I am an artist
Love me
Touch me
Romanticize me
Let me live underneath your skin and tell you all about what happens down there,
I can write it better than you ever felt it, I promise
Believe me,
Trust me,
Let me eat your sorrow and spit it back onto a page, sacrifice yourself at my altar and live forever at the tip of a pen,
There is beauty in this somewhere
There is music in my ears,
I can hear the people sing my praise,
It sounds like,
"Oh I love him, but he's bleeding,
Oh I love him, and he's bleeding,
Oh I love him because he's bleeding,
Oh we love him, he's always bleeding,
Bleed for me, bleed for us, we love to watch you bleed,
Bleed yourself dry *******,
Do not stop to clean your wounds, keep em comin, pour some salt on it *****,
We came here to watch you BLEED *******!"
I will take what I can get
This is all I know
I will let it all drain on to this stage
I will watch my demons form pools around my feet, while my sins float lighter than air away from my body
I will suffer here and they will know why,
Because I will tell them,
And they will love me for it,
And when I die on this stage,
It will be to thunderous applause.

To pain and to whiskey, we say the same thing: keep it coming
We get it while we can, and we might as well while we still know how to feel it
My grandfather used to say, "Any day above ground...", always trailing off so I could never be sure how he meant it, but at a hundred miles per hour with a cigarette in one hand and the other hand tuning the dial of a radio to eavesdrop on heaven, the context starts to cut through the static: you have no control here, you are only along for the ride, never let anybody know this
When they bury your best friend, do not attend the viewing, remember him forever as he was, the madman with the keys to the holy city, the messiah of a new age born in blood and chemicals, think of him in between the lines of his favorite songs, the only places where he was allowed to rest, paint him the Martyr with your words and the Saint with your thoughts, carry the torch as long as you can, then let it die with you in the river, never go back for any reason once you have reached this point,
When the girl with the burning hair kisses you, do not hold back, do not flinch, do not second guess, you may not realize that you deserve this yet but you will, this is where we are tonight and you are not going to miss a ******* moment, we are gospel, we are revelation, we are beginning without end, we are cycle reborn on the mountain, the zenith where the flames reach highest, the point where the paths diverge from where we were broken to where we can rebuild, love this, breathe this, live for this
When I was a child I feared the storm, and my grandfather told me that every man fears storms until he becomes one,
And today I have reconciled myself to that truth
I am the first storm, and I will be the last

With six hundred miles between you and the freedom you were promised,  the interstate speaks through your radio;
Springsteen tells you to hit the gas hard, to run and keep running and let the sunset try and catch you, cover the earth in dust behind you and never look back to assess the damage,
Joni Mitchell tells you to go home, to eat your pride and kiss your friends and to dig your life for all its worth,
Robert Plant tells you to go West, to firewalk with the spirits of those who came before, those who shared a vision and a madness and a feeling and who are waiting to take you somewhere beautiful,
Lou Reed tells you to go East, to disappear among the phantoms haunting New York streets and to let yourself become part of the Great, Inescapable Noise
Bob Dylan tells you to go forth with righteous anger burning holes in your pockets, to give back unto those who have been wronged, and to never trust the government
Jerry Garcia tells you to go forth in peace, with love blooming flowers from the cracks in your bones, to live simply and to hide your drugs well,
David Bowie tells you to learn which way they expect you to go, take a sharp brakes squealing U-turn and laugh as you speed away from everything they thought they knew about you,
**** Jagger tells you to stumble drunkenly down the path but never let them see you fall, to **** and fight for everything you want and keep them wondering how you survived,
Jimi Hendrix tells you that if you burn bright enough, turn it up loud enough, and bleed red enough, you can have them following you anywhere, burning the flags they wave and waving the flags they burn,
Jim Morrison tells you that the other side is within reach, that you can turn any lock with any key and reach Heaven without ever putting on a shirt,
Stevie Nicks tells you that whichever way you go, you better make ******* sure you're doing it on your own terms
Realize that you tread on hallowed ground,
This is the American night of the great mysticism, the holy vision of open road and unending sky, this is the night they drove Joan Baez down, the night that Janis Joplin collapsed under the weight of her own power, the night that Woody Guthrie cried his last bleeding heart tears because he knew the fight would not end with him, this is the night that you find peace in the great uncertainty,
With 100 miles of space left between you and this indeterminate future, the highway whispers to you;
"They will remember you too, if only you give more,
Your beautiful hair illuminated by neon halos, your body broken apart and taken as communion,
Your voice straining with purpose splitting nights just like this in half,
They will remember you too,
They will remember you"

I. Connection - becoming phantoms in a fever dream holding hands and jumping into the abyss laughing, the swirling chaos of existence reduced to the space between parted lips, a look exchanged, a dance from the edge of reason to the holy arms of the sunrise, a night in which you learn to forget and embrace
II. The telling of fortunes - between lines of palms and decks of cards, between the eyes of gypsies that have tasted the dream of freedom, between sleepy kisses and the implications of a future in which Things Are Looking Up,
III. Sobering up - learning which parts of yourself you hide because you are ashamed and which parts you hide because you are afraid
IV. Letting it the hell out - learning to sing and dance and kiss and **** and drive fast and start fights and swear and howl and scream and write and perform and bare your skin and your teeth and your heart and your naked soul
V. Nostalgia - the reflection that the roads you walked and the clothes you wore and the girls you loved and the friends you kept and the things you thought were beautiful will never take you anywhere but home, but ******* does it feel good to come home sometimes
VI. Reconciliation - the understanding that everyone holds true, that in a time travel scenario everybody has a past self who would kick the **** out of their present self, and more than likely a future self who would be revolted by both, and that this is the progression of time as we perceive it at work
VII. Acceptance - the act of bringing together the pieces, the act of becoming unbroken, the act of having faith that you will become broken again at some point, the act of having faith in the cycle, the act of rising, the act of relapsing, the act of creation, the act of destruction, the act of living in a way that will someday make for great television, the act of fighting even though you know you will lose, the act of making it all count for something

If I live to see the seven wonders again, I will be more grateful

When you think of learning to forgive yourself, think of Robert Strange McNamara
With the blood of a nation orphaned soaking into the creases of his suit, the stains that linger and the ghosts that weep, while the whole world watched his guilt manifest on television screens over dinner,
Think of yourself as the hawk of war, all the battles you fought before you realized you had more to lose than you ever could've imagined
Think of yourself as the navigator and the grand destiny you hoped to steer yourself towards,
Think of all those you had to destroy to get where you are now
Let them keep you up nights,
Let them haunt your dreams,
Learn to live with yourself, however you can

