I am born into wrath,
Clenched fists, teeth bared, guns drawn standoff homemade explosives in the backyard, come and take my land, come and take my body, come and take my spirit, come and take whatever you dare,
If I'm gone tomorrow,
My ghost will walk these streets forever, holding generations hostage at knifepoint screaming something about this president or that one, I will visit curses upon this Earth the likes of which no scripture is prepared for
Theres an overdose in the parking lot, there's a beggar beneath someone's gaze, there's an artist dying on welfare, there's a scientist melting in the light, there's a record player weeping for its progression,
I open my mouth and throw up snakes,
I open my hands and drip blood onto paper,
I open my eyes and close them again,
Try to see this for what it is,
Mythology;
Passed down from king to peasant,
From god to servant,
From heaven to earth,
Wrap this in leaves and ignite it to take the edge off,
Wrap it in steel and sharpen it to take the head off,
Nobody can tell you **** about how you cope,
This is our story, our legend, our spirit, our passion, our wrath,
And they will take it from our cold, dead hands

(This poem is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of men and women who have struggled across generations in pursuit of the timeless ideals of freedom, justice, and equality)

When they try to tell you that the act of protest is un-American,
Dig in your heels, square your shoulders, spit in their face, and remind them where you come from
You come from Samuel Adams, spilled tea and muskets over Massachusetts, people who believed a revolution could not be honest if it did believe in its own declarations,
From John Brown and Nat Turner, broken chains and dead masters, people who believed slavery could not be destroyed without taking up the gun,
From Sojourner Truth and Susan B Anthony, ballots cast in handcuffs, people who refused to back down until democracy lived up to its promises,
From Eugene Victor Debs, shut down railroads and prison sentences, people who would risk everything so that every worker had the right to a fair wage and a livable condition,
From Mother Jones and Big Bill Haywood, general strikes and marching mill children, people who believed we could never be free unless we owned what we produced,
From Emma Goldman, anarchy and cries for liberty, people who believed that every institution which dominated the human spirit had to smashed by force,
From Malcolm X and Huey Newton, shotguns and free breakfasts, people who believed the government would not protect us so we must protect ourselves,
From Angela Davis and Assata Shakur, shootouts on the turnpike and crumbling prison walls, people who believed true emancipation was a struggle that would last forever,
From The Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society, midnight break ins and burning draft cards, people who believed the true enemy was not on foreign soil but in Washington
From Chief Seattle and Black Elk, wounded knee and fast receding tides, people who fought to carve their ancestors legacy out from the rubble of a stolen nation,
From Cesar Chavez and Robert Bullard, people who believed to save ourselves we must also save the Earth we live on,
From the Gay Liberation Front, police raids resisted and throwing bricks in dresses, people who fought like hell so that in the future people wouldn't have to fight like hell to love who they wished

Yours is but the next stage in evolution in a line centuries in the making,
You will carry that brilliant torch, and you will burn everything down with it
You will stand on the shoulders of giants climbing to a utopia that was promised,
They will try to break you down, they will try to **** your dream in its cradle,
But you will always have strength they do not,
History will remember you and them alike,
You as the hero, and them as the villain,
Remember this, keep this close to you,
For it will always be your greatest weapon

Do you want to feel safe?
Do you want nice things?
Do you want to love, to be loved?
Do you want your own home?
Do you want a family?
Do you want friends who care?
Do you want dreams that you can realistically achieve?
Do you want to be warm somewhere?
Do you want the dishes to always be done and put away?
Do you want to have inside jokes, do you want the feeling of inclusion?
Do you want to be part of something bigger than yourself?
Do you want your bed to be made when you come home?
Do you want to fall into it, immediately into a restful and dreamless slumber?
Do you want to wake up and be grateful for what you have?
Do you want to never have to worry about money?
Do you want to be comfortable in every social interaction?
Do you want people to know your name?
Do you want people to understand you?
Do you want to convey your ideas to people in meaningful and easily comprehensible ways?
Do you want a good education, a good career?
Do you want to belong to something?
Do you want to never have to want for affection or attention?
Do you want to look in the mirror and feel satisfied with what you see?
Do you want to know there will always be someone who is happy to see you?
Do you want to call your parents and hear them say they are proud of you?
Do you want to go to the doctor and find out that you're perfectly healthy?
Do you want to live a long, fulfilling life?
Do you want to die with no regrets?
Do you want to look back fondly?
Do you want to leave something memorable behind?
Do you want to leave the world a better place than it was when you were born?
And finally, before you go, let me ask you this:
Do you know where to start?

I. Palingenesis: The Spirit We Inherit

We were born on top of graves,
Headstones from sea to sea,
Some places they put flowers over their coffins, some places they put gold plated markers in the street, some places they don't put anything,
No matter how far you run, you are not faster than the ghosts of this land
No matter where you go you will pay for the sins of your fathers,
You will incur their debts on top of your own and you will be wrapped in this when they put you in that ground
They will tell you that this isn't your fault
They will tell you that this isn't their fault either
They will blame this on The Other
They will tell you who your enemies are, and you will believe them
They will tell you to defend your blood, your soil
They will tell you that this is what your father did, and his father before him
They will tell you that patriots do what they must, and so must you
They will out that gun in your hands, and when you pull the trigger, they will tell you it is your fault, that they just don't know,
Where you inherited all this violence

II. Kenogenesis: The Spirit We Create

You will speak up,
You will tell them, in no uncertain terms, that you will not carry those crosses,
You will not fire their guns,
You will not tie their nooses,
You will not die for your fathers legacy
You will not surrender to your history
You will climb the rib cage of empire and spit in its eyes
You will wave whatever ******* flag you please
You will learn, you will fight, you will burn, you will live, you will love, you will survive and you will become greater for it
We were all born on top of graves, but that does not make us mausoleums
Let us not be haunted by our heritage, let us weaponize it
Let us say never again and let us mean it, never again, to anyone, anytime, ever
Let us be stronger than our fathers,
Let us pass through the crucible and come out steel, diamond, and fire
Let us drag ourselves forward, chains and all, and never look back
Let us break through the clouds, and watch the day rise upon this land, and let's remember what all those people died for, and let's make them proud of how far we've come

I cried when Barack Obama left office, and I cried for Joe Biden too, as though I'd lost parents of mine,
But Mike Brown and the others had it coming, they were probably resisting arrest,
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

I go to pro choice rallies and I chant about female anatomy,
I retweeted a #blacklivesmatter tweet once, I think that's just as good as a protest
But don't talk about revolution, that's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered Bernie on the whole way, but eventually settled on Clinton,
I would do anything for free healthcare and education, as long as my taxes aren't too much more
I love all the minorities too, as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

