame,
Unsustainable energy,
I study my veins, and I know,
This too will fail me, someday