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something about the way we relate to each other -
Doing 80 down opposing ends of the same grand highway, strung out in shades of purgatory and sunset, listening to the hymns our fathers taught us before they stopped believing, imagining how easy it used to be to get lost and never be found again, back before they had us by the throats every moment waking or sleeping, this is the kind of thing I live to romanticize,
When we used to talk about Howl you said it lived within me, in the back of my throat desperate to escape into something larger, and when you used to write poems I always wanted to leave the room, there have always been things I couldn't put to words, and yet I still can't stand to leave things undiscussed,
I couldn't give winter the dignity of a graceful death, always listening for the first breeze of spring and falling asleep before things pick up,
And dreaming of a freedom from all of this context; the world has always been big enough without you, and once you bet me I couldn't out run the setting sun knowing full well this is the only fight I have left to lose, and I have yet to accept that responsibility.
In the end everyone has the same question for everyone else, and everyone has the same answer phrased differently:
I wanna
I wanna
I wanna be adored
I need to
I need to
I need to be adored

3 score and ten, late winter hanging on like the bitter kiss of lovers not ready to die, there isn't much I could tell you about the morning sky or dying alone you haven't already figured out on your own, in a car bruised and cracked, the skin of knuckles after too many fights to stay inspired, while patterns take shape above my visions: the still living ghosts of the cars we crashed, the kisses we forgot to photograph, the photographs we forgot to kiss, the wolves we kept at bay only to find them sitting across our dinner tables asking about the weather, next week the same as this one, and for at least five more weeks after that one, if you believe in that sort of thing, I still don't know how to talk to people about what matters to them, and I wake up hearing my grandfathers last few coughs every few hours, I once thought I could burn solutions into my hands for all the problems they were not willing to recognize, now I wonder if I just didn't believe hard enough in the healing process, my dead eyes watching the turn of conspiracies between a pale girls shoulder blades as she sleeps and thinking about the exceptions to all rules, except this one:
If I wake you up, there will be hell to pay

The poet smokes an imaginary cigarette - a technique he has seen before and stolen from someone far more genuine,
He says,
Never trust a person who cannot own their vices,
There is something sinister here you are not allowed to see,
and sinners all the congregation voice their agreements -
The poet then waits for the audience to voice their agreements before continuing
With renewed vigor from this show of validation, the poet begins the descent into madness:
A former acquaintance who says:
"Man, you used to be so cool"
Reflections on this theme:
Consider: the hands of winter pushing their fingers into a mouth washed clean by bleach and hospital rooms, just to ruin it all over again, full reset, back to the top, just where the fall looks most appealing.
Consider: How little room there is in small Ohio towns for caskets and how I chose not to follow up two decades of suicide with such a dramatic final act more for the sake of convenience than anything else,
(See: Disorder, See: Broken, See: Dysfunctional)
Consider: The lines counted out, the hymns of junkies coming through stereos, the promises of futures rolled up and ignited, the pill bottles empty on a 9 month relapse cycle, the come up, the comedown, if this is supposed to be fun when is it supposed to start,
Consider: The weight of a switchblade tucked in a jacket, a flask in the back pocket of jeans, a flip top box of cigarettes to fidget with in anxious situations,
Consider: That if we all have such crosses to bear it's amazing that more of us don't develop messiah complexes
Consider: Humility, Consider: Dignity
(please, I haven't)
Consider: The faces of my enemies, all of whom I am sure will get into Heaven, and I hope they burn the bridge behind them,
Consider: The faces of my friends, and thank them for the ride from the drunken outskirts of a city called defeat to this very moment,
Consider: The last words my best friend spoke to me before he decided he would rather overdose than let the cancer eat his pride,
"There is no need for farewells here, you know what you have to do and so do I, and if I catch you at a better time, or a better place, we will have much to discuss"
Consider: The fact that I am paraphrasing here, and I will never forgive myself for that
Consider: The massive world shaking voice of a tiny girl who loved the forest so much she hung herself in it so she would never have to leave,
Consider: That because of light pollution there aren't very many stars I can see from here that I can name after these people in my memory,
Consider: The face of this land after we have left it - and try to forgive all of the people who walk across your scars without acknowledging them
Consider: That one day they will divine prophecies from the ashes of the fires you burn out
Consider: Making them worth reading
Consider: The goodnight kisses of crooked girls who have never truly seen themselves in the morning and can only guess incorrectly that it is not beautiful,
Consider: Where you are now
Consider: A place to rebuild
Consider: That everything I traded to get to this point has been survival instinct, and believe me when I say I have built shrines for every step of the way and I pray to the patron saint of each one every night,
Consider: That the poet still has no idea how to apologize when an old acquaintance looks him in the eyes and says,
"You used to be so cool"

I was a ghost in an old haunt, something like 2 AM on a January night living out feedback loops of talks meant for Augusts past when I heard the news -
David Bowie is dead
The man, not the character, not any of the characters
Hero king of the underworld, patron saint for the androgynous and pale, the mad shaman of an age of prophecy, scribe of divine message from the gods of distant worlds, burning rebel heart in drag, bleeding soul at the crest of the first wave that broke down the walls and sent all the young punks marching to war against the world with a switchblade tucked beneath their coats and a steady hand to hold the wheel,
If not for the shoulders of giants we would never see another horizon again,
If not for the madmen with astronaut dreams and bleeding hearts we would never know the beauty in the disorder,
If not for the train that came to take a man to someplace less boring, we would never reach the end of the narrative
And with ties cut and the world at his back,
The man departs, confident he has done all he can do, and that there will always be those who will carry the torch,
And all the freaks in the freak kingdom weep, as only they know how,
And the stars look very different today

Kerouac said that the right words would be simple, so you can imagine my relief when I read about grammar in the obituaries -
So from here on we go off script and the madness will present itself in the ways only it knows how,
passed out on the bathroom floors of dive bars, tapping out the morse code password to the Other Side with credit cards on kitchen tables, singing holy mother if you could see me now to the congregation,
We built our egos around songs about summer in the American south and the northern winters are especially brutal for something so fragile,
Flashes in the rear view mirrors, nerves begging for mercy, one hand clutching miracle and the other annihilation and both feet pressing the gas pedal until it joins in the chorus,
And then, the drums
When it hits you're in this ******* thing for life, no retreat and no regrets, the torn shirt lunatics with lips wrapped around their fathers fathers fathers poison, Thompson fired from the cannon, the veins that ache for the discharge of built up static, and there is nothing to be done about it now so enjoy it the best you can,
When I wake with old news hangover and flashbacks to old time anarchy, I will need strong black coffee to deal with the comedown, that much is certain
The fallout from the detonation covers the windows to my bedroom, and most mornings it's the only way I can recognize my surroundings
And then from the ashes, the words,
And from the words, the poem,
And god, it is so simple