The people who voted for Trump, should all hang their heads in shame,
I can't understand where they're at, John Oliver should set them straight
But if you burn an American flag, I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me love me I'm a liberal

I read Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone too,
If I vote it's a Democrat with a sensible economic view,
But when it comes to rioters in the streets punching nazis, there's no one more red white and blue
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and my heart bleeding, I bought every Coexist bumper sticker I saw,
Even marched alongside the socialists, thought I could bring the system down with the power of love,
But I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal
Love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

January 19, 2017
The sword of Damocles hangs tense in the American night as a nation steels itself,
My friends stick to their guns, my enemies do the same, and there's all these children who don't know which side of a border they'll end up on when the dust settles, there's all these trees down south who never asked to feel the weight of bodies on their branches, there's all these people talking in circles and there's nothing but doom on the television,
Dr. King, I think of you this night, three days following the holiday they pinned to your corpse like a participation ribbon, I think of what they've done to you,
Dr. King, they murdered you, they dissolved you in bleach, they rewrote your history and their mouths defile you to this day
Dr. King, I want you to know there are parts of you that cannot be stripped away,
Two hundred fifty thousand raised voices, five hundred thousand raised hands,
Countless bodies in the street, countless jail sentences, countless tears shed in pursuit of a dream
Dr. King, they tried to tell me your dream was of peace, but it's always been about freedom
Dr. King, I know you would understand what must be done in the pursuit of freedom
Dr. King, you knew that nonviolence could only work until they came for your blood
Dr. King, you knew one day you'd have to strike back but they never gave you the chance
Dr. King, they come for the blood of your brothers and sisters today
Dr. King, they put words in your corpses mouth and teach it to dance,
Dr. King, they will claim you no longer
Dr. King, your chains will be broken,
Dr. King, one day, you will be free at last,
Glory glory, hallelujah, free at last

A guitar, a kiss, a river, a lighter, a flag, a country, an idea
A glorious fire, a beautiful catalyst
They told me quit playing politics
I can't hear them over the noise from the streets, from the gutters, from the shelters, from the welfare office, from the edge of ******* nowhere,
I said speak a little louder now,
I said open this **** up right now,
I said tear this ******* prison down,
I said get all these ******* cops outta here,
I said storm this ******* courthouse,
I said hold them all ******* hostage now,
I said get real now,
I said organize right now,
I said build that barricade now,
I said stop talking ******* now,
I said **** them up for real,
They descend on us angry and vicious and afraid
They strike but we strike back harder
They **** us but we get back up
They ask us to forgive but we're fresh outta redemption
They asked Jimi Hendrix to forgive centuries of racism because he could eat a guitar and they loved what he spit back up,
Jimi Hendrix told em to go to hell,
Jimi Hendrix died believing,
We'll all die believing if we're lucky
Guns out, masks up, screaming as the breath fades from the lungs
Come on, take my Earth
Take it if you dare
Take it from my cold dead hands
We've been through this, we'll go through it again
But it's getting late and we're running out of options
It's liberty or death and we all have a choice to make
It's liberty or death and Jimi Hendrix chose both
Jimi Hendrix rolled the dice and landed on eternity
Jimi Hendrix took the world on his shoulders and rode off into the wind with a guitar and a book of matches,
And I wonder,
How many fires he would've set, before he could call himself free, and believe it

There's a rip in my jeans and a hole in my wrist, there's a fire in my mouth and bottles on the table, there's a cut on my palm and blood on my shirt, there's a long way to run and a lot in my pockets, there's an alley two houses down and a bad idea around the block, there's something loud behind my ears
Let's take a ride, let'***** the corner and sing our hearts out for spare change, let's throw punches and not stick around to see if they connect, let's stuff everything in our backpacks and run out the front door, let's take up the street with our bodies angry and breathing and defiant, let's say **** the police and **** all the banks and **** all the CEOs and **** all the people who speed up when they drive past and **** everyone else especially and let's say freedom and death in the same sentence and let's pass out before either one happens, let's wake up and rub our temples and sift through the wreckage, let's take off through the back yards of our neighbors and not stop laughing till the cops stop following, let's climb the fences and scream the morning sun into the sky, let's take a line to the face and cross state lines frantic and hungry, let's tattoo our convictions and bail our friends out of jail, let's ******* and get high, let's hold each other down, let's get it together, let's pick each other off the floor, let's walk outside, and let's dismantle this day like all the others

America, you never had a chance
America, you and I both know there's only one way this ends
America, you aren't going to like it

America, what did you do to deserve the millions of revolutionaries in your streets?
America, whose bones are in the ground beneath your feet?
America, what did your father say before he left?
America, what did your sons bring home  from war?
America how holy was your birth that you can't move on?
America, who will be left behind when you do?
America, I'm too sentimental about you and I know it
America, I watched the workers hold the line for months and you locked the doors
America, I watched those people starve
America, I watched you build a cage and call it Chicago, call it Missouri, call it Baltimore, call it Dayton call it what you want and forget
America, I watched you forget
America, you forgot your angels
America, the saints want to destroy you and I don't feel sorry for you not anymore
America, I let go of you in pieces
America, I watch your flag burn to cinder and drift away
America, I watch you die every night
America, I loved you once and now I'm nothing
America, how did you repay Ginsberg's love?
America, where did you bury Eugene V Debs?
America, did you follow Abbie Hoffman to hell?
America, where are your heroes?
America, what did you do to the workers who never crossed the picket lines?
America, what did you give the black kids for Christmas?
America, what price do the immigrants pay for your freedom?
America, who do they pray to?
America, what do you pray for?
America, I pray too much for someone who doesn't believe in you
America, you never had a chance
America, I pray you get one, I owe you that much at least

I dreamed of Yuri Gagarin straddling an atomic bomb,
I dreamed of grace and annihilation weightless and atmospheric
I dreamed of gravity as the tyranny of man

I dreamed of a view of this world from the sun, ashes in a cosmic crematorium
I dreamed of ice and fire, winter and war
I dreamed of mutually assured destruction, eyes watching the sky

I dreamed of watching from on high, all glory hallelujah and twinkling giants
I dreamed of falling back down, arms spread in unbreakable faith
I dreamed of Yuri Gagarin, alone among the stars, saint of that great abyss, smiling as he met God, and asking him in a calm and reassuring tone, where he's been all this time