Don't pray for me, in the back seats of interchangeable cars streaking interchangeable nights from here to the edge of manifest destiny, daydreams of sleeping cities on waking seas, whiskey shots in the crowded western fog, chain smoking deaths of mindfulness, of where it starts and where it ends, of friends pledging reverence to Halle Sellasie in wire framed lenses fogged by the afterthoughts of a failed drug test, by the curves of highways beckoning the sick to leave it all behind forever, while all the freaks in the freak kingdom watch Thompson's wave crash against the pier, waiting for the resurgence, the return of the feeling that shook the streets and forced the living to live, and the streets responded, hushed under the shadow of the marquees: This cannot happen on its own. The fight is not yet over and it never will be. Do not lay your arms to rest until they bury you in the rain. Embrace your human war. Leave your house. Make them hear you

Durch Geld , wird die Demokratie ihre eigenen Zerstöre

The decline of the west plays back and forth in newsroom warzones across the America that Samuel Adams died believing in, the promise of a gold lined path to a bygone peace the immigrants can now only dream of, while the sons of the sons of the sons of the sons of their sons close their doors and arm their security systems, there are racks of guns lining every wall and everybody looks ready to go to war, so I might as well join them, the possibility of compromise lies with dozens of boys and girls in dozens of pools of blood across dozens of states and the people cry out enough is enough, and if the decaying capital will not hear us then they must be made to listen, a united front of iron forged from the fires that burned down Missouri, that burned down Los Angeles, that burned down D.C after the soothing voice of the raging masses was shot dead, if my rhetoric is too strong it is because not only are things not moving fast enough they are moving backwards,
When men, leatherbound and arrogant would consider every moment in the spotlight a coronation, the options become clear:
These kings must die so that the country may live

I dream of living to see the next revolution,
And of the men who will not live through that revolution,
Of the air humming electric static heat in anticipation of the inevitable riot,
Of the holy barricades standing in defiance of Heaven,
Of the enlightened kicking down the doors with guns and masks, asking;
"ARE YOU GONNA BE A PART OF THE PROBLEM OR ARE YOU GONNA BE A PART OF THE SOLUTION?"
Of gallows for the dogs of war,
Of guillotines for the capitalist pigs,
Of a firing squad for every reactionary content to oppose the wheel of history even as it crushes their bones down to nothing,
Of the end which justifies  the blood staining the cities red as the hammer and sickle cells that divide and multiply fevered in the streets,
Of the ghosts of iron men long dead still insisting that we take not one step back,
Because men get arrested, animals get put down
And God,
God made them as stubble to our swords, boys
And with blades clenched between their teeth so climb the dregs of the Earth to the surface to taste the apples they shook from the trees,
In 24 hour news cycles the slogans repeat to infinity:
"NOT RESISTING ARREST"
"NOT COMMITTING A CRIME"
"I WAS NOT A THREAT, WHY DID YOU TRY TO **** ME"
You can only force people to paint the smallest target possible on their own backs for so long before you end up in the crosshairs
I have seen the faces of  my saints painted on the walls of eternity -
Of Trotsky,  million headed proletariat staring daggers through the hearts of the tsars,
Of Cromwell, crusader for the ungovernable force of will,
Of Robespierre, headsman of divine terror riding on the wings of the Angel of Death,
I have seen the end and the means played out in countless dramas across millennia,
And the only question that remains unanswered is this:
Are you gonna be a part of the problem or are you gonna be a part of the solution?

For vanity's sake, I write to ****

And for sanity's sake I bite my tongue

The holy name misspoken,
The divinity of the poem bastardized,
The fool's reward dripping down his face into his beard

Waking from wet dreams of Sylvia Plath,
At the dawn of the new age christened in the blood from the believer's fists pounded into cement floors,
Rise the son and heir of conflict, connection, the infinite mundane war,
The cowards ready to die with gold plated switchblade and crossed fingers behind their backs,
Stop me if you've heard this one before

The consummation of the union devoutly to be wished -
The obvious overlooked,
The punchline ignored,
The ****** disappointing,
The falling action drawn out ad nausea until the audience starts to wish you'd just hit the ******* ground already
But you've just got so far to go
I write to ****,
But you never needed my help

There are preparations being made for another funeral in my hometown and I am late again for a fitting,
I pass by a familiar old man on the street corner, still stockpiling ****** and ammunition and I think it is beautiful that he still has hope,
So I give him the last of my money,
$1.60, the price of a rematch never won, not nearly enough to pay for the guilt of privilege but the best I could do nonetheless,

In sickness I watched the faith of my drunken friends run down their faces among half full glasses of red wine and bummed cigarettes, and it is this same divine tragedy that runs feedback loops through my deluded cortex every night between bouts of drowning clarity,
'There may be hope for you yet,' whispers the phantom poet of my fever dreams,
As I notch another eventual demise into my belt,
While the white washed pages of bloodied history sneer back at me, asking,
'What are you gonna do about it, punk?'
I don't know how to answer that question

Somewhere out West my shadow firewalks with the best of the fallen heroes, and I begin to understand that feeling I heard sung about in my youth
I never could've imagined it would feel this bad
Of all the things we do to find people who feel like us, this is by far the worst

Cracked screen, broken glass, combat boot on the neck of the pulse of the revolution, the ghosts of fascists haunting skyscrapers staring back at me with eyes that stopped working in the 80s, protest signs written in dead languages I can't begin to understand, I can already tell where everybody stands - I can see it in the Eyes and on the t shirts and on the blog posts and on the graffiti tagged windows that read like picture books in a school for deaf children,
The orphaned poets, the ******* sons of *******,
Hell is wherever you're wasting away come Rapture, where you are now is where your ashes will be scattered,
Your memorial beneath your feet defaced and unbegotten by the seed of the ****** wind, and here you will be returned at the end of the day, your trail of tears turned to paths of lilies and roses and the desert sweeping your suffering underneath the centuries-
This is how you will be remembered, sand piled upon ******* sand

From the concrete purgatory of my burdened decades I hear them,
From the capital run over, drowned in the tide of righteous pandering fervor I hear them,
From the streets taken to by shock treatment portraits of deaths un-died, I hear them:
The mournful howl of the 108,000 in waiting,
Terrified for the fate of their soon to be brothers, sisters, competition for the future,
For the divine rewards the privileged will promise themselves for their narrow compassions,
For the killers slapped on the wrist while the innocent remain condemned to a life that no one asked for, without the consent of anyone involved,
Yes, the street preacher cries,
Yes to life,
Yes to opportunity,
Yes to the future promised to all of us by this great nation,
(Well, all of us, not all of you)
But when the destitute mothers of a generation abandoned reach out cupped hands for help,
He's left his wallet in his other ideology,
Divine privilege only applies to you before you're born,
After that you're on your own
All lives matter, until they're alive

I saw David Johansen's straight boy drag queen heart bleeding for the state of being he left the scene in - the euphemisms weighing down the airwaves like bricks chained to the ankles of those selfless enough to take the plunge, the chaos of energy turned to profit margin and the makeup all cried off as the lights go out over the once holy cities
Richey Edwards' truth was carved to his flesh in no uncertain terms - this is real and this is happening and you are just as responsible for it as I am, the Prime Ministers guilty and the preachers guilty and the divine street youth guilty and that guilt was all he had to pack in his suitcase when he left them all behind forever,
They all watched Iggy bleeding from the nose on the pavement in the rain and they all walked away because they had their own **** to deal with and I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't have done the same,
The fight is not yet over, Trotsky closed his eyes believing the fight was not yet over but he never could've imagined how right he was, and the walls of the mausoleum called to me in my acid flashback dreams:
This is the gospel of collapsed veins and broken synapse - the Rapture clocked in at 0 Revolutions per minute and the message scribbled down from whatever could be picked out of the static
Take what you need from this place and go,
If you burn bright enough they will one day count your shattered visage among these lost martyrs -
But that's a fate I wouldn't wish on anyone

I.
The people look like flowers at last - sick thoughts of dead men strike the clock winding backwards and ignite to illuminate my approach,
The people look like,
Cigarette burns,
Bullet wounds,
Casualties of Rollins' war with himself,
Of Ellis' numb utopia,
Of the Bukowski cynic suicide,
Of the thoughtless progeny of deadbeat generations desperate to push back,
Every street corner is holy, baptized in the blood of those who died believing,
A thousand fists moved to release a thousand frustrations, and a celebrity endorsement for each overdose death,
Angel mine, abate your gutter wars and mob mentalities,
The tattoo ink has dried and the clubs are closed for the night,
Where are the revolutionaries to go now?

II.
The revenge of the skinhead minority,
The born again soul of a fallen brother,
The madman defiant in publicized rage, the faces of the enemy painted with crosshairs on TV screens,
And the damaged finally able to stand on their own,
Damaged and unrepentant,
Damaged and brilliant,
Damaged with criminal record eyes,
with paranoia brain, with X's tattooed into calloused knuckles,
with track marked arms,
Damaged, the unstoppable tide of the righteous youth - caricatured in the spray painted stencils of their testaments

III.
The spoiled children of an undefinable zeitgeist with nothing to lose,
In ecstasy binges these angels hallucinated manifest destiny through non prescription lenses,
Studying traffic patterns I remember how people are afraid to merge and everybody is looking for just the right amount of trouble,
A fire dies and another is born almost immediately,
Careless ramblings in careless county - a land I'm sure was promised to someone, somewhere, sometime
But after the gold rush nobody could cash out fast enough,
I can't cash out fast enough -
Every girl has got the guilty smile of a teenage runaway living out a Janis Joplin fantasy, and all the boys line up like addicts itching to cop,
The air is so heavy nobody can hold a thought - and when I speak, It's the accent, they say, they can always tell,

IV.
Taxi rides in laser show utopia,
Sicilian saint newly minted tells me about the ******* machine and it's ravenous posturing -
be present & be seen,
Fake it till you make it,
Cop killers singing confessions for beer on the street corner,
While the socialist manifests itself in mispronounced beverages and faux-marked Russian volumes,
avant-garde hyperrealism & ritualistic sacrifice,
There was something about *** and dying on the radio I couldn't be bothered to hear,
A drunken brawl over a bad bet made, disappointing street race, police sirens distant growing moreso,
In ****** bars where ladies always drink free, I rewatch the fall of a ***** old man from the penthouse to the street all over again,
If you haven't figured it out by now,
Don't try

V.
In dreams I walk the Pacific Coast Highway dead of night, barefooted soul alive and naked in the Western night like a Jim Morrison poem, the traveler that never arrives, watching the sunrise form halos over the Sierra Nevada, like a girl I know back East who talks a great deal about plans, the best of which never even have an aftertaste of freedom
There is the same sublime anthems playing on every radio and palm trees forming crosses for any messiah who is willing to claim them,
Last train out of Anaheim as the tessellating California skies swell and give, catch and release,
I see the roofs of tenements lit up by Disneyland,
ocean reflecting the glare from Heaven,
faces of the impoverished reflecting the glare from Heaven,
everybody getting sunburned from the glare from Heaven,
I watch the lovers depart for Santa Ana,
Elderly Asian tourists for Irvine,
Hipsters for San Juan,
and the rest of the destitute ******* for Oceanside en route to San Diego,
There but by the grace of God go the drunk kids spilling out of greyhound buses, sitting till dawn contemplating skylines reflected on the bay, finding romance in every moan of living Earth,
wide eyed at possibility of removing themselves from the equation and finding the answer,
Neil Young harmonicas drift listless above Spanish villas,
Everybody talking like something bad was gonna happen but I couldn't see much thru the windows past the tourist burly shouldered slumbering beast,
I think it was somewhere between Yuma and Dallas, with Mexico stretched out like an invitation to an anarchist rally where I was haunted first,
I'm haunted by El Campo Santo, paved over restless Indian graves in the shadow of the hanging tree,
By La Calavera Catrina blessing the sinners as they pass, hollow faced and sunken on the ***** Spanish streets of their ancestral Apartheid home,
I'm haunted by Calvary, 3000 spirits hanging around unsure of what comes next,
I'm haunted by the faces of the beggars I couldn't spare a cigarette for,
In dreams the Western night releases me and I leave California a shade lighter,
And the handful of stars that manage to burn through the haze seem to promise me:
"You may be gone, but your shadow lives on without you"