When great grandmother died they salted the land down south, I suppose because some burdens aren't worth carrying alone, or because they believed the harvest wouldn't taste like triumph anymore, or maybe it's just that sentiment still holds as much weight as grief in some places, either way, this is a story that begins at a funeral and ends in a grocery store


When grandfather died they gave him full honors, thanked him for his service in the rain, as if this place is any cleaner for all that pain, as if the war hadn't carved the heart from his chest and left broken bottles in its place, I think about how ceremony can make men out of monsters and back again, on the drive home I wonder what they'll say about me

When the angel of death appeared to me,
He said,
"If you're willing to believe this isn't the end,
We shall have no more to discuss tonight"
I closed my eyes then,
I've been feeling around in the dark ever since,
Afraid of what comes next

The cold welcomes you home,
Like eviction notices and ghosts in the attic,
Something is crying all night long
Something is turning this place hollow
Something nobody wants to admit is here
The valley is buried and the Shepards **** the flock one by one to spare them the pain of transition,
No act of mercy goes unpunished,
In every act of mercy there is a promise,
For Jeremiah, the doom of Jerusalem carried with it a promise of cleansing, so he opened his mouth and raised his arms to the sky and let the word travel through him, but when he had had enough, he shut his mouth and locked the prophesy inside his chest where it burned his heart so viciously he weeps still to this day in his tomb
For Alexander, the sword held a promise of unity, so the old king rode among his men as a lion with pride, resplendent in gold and the light of divine purpose, but when the light went out, those cruel gods sank their teeth into the kings stomach and cursed him to fade forever into marble and history
For the Bolsheviks, the rifle and the pamphlet bore promise of utopia, so they armed the masses to the teeth and let hell claim the tsar, but when the long winter came, they stared down the barrel of their own guns and wondered, what good can come of this world after all?
For me, the snow brings with it a promise of remembrance, so I dig in, light a fire, and let it consume me slowly, as it has always done

The poem is either a confession or a rifle
It remains deadly regardless

The disorder, the struggle, the heartbreak; the criminal record, the tears, the drugs, the breakdown, the music, the suicide attempt, the riot, the midnight, the fire, the comedown and the uprising

The girl you spent nights awake over, writing poems you knew could never live up, who you were always afraid would ran like hell and never looked back if she ever saw through you,
The night you got arrested, trying to spray paint a manifesto on a red brick wall because you didn't know how else to make them hear you, and you couldn't wipe your own tears through the handcuffs so you had to let your face tell everyone that you weren't as brave as you thought you were,
The boy who died just months after his 18th birthday, who never wanted anything more than to disappear and finally got his wish except in your flashes of memory and dreams of a different life,
The day you first stood in the street with your fists clenched tight around a sign you held high as God and twice as loud, and you felt ignited for the first time in your life like you could burn up everything that held the world down with a Bic lighter and unshakable conviction

So this is where you find me,
Somewhere between the personal and the political,
From the needle in the groove to the back of the squad car
From the drunken night to the show of solidarity
From the "I can't go on anymore" to the "A luta continua"
From the relapse to the rise,
You'll find me in the poem, and I'll be fighting either way

Viva Castro
Viva la revolution
Viva the people
Viva the killing of tyrants
Viva the guns of Santiago
Viva the exiled capitalists
Viva the educated masses
Viva the death of Apartheid
Viva homes for the homeless
Viva health care
Viva resisting empires
Viva never backing down
Viva always learning
Viva always improving
Viva learning from mistakes
Viva dialectics
Viva destiny
Viva the future
Viva the flame of life
Viva the hammer of justice
Viva the will of the exploited
Viva our comrades
Viva the titans living and dead
Viva Che
Viva Assata
Viva Fidel
Viva la revolution
Viva Cuba Libre

The Emperor watches
The Emperor judges with eyes of fire and diamond
The Emperor holds a grudge, hard
The Emperor holds nothing but contempt beneath his armor
The Emperor grasps the ankh in one hand and the globe in the other, signifying total ******* over life and land
The Emperor sits alone atop the mountain, adorned in gold and ram skulls
The Emperor takes no counsel
The Emperor speaks only in mandates
The Emperor doesn't need to be told he is divine he just believes
The Emperor passes the sentence and swings the sword
The Emperor guards the door to Heaven
The Emperor believes Heaven is beneath his boots
The Emperor cannot be bothered to check
The Emperor does not ask he takes
The Emperor cannot imagination rejection
The Emperor would destroy anyone who tried
The Emperor feels fear
The Emperor runs his fingers over the cracks in his throne
The Emperor knows that if they break out from his grip they will show him no mercy
The Emperor does not know if he can be broken but is not willing to risk it
The Emperor comes down harder and harder every time
The Emperor shatters under the weight of his arrogance
The Emperor is dragged through the streets
The Emperor dies knowing humility
The Emperor's armor rusts
The Emperor's throne breaks
The Emperor's sword is buried with him
In an unmarked grave, somewhere at the base of the mountain
The Emperor is forgotten, and the empire breathes easier every day

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

We are a broken
Hallelujah
We sleep uneasy we dream of running as far as hell will take us towards
Hallelujah
We forget to call we forget to write we forget to medicate we forget the name that we once called
Hallelujah
We dig in we arm ourselves to the teeth we can't trust we can't remember
Hallelujah
It is not safe here, we are drawing battle lines across the block we are marching the neighborhood we are holding hands to stop the shaking
Hallelujah
We know that alone we can be killed but together we are immortal
Hallelujah
All we have is each other and a clear picture of who our enemies are
Hallelujah
Our enemy is death and he is fear and he is afraid of the strength of our
Hallelujah
We'll take the streets and hold on
Hallelujah
We'll take the power and hold on
Hallelujah
We will endure and we will overcome
Hallelujah
And we will all sing
Hallelujah
And we will all sing
Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

0.
Friends, lovers,  co-conspirators, criminals, junkies, artists, vigilantes, killers and heroes and the ghosts that haunt all indiscriminate, I write this in your blood, for you alone,

I.
I saw you each to each pressed together in a crucible, growing callouses in a garden of fire, fingernails black from digging the harvest of ashes, and when the lord came near you boarded your windows and cocked your guns because you could no longer hold stock in a strangers promise of love, not since your father branded his name into the tender skin of your back and told you, you are only as good as what you own in this country, and by covenant you belong to me now, some nights you still see his face in clouds of smoke when the cold chill of predetermined destiny kisses the back of your neck, other nights you watch the sky and wonder which parts of you will be left when the birds have had their fill