The uninitiated pandering to the lowest common denominator,
the clean cut ******* in sophomoric rhetoric,
"Sick" he says,
"Addicted" he says,
Like,
"I haven't seen the girl I have a crush on in almost 24 hours and I feel.......like......
Withdrawing.
Itchy,
Nauseous,
Angry,
Vomiti­ng,
Like I've got insects EVERYWHERE,
MY BODY IS THE ENEMY,
OPEN REVOLT OF THE AFFECTED CELLS,
(THEY'RE ALL AFFECTED BY NOW)
There is no escape there is no relief there is nothing to be done but wait it out,
One day clean,
Two days clean,
Three days clean,
Maybe, this will pass,
NO IT WILL NOT
Four days later, a glimpse, relapse, progress undone, back to 0, the sickness is inevitable, I'm going to die like this"
When was the last time you looked into the ravenous ****** eyes of the masses, and what did you learn from this?
Not enough
Grow up.

"How much farther?"
The weary traveler, strung out angel with cancer heart and extrabrilliant soul, dead of night, cutting lines off each passing interstate sign that reads off the progression we've been working towards in a feverpitch monotone -
The end of the line is coming sooner than you think,
I cut a pack of worn out tarot cards with my free hand and set to work deducing meaning between highway lines,
Anything to pass the time

Beat, *******, beat,
Down and out, curbstomped destiny, infinite wasted conviction, licking at the heels of straightjacket giants,
Dying by,
Dying by,
Dying by
inches
It all happens in the mind but good ******* luck trying to convince anyone else,
Have you tried, maybe you should, why don't you just, you don't really, it's not so bad, what about,
YES,
I know how it looks,
I just need you to trust me,
You aren't helping,
But what about,
all lives,
what about,
your privilege,
what about,
asking for it,
what about,
WHAT ABOUT US
This,
Is not,
About,
You

Hopeless the machine souls marching the streets,
the gutters full of yesterday's news,
the sidewalks cracked and the love of nature trying desperately to squeak through,
the streets alive waiting for Rapture that comes every night at 8 o'clock on a giant TV screen in the department store window,
I could never tell if I was watching reality unfold or if it was just television, but by now I know it's always been television
Recycle it - again
Fill the cities with refuse angels to wash clean the worker's shame,
Then tell the candidates about how much you miss the way things were
Save us, Mr. President, we're dying out here
God can wait till morning
There's ten cent words going for ten bucks a piece on the free market
and all that speaking in tongues came back around to mean nothing after all,
And here is where the ghosts of their meaning rest
THE ENEMY IS HERE!
These are the three pillars of the freedom you paid for:
1. Silence
2. Silence
3.


The outlaws died for this
The beatniks died for this
The punks died for this
The hippies died for this
The revolutionaries died for this
The youth stayed home sick, grew up, voted Republican
Know Thy Enemy, Know Thy Self

In music video daydreams,
In empathy withdrawals,
In light pollution nightmares eclipsed skylines burning,
Burning, burning!
Screaming the heart raw!
Scraping the bottom of the barrel!
****! Eat! Drink! Death! Rebirth! Repeat!
Repeat, repeat, repeat til the nose bleeds,
The love dies in the back of the throat,
The words that could've fixed this left,
ignored,
On the kitchen table with the unpaid bills and the residue from last nights drug binge

I the poet
We the poet
He/She/They the poet
Will never be worthy of the poem
But allow me this as confession:
The fire that cleanses and the filth that remains
Yes - I have heard the sphinx preach friction to the dumb and the wise alike hoping to spark some understanding, dialogue, meaning,
Anything to feel connected,
Complacency as a concept is destroyed the moment you think about it
and the great tragedy plays itself on repeat ad nausea to the audience who are only still listening to get their money's worth
Yes- I have left several pints of blood and the better part of my sanity in the streets of cities with no conscience to speak of and I have been unaware of the gravity of my situation till now
Two decades of suicide played out in impermanent scenes of a purgatory I could only dream about once and am now the crowned jewel of
The ****** come, the falling action begun,
And I thought I heard the cavalry coming tonight but it was not for me
Red and blue lights reflect off of welcome signs,
Hands raised yielding into the air so as to avoid presumed suspicion,
And I get the feeling that any moment
Fire will catch,
lightning will strike,
The gunshots on the block will pierce the walls of Heaven,
Neon reality will light up a sign that reads
"EXIT HERE"
And the faithful will follow as they have always done
Yes - I have read the writing that would render my delusions obsolete but I cannot communicate with the demons in my skin, the devils in my blood, the cancers in my lungs, the rope double knotted round my neck that I'm sure will be called a halo when I'm gone
We are far past that now
The fate was always empty and the choice predetermined
But at least we know the score
And we know who our enemies are
The machine, humming static life into callous evening as the heart yearns for one last fix, and I wonder how much longer we can keep up the joke
Existence confined to the space between parallel lines -
From the altar to the ashes,
From the drug deal to the wake,
From the unknown back into the unknown,
Reality is all you can see down the barrel of a gun and it is your civic duty to pull the trigger
Let the world go supernova and remind everyone they're alive!
Alive! The psych ward prophets spoke sense to me in electric dreams! The martyrs monetized their own demise! The drifters smoke a pack a day and refuse to call their families! The junkies pressed the plungers on their salvation and are rushing to greet the stars head on as we speak!
The revolutionaries lost their keys and had to *** a ride home from the enemy!
The artists couldn't make any ******* sense of any of it!
Alive! Judgement at last!
Judgement the victory!
Judgement the cataclysm!
They'll wear flowers in their hair with clenched daydreams between their teeth as they count the footprints in the sand wondering which ones belong to Jesus!
Magnificent ****** *******!
Unrepentant bleeding heart liberal!
And I hate to ask but I need to know,
Will the concrete steps where I've lain my burdens all this time, my gypsy blood and nicotine cursed lungs, carry me to Judgement?
Judgement - Safer Than Heaven
Judgement - Safer Than Heaven
Judgement the Beast come round at last!
Judgement the circle redrawn!
Judgement the cycle reached final act!
Now start over