II.
Mercy and desperation,
Concentric circles divided by zero around a sacrificial pyre,
Something here cannot coexist,
Something here has to break to fit,
In longing the martyr dies never knowing what for, and in sacrament he is chewed up and spat out
In longing the basin fills, and in sacrament it breaks to flood the earth
In longing I carve out my insides, and in sacrament they will call me a museum
That is to say, the difference between a museum and a graveyard is a still beating heart

III.
Lear looked among his children and saw only sharpened knives,
Castro looked out over the ocean and saw only crosshairs,
I look out over the city and see only cupped hands,
Our grandfathers could level nations to prove a point and our grandmothers could only cower before men of such rage and power,
Make no mistake, these streets have witnessed genocide and remained passive,
Driving fast down these empty roads after midnight, you can almost make out an apology from the wind,
She says,
You have to understand what it's like to be gutted in appeasement,
You have to understand what it's like to become deadly against your will

IV.
In dreams a vision of Ginsberg, playing chess with his demons on the fifth day of a three day psych ward stay
Vision of Plath setting fire to her own head rather than have its contents laid bare,
Vision of Wolfe watching trains roll by paralyzed by fear of the future and his own hand in it,
Vision of Van Gogh unable to express love in any way other than to destroy himself
Vision of Virginia atop the lighthouse demanding payment for the transgressions against her
Vision of the poet as a saint performing miracles after death, vision of the poet as the archetype of madness realized, vision of the poet as divine mouth and unholy ghost, vision of the poet writing his own obituary and praying for silence

V.
We are blessed with the ability to tear down our monuments when they no longer stand for us,
We are blessed because we can justify anything we destroy
When Jacob's time came they carried him to Canaan and the Lion of Judah went on to fill its stomach with the blood of anything innocent it could sink its teeth in,
I take this to mean that there are some hungers that can only be sated by devouring everything you believe in
But what do I know,
I am a crown without a king
I am not much for devotion
I pick up the pieces of the monuments that once stood here and I sanctify them in hopes that one day this will mean something,
And if that day ever comes,
We will live again inside of something everlasting,
And until then,
I will carry this with me wherever I go
It's the least I can do

You wake up one day and the sky is pink and tender and the earth aches for your touch,
The low fall sun turns your blonde hair golden as you rest confident in your divinity at last,
You find peace in the sand beneath you and the god that has wrapped you up like a present to the world
You wake up the next day in a waiting room washed red,
A man from another place tells you that you are dead backwards
A giant touches your face and sighs, tells you he would've collapsed from the weight of this loneliness long ago if he had anywhere else to go
Your killer wears your fathers skin, and there's nothing but static in your dreams
Laura, we're all walking that line
Laura, we all have safe deposit boxes for our demons
Laura, we're all trying to get somewhere else, somewhere we can finally balance out

He says,
Boy, you fill that page until everything inside of you is gone, gut yourself for the poem and the poem will grant you a swift death, you will be fast asleep by the time you know you are gone, you will dream of the summers of childhood, when you buried your face in fields of flowers and they held you like you always wanted somebody to, you will live forever here, you will wake at the center of everything, a black hole ******* in all light and keeping it in your chest, you will be the angel wheel in gods chariot, you will blaze across the sky in streaks of revolutionary red, you will be the harvest of promises made to the soil, you will come home wreathed in the laurels of glorious victory on the shoulders of your friends,
He says,
Boy, this may be killing you, but it's holding the whole **** world together
Boy, let them drink of your blood and be sated,
Boy, let them eat the contents of your soul and grow stronger for it
Boy, let them remember you in marble and gold
Boy, let the flowers grow over your grave
And when they hold you, don't ever let them go

Started using again,
Left my heart on a front porch just outside Louisville like a spare key, drove home 200 miles with powder burning in my head, igniting and torching the highway, the cliff faces, the forests and all
All of that wildlife with no place left to go,
I will return to this when I'm ready, I say
This just got to be too much, I say
I just need to sleep this off, I say
Started using again,
Built these lies into a jail cell, turned a key and dropped off like nothing was ever there
Built these words into a vehicle, turned a key and drove off without a word
Started using again,
Quarantined for the better, stenographed prophecies into the past so that I could realize them now and feel like I've achieved something
Started using again,
Forgot about it except in between sleep cycles, the details gone only the patterns manifest, trace the curvature and find a reason, fall asleep, forget again
Started using again,
Slow it down, take it all in by pieces,
Breathe in the fumes, feel the head rush
Don't get ****** up,
Take the edge off and don't **** yourself with it
Started using again,
It's all in the comedown, the clarity, the doom on the walls and the tar in the lungs,
It's out of my hands, I will seek no forgiveness, I only ask for understanding
Started using again,
Depart in the morning before everyone wakes up,
Have some coffee, a hot shower,
Do not be afraid of today,
Fear forever, fear your own head,
Then find your spine, unlock it and teach it to stand on two legs,
And walk out of here, and don't stop for anything

The night they shot Dr King, Stokely Carmichael  pulled the pin out from the grenade in his heart and made ******* sure the world knew he and his brothers would never be weak again,

The night they shot Malcolm X, the liberals shook their heads, clicking tongues about how "violence begets violence", and sometime later they put his face on a stamp, taught his corpse to dance, taught their children that this is the fate of a man who never gives up trying to change the world

The night that Missouri burned down they sent in the tanks, steel goliaths prowled small town streets looking for anybody black, or angry, or conscious, or any combination of the three, and every time their guns went off a new revolutionary was born in rage and desperation

Who are your comrades gonna be when the cops kick down the door?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the drug raids come?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the crowd control rounds turn to live ammunition?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the talking heads condemn the martyrs to hell on a twenty four hour newsreel?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the streets split open and the riot swallows everything in its wake?
Who are your comrades gonna be when the prisons crumble brick by brick?
Who are your comrades gonna be when it all burns down?
Who are your comrades gonna be when we rebuild this world from the ground up into something beautiful?