XXI. The World
As it was, again

Holy Mother hear me now!
The High Priestess sits jaded on sapphire throne wreath'd in laurel purities,
Blessing the sinners one by one as they line up grovelling down the block,
Shivering for acceptance, the emaciated children of a future abandoned and thrown to the wolves,
In reverence, she watches the nations burn!
The prisons burn! The churches burn!
The balance bleeds the light of dawn into the sidewalk cracks and tinted apothecary windows,
While the other end of the spectrum weeps blackest night into the open casket funerals of the unjustifiable crimes committed in the name of PEACE
The Almighty PEACE
PEACE in the Highest
PEACE at all costs
The High Priestess rains down PEACE from her bomb shelter throne
You may not understand it now
But this is for your own good

The Magician, gifted deadbeat, listless designer of immortal destiny, tragic comedian of the purest order, locked and buried, chained to the weight of indecision,
Ordained by cancerous night, canonized in the manifestations of nightmare heart withdrawals, ascending the cigarette strewn steps to lost versions of heaven,
Eternal kindred lovers in mourning, trace the chemical pathways to a neural shutdown disaster, martyrs imprisoned by their own mission statements, murdered by the cosmic truths exposed in tape recorded suicide manifestos, played backwards for empty auditoriums in a requiem for their apathy
Endowed with brilliant catastrophe, with the wand double edged with creation balanced to destruction, with infinite purpose,
The Magician breaks as he parallels the Fall,
the all consuming detachment,
the disconnected realities viewed from shattered lenses,
From distilled terror, from magnificent prose, from the ashen pillars of kingdom rotted, gutted, broken
Holy and lost, wisdom wasted,
As a mother's rage moves 1000 eyes and 1000 hands to some unclear end that I doubt I will be around to see
The Magician smokes his way to an early grave
While flowers grow over the memorials of those unmoved
I'm not sure what any of this means or why it should matter
But listen
There is a story here, if you will have it

Broken heroes of the first string
ready, aim, fire
**** the momentum and hold steady
The choir gave up before the song did this time, the final note dragged on for a decade of suicide, of bleached scripture, of double sided shotgun decision,
It's life or death now and I don't know how to fix this and neither do you so let's just burn it all down instead
It's what we've always done
Mortal doom painted on the windows of the brains shattered lobes, ripped open to exposure of the wicked senses, the holy spectrum exploding, the destroyers locked up and the keys swallowed whole, and the sadness drowned out momentarily in a triple C blackout haze
I called you prince once and spent the next 4 years draining secondhand love from your chalice, I was the Judas at your Last Supper, and I know you could taste the barely dried guilt in my bloodied kiss
I hope you can forgive all that now
Because I have watched the Columbus sunset a thousand times in my battered memory and it gets brighter every day while the next bell tolls for you and I both in moments of incarcerated brilliance
And I can hear our train coming now, and we don't have a choice but to go
I'll see you on the other side

Ash buried graveyards what sick thoughts I have of you on these nights,
These nights where I dream of love and hope to die in my sleep
The sky falls vivid and streaked with incendiary demise and I keep steady the best I can under the weight of total collapse
But here the dead bare the weight of suns within their broken chests and I am still hung up on my same belltower clockwork systematic *******
Awake, remember, sleep, forget
Purgatory cycles in ash tray limbo wrapped in the tea leaves of misplaced fortunes
Irreverent shadows tripping lucid dream aneurysms down both ends of the block
And ******* fathers moving dope from greed to desperation to section 8 prisons
The headlines on the marquee monoliths read:
"There is nowhere to go but up"
And this is the junkies last thought before he trails off into the sweet kiss of sunset
This is the last thought I have before I put down the pen and lie to myself that I've done the best I could
What did you expect, honestly?

Au revoir to the fever dream valentines strung out on the idea of an almost always that never was quite anything
To the ash tongued burn scarred stigmatized and delusional messiahs shivering outside the unemployment offices
To the leftist inquisition huddled together for the warmth of enlightenment,
In poorly knit thrift store sweaters,
In drug induced nightmares,
In outdated self referential rhetoric,
In visions of a reckoning that has already come they couldn't be bothered to notice
I can not be bothered to notice
I watch the dead eyed newsman cut his sweetheart a chelsea smile with dimestore switchblade and now he's reading to her manic and weeping from his ***** diaries
She's an actress and I can't feel anything anyway
The spirit is exploding out the back of the skull from shotgun epiphanies and the psych ward prophets are holding on for dear ******* life and I am losing control every second I think about it
I know they'll come for me this time, I can hear them calling for my blood when I turn my ears to the sky
Deliver my eulogy as if you were there to see the end
Fake whatever you have to for the crowd
Paint your idols in shades of gray and your wayward ******* fathers the same
We're building up to some kind of ****** here and I'd like to just get to it
Maybe the lights are only on because there isn't anyone home to turn them off
But I can't make any of that matter now
I have it, all of it
I have a medicine cabinet's worth of reasons not to wake up,
I have enough clarity of vision to know that I can't see anything,
I have a page that never fills and a poem that never lives up,
And I have a sign hung round my neck that reads:
"Days Clean: 0"
The only thing I don't have is something to lose

All things are holy and nothing is sacred
The psychoses, the diagnosis, the manic-depressive war, the acid PTSD flashbacks, the track marked arms, the scabbed over burn scars, the crisis hotline voices reverberating ceaseless from the walls of the skull to the gravestone that reads
WHY! WHY! WHY!
Father, President, Congressman, Representative, I have looked on the faces of your human annihilation and counted not an innocent man among the lot
Holy terror for the white supremacists in their gilded tombs!
They boiled their brains in the mustard gas ovens and voted for the Tea Party!
I am missing the connection at some base level and it is irreparable
There isn't **** to be done about it now
I used to love this, I don't know what happened
I lied to myself just to get a reaction and I felt nothing for the first time in my life
So plaster my name on your movement and take my face for your martyr
I don't have the strength to argue anymore

Bleeding from the eyes and ears on the 4th day of a burned out unemployed Hallelujah ecstasy binge
Watching the form of the essence of the madness take shape in existential tears as I cry mercy to the fury of destiny
Drunk in my distaste as I ****** my way to the edge of the world just to bust up laughing at the abyss that stared back
I don't know how to tell you what I'm feeling and I never have
I cut my teeth with the shards of a broken bottle rage still wet with whiskey and the blood of the exorcised demon
And I still remember the lights dicing apart the New Jersey Turnpike as a thousand white explosions shattered every cortex I had still standing
And you had me up against a wall that night, and suddenly I couldn't think of anything to say for the first time in my life
The streetlight halos illuminating the leaves on the trees and the asphalt in the parking lots and the cigarette butts in their graveyards and the homeless in their cells and the faithless in their crusades and the crimes with no witnesses
No witnesses
Something died in the back of my throat just then, and I've been coughing up fragments of its ghost every morning since

Planets align in the black of the emptiness before I drive back sixty miles an hour into the mouth of the storm to face the rain on my own terms
My sister's voice cracks the radio static in a haunting southern ballad as my brother's drunken affections get the best of him again
He takes his penance where it is due and so must I
And if this be thy will then I go before history with inkwell lips and kiss the lines of our memory onto the grayed out page,
I kneel at the feet of a misused culture and offer my humbled blood as sacrifice - take me for your poet and I shall serve my sentence in full
From the scraps of suicide notes I will cut a deeper manifest, and I'll be honest about it this time,
Of the rise and relapse let me preach candid and cutting, of the love and the rage let me speak grateful and true,
Give me the bent form and let me keep it free, give me the blessed spirit and let it keep me warm
Give me the final movement and let it **** me, as I know it will someday
Keep a locket of my ashes for luck,
And do with the rest as you please
I am humble servant to the human soul,
Just let me rest when I am done
And allow me this, a humble prayer-
Blessed be the madmen, deformed seekers for a deformed truth,
Holy Crosen Holy Williams Holy King Holy as the bughouse patron saint on a throne soaked in red wine and deep rooted hatred
as the blondehairedredblooded fury of fire made flesh
as the ***** haired waste inhaling spirits by the dozen
Watching the slow death of the mind in star spangled entropy, as a nation weeps its forgotten angels
Serotonin drought to misfired synapse meltdown
To end times propaganda on the evening news
Wake the dead in the streets and do not ask them for mercy
Blessed be the wicked, castraters of moralities grown weak,
Holy Creager Holy Dahmer Holy Gacy Holy as the evil woken in the black soul of the tyrant
as the unmemorialized graves of the systematic slaughterhouse
as the twentyfourhourtwentyfourhourtwentyfourhour news coverage seven days a week year ******* round
Burning the ghettos and taking to the airwaves with implacable outrage at the stylized fall of the West, The South cannot even lift its arms up to hold a weapon let alone rise again

Blessed be the fire with nowhere to burn but within
Blessed be the prophets powerless in their pulpits, and you may count my shaken voice among the paralyzed
Blessed be the ****** engineers of this brutal destiny -
This is all we know to do,
May we do the best we can with it
Amen

Black sky swallowed whole by dead dreams while blacker lungs succumb to inevitability,
And I remain seated watching heaven for a sign that grows grayer by the hour
Pluck my mortality from between the branches of the tree I tried to hide in and tattoo its signature in thick black letters down both of my arms -
A DAY WILL COME
And I remain
Tracing the trajectory of comets with drowned ocean eyes in the shifting desert sands,
Sifting through piles of physical copies of moments I could only experience in retrospect,
Reading fortunes in the cracks of skin well lived in with my own bloodied hands,
Flirting with mirrors to exchange my identity with the gilded prophet adorning the poster on a dorm room wall,
Drinking down the chalice of my coronation only to recoil in horror at the king I become
I asked for every second of this, don't let me tell you any different
When the clouds break and the face of creation stares back at me I will not blink
I will broadcast my downfall on every television screen and sickened memory,
I will hang my shame from prescription medication gallows,
I will press the traitors brand deep into my torn chest,
And I will not blink
I will stand by my ruined kingdom and I will wear the weight of my failure 'round my neck,
This is the only vow I can be sure of
Fill my pockets with dead spirits before I jump into the river to be carried to judgement,
And remember my face, in case you never see it again
A day will come,
Keep your eyes to the sky
Watch for me

Spotlights burn confessions from the sinners pockets as their penance is paid penny by penny in spare change jars and guitar cases all along the interstate,
Go and tell the gutters of our suicide and leave a note in tomorrow's obituaries if they wept for us
If not, just ******* spare me
Neurotic breakdowns in melting rooms filled to fever with strung out felons just now crossing the lines of the tally marks that denote their resurrections,
And I long to start trash can fires with my wasted chances and apologies from former lovers mixed with equal parts sawdust and gasoline,
I've got more than enough to light up the backstreets I take to get home every night at least, but you know how melodramatic I can be
I'll be dressed in all black back against vandalized brick walls on some steps somewhere claiming to be able to read the future in a deck of hand-me-down tarot cards,
I'll be hearing the whispers in stuck tongues about my hair and how it's grown as I listen to the horizon waiting for the crack of thunder to begin the storm,
I'll be contemplating connections between drags of cigarettes in the hum of static evening with the drifters drawn like moths to the glow of empathy,
I'll be ready to go whenever I'm called, and I promise I won't cause a scene,
But now I think there's a girl walking calmly towards me, ignoring the traffic jam of my speech patterns and I find myself catching fireflies by the hundreds to illuminate her approach,
She tells me she'll see me in the morning if I ever decide to lay my head to rest,
And we wish each other good luck

Prepare the arrival
Begin the ritual
Cut your veins open to bleed your sins into the river, then cup your hands and drink from the basin just for one last memory of the taste,
Then start over
Try to take yourself seriously, for once
Have a shot to take the edge off,
andanotherandanotherandanotherandanotherandanother
Till you waken from your car crash nightmares on the ceiling of your sanity suspended by your disbelief in anything and everything coming apart piecebypiecebypiece and trying your best to take it all in stride,
Read the terms of your surrender and convince yourself it is the best you can get,
Lie as much as you have to,
Lie as much as you can live with,
Then lie some more,
Shed your skin and spray paint an anatomically correct depiction of your deformities on a T shirt, then wear it until everybody else in the room becomes so uncomfortable that they have to leave
Let the door hit them on the way out
You've really ******* done it now,
If what you need is to tie a noose for every wayward ghost knocking at your door asking for a smoke and a place to stay, then get your rope boys because it's gonna be a long ******* night
If what you need is to realize that your hair is not your prison but your home then tattoo your own reflection onto your eyelids because today is the day you quit hiding
Prepare the arrival
Destroyer,
Your confessions are dead and there is no time to mourn because now we go to war
You didn't start this one but you know ******* well you have the power to finish it,
Destroyer,
Accept that you can't ever be fixed,
Get angry about it anyway
Destroyer,
Do what you were born to do,
Or failing that,
Do what you created yourself to do,
Destroyer,
Do not repent to the wreckage, do not bleed yourself dry in pity for the scorched Earth and shattered skies, do not make sacrifice of yourself on the broken altars you learned to fear, do not weep for the dead left in your wake,
You did what you had to
They'll understand someday