When they tell you, "Do not resist"
Resist
When they tell you, "Your methods are too extreme"
Tell them, "By any means necessary"
When they tell you, "This is the way things are"
Change. Everything.
When they tell you, "You can't change the world alone"
Tell them, "Solidarity, forever"

I learned how to love the same day I learned how to run,
Cigarettes make the first part easier and the second a hell of a lot harder
So on nights like this where we run out of breath, for one reason or another, we make **** sure that the radio tells us what we wanna hear;
Kingdom come in somebody's eyes, a straight shot up from the highway into the stars, a kiss from a red haired girl with the sweetest melodies,
A place to run to, a place of our own, a place where we can know what freedom is and not just what it isn't
Our dead friends in the passenger seat for one more ride, alive and electric and singing loud enough to wake heaven and let 'em know what they're missing out on,
Our dying country stretched before us like a Norman Rockwell painting while we live like characters in a Springsteen song, wild and desperate and without a home to hold us back,
Our lovers waiting for us somewhere between the sunrise and the B side of the album, all open arms and 4th of July lips to kiss clean our worn and ***** souls and deliver us from our evils,
So on these nights where we suffocate under the tremendous weight of living,
We still have each other, and we still have the radio,
And we can still remember how to breathe a little easier

"You are my drug, I'm addicted to you"
Says the poet, immaculate, grinning his way through juvenile metaphors and picking his teeth with the bones of the dead horse he's been beating, Slick ******* on a stage locking eyes with every girl in the room, cocky enough that he thinks he can make every single one of them think that this poem is about them, and that they'll just -get it- , that it's just a -metaphor- of course he has no experience with drugs, he's never watched anybody wither away to nothing, he's never had an itch that took his body hostage at a cellular level,  he's a real -stand up guy- he's just -sensitive- he's a real ****** honest to god artist standing before them and from there it's all but too easy to ******* his way into some casual ***,

"It's always someone nice who gets killed, it's never some toothless ******"
Says the comedienne, immaculate, laughing into television cameras, and everyone gets the implication here,
The ****** is not human
The drug addict does not deserve life
If you made the choice you should pay the consequence
Stop breathing while people who actually deserve it are dying
Don't talk to me about the socioeconomic climate that breeds drug use
Don't give me statistics
Don't you dare send those rats to rehab, if they're going to live they should do it behind bars, locked in a cage like the vermin they are

"I thought I could stop this time"
Said my best friend as I wrapped a blanket around him,
He is weak, he is ice cold and still sweating, he is on three day withdrawal and he will relapse tomorrow once I have left, he will have been dead for nearly 4 years by the time you hear this poem, and the silence that follows will take shape, and it will whisper,
"Good"

The fight is how we express divinity in a way that is comprehensible:
Steady, heel pivot, throw your shoulder into a punch, laugh in the face of a Hell that was never frightening enough to hold you back, bail down the alley, run to the edge of the world, spit in the face of a Heaven that was never there to catch your friends who didn't make it, catch your breath somewhere warm and safe with the ones who did,
All we got is each other, after all
And in the middle of it all, in this America, in these ****** sinister times,
That will take us farther than any president ever could
And so we fight to get by,
We jump in cars and hit the highway with home at our backs and a promise to never go back,
We lock hands and sing one loud for the dead, and another even louder for the living
We love what we can, because we can
Our words will burn, our cities will freeze,
And we will take as many of the ******* down with us as we can

The party has been over, but there will always be those who cannot stop,
Not until the very last body hits the floor,
Not until the lights go down on cities we used to love people in, when the ash tray overflows out onto sidewalks that long for disease, to die, to be reborn, made clean, only to be soiled again by our fascination with them
We should have learned by now how to not ruin something by loving it
But where there is emotion there must always be casualties
I reconcile this with myself in the dark nights I spend painting landscapes of the street from the porch
I watch the summer wilt and fall apart, piece by piece, and my hands cannot dig a hole deep enough to escape the fallout
When I leave this place, all I will take with me are words,
And when winter comes I will burn as many of them as I have to to keep warm

I could never bring myself to judge anyone for what they do to survive

In the mythology we will one day weave of our lives, every night is either fable or cautionary tale
We trade stories of war across tables separated only by black coffee and the depth of understanding,
In a Waffle House in Florence, or in Clifton, or off the last exit we can bear to see because we can no longer take the motion and need a moment to rest, to breathe,
We talk, as if we are each others children, starry eyed and open mouthed to let all the possibilities sit on our tongues, wait, and then dissolve into dreams,
We all have different definitions of what it means to fight, but we appreciate others scars once they are made visible,
Like the night they took Jake to the psych ward, his heart a scientist burning  hypotheses in the street while Jess wiped tears and ashes from her face and resolved to battle this thing to the death,
Or the early morning we drove Sierra to Indianapolis, and we turned the radio in the old jeep up as loud as the one blown speaker would allow and tried to sing our way out from under the burden we carried to that dying city,
Or the night Jennifer's brother put a dent in my car and I drove my fist into a wall, again and again, trying to beat an answer out of it for why the summer had gone and left us ghosts in the dawn,
I am as of yet unsure what this tapestry will look like when it is completed,
I promise a great deal, but I wouldn't dare bet on destiny
All I can be sure of, is that at the end of any highway,
There is a Waffle House,
And there will always be those,
With poet souls and hungry mouths waiting,
To turn something ordinary in to legend

"Do you know why I stopped you?"
Do you wanna have a friendly chat?
Look at me, I'm just a nice guy doing my job, you can talk to me, you can trust me, you can confess whatever crime you think I think you just committed and that'll be evidence enough for me, you can go ahead and incriminate yourself and save us both the trouble
"Do you have something to hide?"
Come on now, why are you being so difficult? If you hadn't done anything wrong you'd have no problem taking more time out of your day than I've already taken to let me look around for something to charge you with. They say you're innocent until proven guilty but you're not doing yourself any favors.
"Cooperating will make things easier on you"
Ok so you know your rights, ******* congratulations, you're a regular ******* model citizen. You know what? Your rights are becoming a real pain in my ***. You have no idea how much more difficult I can make things for you. You think this is bad? You ain't seen nothing yet punk.
"We'll just get a warrant"
You think I give a **** about your refusal to consent? You have no idea how easy it would be for me to get a judge to sign a paper to **** your entire world up so can we please just get on with this thing I don't wanna spend all day talking to you I have quotas to fill.
"I'm going to frisk you for my own safety"
Keep your ******* hands where I can see em. You don't move unless I give the order. You made the choice to be difficult so this is how it's gonna be. You got a gun on you? You might, or I could **** you where you stand and put one in your hands after. What? You think anyone is gonna believe you after you're dead?
"We have someone who will testify against you"
Guess what? We caught some other poor ******* a while back, and he's willing to do anything to get out of trouble, so he'll say whatever the hell we tell him to. Do you get it yet? You can't win here.
"We can hold you for 72 hours without charging you"
I'm sick of ******* around here, I'm taking you in, and you are going to confess to whatever I think you should confess to. You are prisoner. You are ant beneath boot. You are out of options. I am the law and you are nothing. So go ahead, know your rights, see where that gets you.

Black haired silhouettes dance in recollections of August, strip naked, strike a pose-
Driving up and down Vine with a head full of acid, every passerby looks to be the death of me and the city smothers stars while they sleep,
Darkness about something on the radio, lost in hardwood floors and slanted ceilings, laying flat on my back in the depths of a Janis Joplin howl of pain,
Talking in rhythm and never rhyme, drawing inspiration from the atmosphere and picking poems from the tension, collision course ego trips clocked in at under zero revolutions per minute,
Revolutions that begin in ****** bars in the suburbs, continued into parking lots, to the front seats of cars, culminating in bedrooms the way all things do,
Fragments of lost phone numbers and sunrises on the highway, crash into me, break all my teeth, show my face to the world,
Just make sure I can still stand come morning, all tomorrow's parties won't wait for me or anybody else
And don't let me forget this, no matter how much I beg

A crushed, half smoked pack of cigarettes
Three to four empty coffee cups converted to ash trays,
My grandmother's Bible, seams torn by the Great Depression and the backs of children's hands,
And maybe thirty dollars, some change,
All I have to my name,
I am 15 and I am setting fires, busting out the windows in abandoned houses with my skateboard, spray painting anarchy signs everywhere I think will send a message, growing my hair out, reading Ginsberg and Karl Marx in detention every afternoon, I am angry and I have fights to pick and a system to overthrow,
I am 16 and I am driving fast late nights down backroads with the headlights off, I believe I do not fear death, I believe I welcome oblivion, I believe every word in every song I howl the words to, I believe I will die a martyr and they will hold parades in my honor, I believe we are fighting a holy war, I believe that we can and we will overcome, I believe that I believe in nothing but my leather jacket and the switchblade in my pocket and whatever punk song is on the radio,
I am 17 and I am speeding out of my mind off razor blade lines on end tables, my bones ache to destroy, my veins pump gasoline to a nicotine heart, I shoot guns all night pretending each bottle is a cop and each round hits a politician right between the eyes, pretending that if I can do enough damage I can free us all from our chains,
I am 18 and I am voting as far to the left as I can and I am still bitter because it is nowhere near close enough, I am singing dying songs for friends and pouring my heart out to strangers, dancing around fires, making blood oaths to never surrender, telling fortunes for beer and dreaming of open warfare,
I am 19 and I am getting ****** in parking lots, tattoing my heroes visions into my arms, trying to save my city by shouting at it until it wakes up and takes to the streets, burning my home to the ground in hopes of a glorious revival, passing out before I can convince anybody of my beliefs, cursing my enemies from the porch and seeing how many puffs of smoke I can get out of a night before I become just as greedy as the rest of the *******,
I am 20 and I am drinking alone
I am tired and I have lost my voice,
The prophet of my folk punk day dreams slipped away, into the night with no explanation and no destination
Erik, I will honor your memory the best I can,
I will carry you into battle everyday until I can no longer clench a fist,
I will scream your words until there are holes in my throat,
I will build you a funeral pyre of my love and rage,
And from the ashes, I will rise again, and so will you

Kids on the brink,
We have all dangled our feet over the edge,
We know the appeal of falling like the backs of our fathers hands,
We flirt with oblivion, leaving our phone numbers on gravestones hoping the other side might call to tell us there is a bed waiting for us somewhere dark, and warm, and quiet
We long for the chance to rest, bones that have seen too many miles, fingers that have danced around calling the police to take us away
We are afraid of what's on the other end of the phone
We are also afraid of the police, but that should go without saying
Kids in urgency-
We become mad,
Mad to escape, to bail forever to some coast or some city street where the light will guide us along, to live under threat of eviction, to stay one step ahead of collapse, to light up a sky somewhere and to have a moment of love that echoes through decades
We become insatiable,
Never fast enough, never loud enough, never high enough, never enough, never enough
We take as much as we can from a night and leave the sun to sort through the wreckage
One more song, one more mile, one more poem, one more kiss, one more ****, one more fight, ond more hit, one more drink, one more revelation, one more flash of extrabrilliance, one more proclamation of fleeting existence from the superheated engine of our ****** heart in the middle of America with nothing to show for ourselves but the length of our hair and the grief we carry and the love of our comrades
Kids in the light-
We all end up home, most nights at least
We all end up alright, most nights at least
We hold each other up when we are strong enough, and never let a day go by without reminding ourselves we love us,
And most nights, that's enough to see us through till morning

Sweet Jesus what a world we've inherited
People speed up as they drive past, hopefully afraid of what might happen to them, I like it like this, paranoia, some old greasy **** complains about a beverage, when was the last time you looked death in the eyes? Blink ******* blink. Leftover explosions shake a disinterested sky but not enough to wake it up. Dreaming. Visions of a different sky. Painted murals of a fever we called war. Interchangeable parts. Echoes. I do my best to calm people down on good days. I hold my lover close. I pay taxes. I am American. I drive fast I live for violence I am American. I'm getting twisted. Relax, I say, take it easy. I build my monuments with cigarette butts and I spill coffee on everything I own and I laugh like a madman at the news I am American. I owe a great deal to the dead. I read the writing on the wall and try to best understand what is to be done about it. I do all I think I can about it. I don't lie to myself more than I have to. Delusion of victory, screams behind glass and cries for mercy on every television. The interstate goes on like it was built to, a hundred miles or more since the last time I thought anything worthwhile. Something about the way we communicate. Weak at the base, weak in the head, revolving door of the skull shut and names crossed off of lists. Loss. Frenzy. I won't be clean til I cut my hair I won't be clean til I'm dead I am unclean American. I curse words and names and gods and laws and faces I am hateful American. I am above the law. They killed that black boy last night and probably another today they haven't killed me yet when I know they should and I know **** well why they haven't. I can only pray there will be hell to pay. I wish death on my enemies I am American. I am American I feel no guilt I didn't pay for. I walk over graves every day and don't leave flowers. I put those men there. I am death row idealist and convenience store pariah. I have no respect I have no patience I want war that I cannot pay for I am American. I have never seen an execution take place I am wealthy I am white none of this is happening to me I wish it would ******* I am American. I lay claim to beliefs with no intention to follow through on them I'm sick of hearing of all this change I am American. I am American and I want to be strong. We got the guns they got the blood are we doing this ******* thing or not I am American. I seek vengeance for far away crimes I wish death on my enemies. I am American and I will **** everyone I have to to prove it

Blank pages, sick thoughts, strange recollections on an overcast July sky,
America at war, fires set in Denver, Nazis dead in Sacramento, immortalized in the thoughts and prayers of talking heads, all those spineless liberals afraid to take the plunge, buy the ticket take the ******* ride, meanwhile Missouri looks like Belfast '75, Detroit like Dresden '45, Baltimore can't maintain, unsubstantiated claims of Providence, more sinister tidings out of Washington, they know the last American hero died 4 years ago now we're trying to keep up appearances, can't maintain, trouble carried in on all four winds, the Devil in the Southern sky, hysteria on the television, nothing but nostalgia on the radio, no progress, talking in circles about guns again, no clear endgame here just numbers thrown at the wall, something might stick, somethings gotta stick, somethings gotta stick,
A man clutches a newborn child to his chest, asks me if I think he should **** the thing, I say that's between you and your God leave me out of it,
A black boy blows his brains out on the statehouse steps, out of options, a final statement to pierce the veil of bureaucratic esoterica, blood of love and rage and hope staining concrete for generations,
Desperation, something on the rise, chaos in any direction
God hasn't returned the President's calls since '81, Jimmy Carter deserved better, we all deserve better,
Cold rain in summer, cigarettes, celebrations, weddings and funerals, uncertainty in all things,
Tomorrow the bombs will go up, and no one can be sure where they will land

I find myself missing the feeling of going to war, constant conflict, broken bottles and 18 hours missing time, counting down from 10 towards blackout, the feeling that any moment we will receive the call to arms we've been expecting and take to the streets with righteous anger, we are the only nightlife we've ever known, barely recognizable through the residue on our lips and the collection of small plastic bags on the kitchen table, whose edges have been burned closed so many times they have become numb to their own purpose, I pick what I want to hear from the consuming noise, I am talking to those guys from down the block about anarchy for the hundredth time, they still aren't convinced and neither am I, I am the holy burnout, I weave mythology into my skin and hope it sticks, I am naked and coming down in the living room, I am burning down the alleyways, I am screaming EVERYBODY WAKE UP at apartment complexes and dormitories, I am something on the radio, singing harmonies to my arrogance, I am cocky and I am young and I am pretty and I am angry, I am double nickels on the dime with two middle fingers raised when the cops drive by, I am failing to realize what is happening here, I am unconscious, I beg and I steal and I **** and fight and pass out around the time the sun rises, my neuroses tell me don't look back you can never look back, and then it hits, all at once, full collapse, illusion shattered, I am watching my brothers watch my tail lights disappear from the porch in my rear view mirror, I never considered that I could be a coward, I'd just never been tested, back to the crumbling house, shoulder to the wheel, straight on through the night, following stars I used to know the names of, I pull in the driveway, I tell myself under my breath, don't look back you can never look back

I am a revolutionary

And you are a revolution

We collide because we must
We cannot help our own velocity

I taste emergency on your breath
You taste smoke on mine
We both know the kind of ache that plagues the other

We also know that there is no grief too heavy
To be lightened by an old song on the radio,
Kissing by lamplight with nothing but skin between our hearts,
Talking until the only punctuation marks we use are left on each other's necks
And a deep breath out, followed by "****"

You are the hill I am willing to die on
You live between the notes of those songs
You stream in through the windows with the sunrise,
You cut the room in half, between where I died once and where I was born again
You coat my lips with sugar when I am at my most bitter
You take my hand,
We are witnessing miracles in real time,
We will be filled with light, so sweet we will have to take to the streets, we will start a revolution from this bedroom

The Devil lives in all things
In my skin, tattooing sins down my neck so bold I had to grow my hair to hide them all under it
In my grandmothers voice as she drifted back and forth across decades of indecision and compromise in a haze of narcotics and brutal nostalgia
In my best friends veins, always waiting until the lights went out before putting on a shadow puppet show of The Fall on his bedroom walls
In my fathers fists, clenched tight around anything that reminded him of an almost could have been,
In my older brothers brain, filling the holes that pride and drugs left there with a manic depressive war that can only be won through surrender
In my younger brothers heart, weaving together his arteries until he had grown too cold to speak through no fault of his own
In my sisters pen, scribbling out music notes to a melody that would remind her forever of where she had come from and the ghosts she could not escape
In my lovers tears, tasting only separation and the bitterness of memory and the pollution of rivers once pure,
I cross myself, once, twice, thrice
I speak the words
I exorcise the Devil
I show him a card trick
He seems impressed
He lights my cigarette
We keep each other company
We both have a long way to go,
The night is too dark to be alone
And we both know we won't keep till morning

I am writing this in my head by the first light of morning while you sleep beside me
I am lying awake
I am counting your breaths, translating each one as a confirmation that I transcribe to hieroglyphics with my fingertips on your stomach
I am memorizing where every part of your body is located in relation to mine and I am taking steps to maintain proportions
I am letting my hair become tangled in yours because I am afraid of not touching you
I am deconstructing this moment as it unfolds, letting it envelop the alarm clocks and my sense of self
I am reconstructing my visions of the future
I am reconstructing myself to fit accordingly
I am born again
I have never been touched
I have never been kissed or broken or ****** or bruised
I am letting myself be made clean
You open your eyes periodically, look me in the face, then fall back asleep
I am reminded of watching the sky for hours in my youth because I never wanted to miss even one shooting star
I never regretted the exhaustion then, and I **** well won't now

Flowers for loved ones

Reminders of mortality

Graves decorated,
The inconsistency of stories

Memory floating in on river breezes,
Bitter and sweet in cramped summer
Swaying with leaves and sanity, glimpses of history repeating

Movements in a piece of music,
Strings swell over sleepless city
Percussion beat urgency into angry hearts
Woodwind ease the beasts back towards dreams
Brass to commemorate the time lost in the between

Forests burnt entirely down
Wildlife returning in uneasy steps
Retracing paths lost to ash
Reconnecting with roots
Miracles in a slow march
Water from streams
Beauty in the remains
Finding a way to cope with the fallout

Light up a smoke
Start to cry
Relapse just enough
Rewrite your reality
Present a better narrative
Take stock of your surroundings;
Friends, lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, memories, psychoses, vices, recurring nightmares, moments of brilliance
Words that keep bleeding no matter how many times you write them down
People that keep calling no matter how many times you change your name
Spirits that cling to skin, absence of escape routes, confessions that never solidify into repentance, apologies that never pass through lips,
Heretic heart burning vicious under black sky
Bones aching for the weight of mourning
Take a breath
Stop freaking out
Keep your sense of humor
Give it teeth and let it draw blood
Dig yourself out
Kiss your lover
Kiss your friends
Kiss the sunrise as she relieves you of burden
Find the furthest corners of your mind
Keep a candle lit to view the writing left on the walls there
Take photographs of each moment in the event you find yourself missing it someday
Release yourself shamelessly into the night
Reinvent your language
Speak over people when they stop respecting your voice
Bleed it out bleed it out bleed it out
Fill your page
Fill your lungs
It will be enough someday

Talking in code
Talking in rhyme
Sitting up summer nights on balconies high up enough to reach out and knock knock knock on heaven's door drunk on gin and chewing mint leaves trying to come to some kind of solution
There are problems here that need addressing but how much easier would it be to just ******* about it?
Piecing together alibis from the body counts of tragedies, picking up as many fragments as we can with the little strength we have left
We didn't do very much to deserve to feel this tired did we?
We could never figure out how to remove ourselves from the equation
Answers are a lot harder to come by when you've lost all personal interest
Where is this going?
Where does this progression end?
I wanna see what else is on
When I was a child I had recurring nightmares about televisions
When they shot Andy Warhol all he could say was that his entire life had been television all along
I don't know how to find comfort in familiarity
I am missing the connection here
I wanna see what else is on

I am writing to convince myself
I am on the second day of withdrawal symptoms and I am kicking myself for using such juvenile metaphors
I am sifting through scraps of newspapers, each one bearing the face of Antichrist burned into my retinas
I am feeling myself swell with rage
I am clenching fists and biting tongues
I am limited in my capacity to destroy
I am becoming romantic about forest fires and wildlife again
I am becoming misty eyed at the thought of where we came from
I am speaking in tongues
I am establishing a dialogue
I am addressing Mohammed as if we met at a high school party
I am watching a child of Christ light a cigarette at a gas pump
I am trying to think of an excuse to leave
I am breathing in exhaust fumes
I am standing on Nietzsche's shoulders as if he owed me a better view
I am putting off calling my grandmother back
I am godless in my arrogance
I am strung out on my ideology
I am overdosing on words
I am fighting hard
I am losing
That doesn't matter

THE REAGANS KILLED MY BEST FRIEND

THOUSANDS MORE DEAD, THE PLAGUED MASSES PLEADING TO BE MADE CLEAN

THOUSANDS MORE INCARCERATED, THE JUNK SICK DESPERATION VOMITING UP DEMONS IN JAIL CELLS

THOUSANDS MORE HOMELESS, DEEMED WORTHY OF NOTHING MORE THAN SPARE PENNIES AND BARELY CONCEALED DISGUST

I will not let the blood be washed away
I will not let history paint you as Saint
I will not let you be made holy
I will not become another casualty in your war
Not while I still have a voice
I spit on your grave
I see red
I bleed red
I am red
I am a rifle
I am a nuclear warhead
I am a Contra weaponizing loopholes in the law to **** my enemies with
I am Osama bin Laden as the Crucifed Christ
I am the AIDS victim drinking drop by drop of toxic blood while the hawks of war stifle laughter from gay jokes in their capitals
I am the ****** bashing my head into a wall hoping to destroy the itch before it destroys me
I am the beggar who the wealth never trickled down to
I am the mental patient met with closed doors anf nothing but ammunition to soothe the screaming in my head
I am the workers on strike chiming out the death knell of the unions and my own autonomy
I am the Soviet child living one badly timed joke from holocaust

I AM THE DEATH MASK OF YOUR ANNIHILATION
I AM THE DAMAGE DONE
I AM WASHINGTON BURNING DOWN
I AM MOSCOW INSOMNIAC
I AM HINCKLEY IN MY DREAMS I **** YOU EVERY NIGHT
I AM WATCHING YOU RISE AGAIN
I AM TERRIFIED OF YOUR SURVIVAL
I AM READY TO DIE BEFORE I LET YOU RESUME CONTROL
I AM SICK OF LIVING IN YOUR SHADOW
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE

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

A perfect entity:
Past life regression as a metaphysical act of war,
Held still in flashes of light from beyond mirrors, captured in essence for sake of eternal memory, martyred for sake of one or two moments of hallelujah before total collapse,
Divinity! Break the silence! Moan your lovers name! *** into oblivion! Leave pieces of your kaleidoscope skin on the shellshock floors of echo chamber bedrooms for someone to find and remember you by!
Listen! The voices of the great suicide angels crack and bleed through stereos! This is the last great art form! This is how you establish a dialogue between yourself and abyss! The black hole named God will take your calls but will not return your light once it has left your eyes!
How beautiful you look like this, defending your faith from the hawks of war, eyes lit by the turbines of jet engines burning fossil fuels on towards confrontation, hair falling in waves around a single demarcation point that reads: THE ****** AND THE SAVED,
Try hard not to think about where you fall on any kind of spectrum,
Be fluid and give only vague directions,
Paint self portraits out of what you can learn from static,
Static is the only way our gods know how to communicate,
You have to tread lightly around an ego so fragile,
Return home when the damage is done,
Home where you were a Joan Baez marquee moon in my memories of sunflowers!
Home where you were a Carl Sandburg eulogy read in tripping staccato!
Home where you leave your lights on all the time to ward off spirits!
Home where your shadow climbs higher and higher into the night and leaves your soul behind!
Home where you listened for the sounds of Pagan rituals through the walls and hoped to find salvation in a chanted chorus!
Home where you let the deep red shades of a thousand electro shock patients turn your machinery towards eternal rest!
Home where I love you as a perfect entity in radioactive decay!
Home where you love me, and my great way of forgetting

Walking in the light, the summer heat rising from the streets we used to beg on as familiar daze settles back over the Midwest, not to release us until the fall comes to crack our skin open and let the dreams we talked about escape and drift into grey skies, the old neighborhood bleeds but none of us feel it anymore since we took new addresses, but the beggars still speak about Vietnam and it is hard to ignore the falling of shells in their voices, the echo of protests that even now make the peace seem uneasy, I am uneasy and I think we must have seen better days but maybe I was too strung out to notice before, I do not know whether I should envy myself now or then, but baby whispers in harmony to the rustle of lazy breezes, tells me to come home, and I perform another disappearing act, the act of turning  my back, the act of tearing the roots from the Earth to get back on the road, to seek a greater death elsewhere, to read too deeply into passing interstate signs, to con someone else out of a future by way of worn out cards and mixed up tea leaves, while the lines on my own palms scream things like "You May Never Stop To Rest" all night long, but still I keep faith, my hell can wait, the devil on my back tattoos "We've got a lot of work to do" on the back of my skull, I haven't seen it in years but I feel the itch every day, I could sleep forever, I could shave my head and change my name, but I never believed in taking the high road before, it might be too late to start now