**** the connection & circle back - begin again at the original sin and I'll conceive another immaculate excuse to explain myself this time, I always do, trust me,
Desolation angels blazing weary epiphanies into the highway lines, viewing crop circles at ground level, knowing we should be impressed but not sure by what, and I never drink alone anymore because that holy ******* cowboy is still blocking the warped door frame - I'm ******* trying to lighten up, I don't know what else you want from me (yes I do, it isn't this)
I weep the mirrors shattered luck, I weep my mothers bitter tears my fathers clenched fist my crazed manic adopted brother's visions of inertia salvation - I weep the thrown bricks and ****** fires of youth bled dry, I don't know how much longer I can keep this up
Wisps of my ***** hair catch on sighs of wind and carry off through the trees dead of night - I envy those who can live without context
I need to take myself seriously
With 12th cigarette breath mid week mid summer mid west midnight I will whisper in cracked refrain the vows of my idle retrospect -
I will haunt this city all year, sleepy eyes holding interstates hostage in preparation for the coming doom
I will sit atop the hill, feign wisdom for the ages, and preach melancholy my fondness for the earth, but now that I've made it I'm not sure I can go back
Maybe it's for the best

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,
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,
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

$1.60
May 6th, 2015
A ****** diner outside Dayton, Ohio
My city steals ragged breath after breath
A defeated boxer calling for an ill-fated rematch
And to her I will answer - yes
Yes I have seen your name illuminated in broken neon
I have seen your love run black on the asphalt to fall again like rain on the undeserving
I have seen you lose time after time with excuse tempered silver on your tongue and rise to return to your tomb by morning
I have seen the marks the centuries left when they stripped you naked and left you begging,
But I just don't have it in me to feel sorry for you anymore
I have bared you witness so many times your testimony buzzes white noise to my ears
I have seen the sacrifice you would have of me but my blood and my ink are no longer for you to drink
I wept with you one night, and I swore I would never show you mercy again
I have no idea when I got this ******* cynical
Is it my fault or yours that my empathy has run out?
Please tell me it isn't mine

Mother, I'm sorry you birthed a ghost
Mother there is a song of mourning rising from the streets but I'm not sure I know how to cry anymore
Mother they're calling for me, at the gallows, at the sermon, at the university, at the madhouse,
and maybe they're right, but my voice is too weak to tell them that
Mother you know I'll have to go to them, sooner rather than later
Mother I am praying to a clocktower for the end,
I am on my knees speaking in tongues between twin pillars of apathy and boredom,
I am tying my tongue to nooses to hang my shame from the trees where I carved my switchblade prophecy when I was young and angry,
Younger and angrier, anyway
I am singing with the homeless & the dogs on the street corner, burnt out anthems of heartland heartbreak too ******* sad to be classics
I am with the junkies, the proof of their gospel is tagged on the walls of my sinus cavity
I am with the anarchists, they put a pen in my hand like a rifle and told me aim for the head
I am king of nothing on a throne of empty words
Don't pray for me mother, I won't hear it
Mother I can barely hear you speak
From behind salty seraphim eyes you speak
"Where are you?"
And I speak
Where were you when the enemy was at the gates?
When the bombs fell like rain?
When the world went silent and I woke with my crown soaked in blood?
When I was a lion backed into a corner by the wolves?
You knew I was strong, mother
But you also knew the wolves would never ******* rest
And that one day they'd tear me apart
So you spent that time stitching my epitaph together from caved in walls and shattered glass,
From rage and love and rage again
Blowing the dust off your grandfather's Bible,
"Forgive him Father, he knows not what he does"
I know not what I do, Mother
My ruin is mine alone
Do not let me destroy you, Mother
Scatter my ashes in your garden and sing my praise to the congregation
For you brought me the Gold which made me grey too early,
and it is for me that your gold will be made grey,
Too ******* early
Mother, look at me
It is for you I am restless, for you I am discontent, for you I am burning out my nervous system seeking a ******* answer
And for that, Mother,
I will thank you to my grave

No matter what they say, I am still the king

Come to me with damage sewn into the denim of your jacket,
with week old bruises decayed a beautiful yellow
And I will show you the scars from two souls cut each to each from the same magnificent stained glass
Come to me tripping manic on your delusions of heaven, with brilliant cross laid eternally upon your shoulders
And I will show you the Earth laid bare, stripped naked of supposed grandeur
Come to me timid and unsullied, knees scraped black by the chains of the altar
And I will show you the grave where I buried innocence, and the half-hearted epitaph I wrote when I was young and callous
Come to me yearning to believe, veins itching for a Hallelujah fix
And I will show you the words of my prophets inked into frail skin, testament to minds destroyed by madness before I'd even thought of the idea

Come to me pure and holy, hymnals dying in your throat with each breath, and I will show you sin
Come to me curious and I will show you the withering fire,
Come to me a lamb, and I will show you the slaughter

Come to me broken and deranged, revolutions pounding drums of war in your skull and I will show you mercy
Come to me sick and I will show you the desperate solution
Come to me a madman, and I will show you a liar

Come to me unwashed and sleepless, burning yourself out as a wheel in an unworthy machine and I will show you rest
Come to me seraphic and I will show you the taste of gold
Come to me craving, and I will leave you wanting

No matter what they say I am still the king

I.
I saw it all through the eyes of a child, knees scraped ****** at the altar of remorse
Who couldn't sing a single hymn without his voice breaking off
And who lost himself in the laughter from the congregation
I took it all in by pieces
The way the dreamers lusted for Icarus, but ultimately settled for getting high on the ground
The way the dreamers became junkies and the way the junkies died like clockwork every hour on the hour,
To be reborn as prophets on a newsreel clicking their tongues about the fall of America
Please
Get down off your high horse, brother
America has fallen and now you're just embarrassing yourself

II.
Mercy for the lovers, they know not what they do
Mercy for the restless, the senseless, the savage
Plucking at chords till they find the voice they need to reach heaven,
Sipping gasoline from the cupped hands of the sons of the revolution,
Mercy for the revolution, they really did mean well once
But their anthems caught on dead air and they drowned in the high tide of their own self importance
And we didn't mourn but we'll sure build them a monument,
A manifesto pieced together from scraps of torn up prescriptions, misspelled names on coffee cups, tobacco spilling out the seams of broken cigarettes
And it will proclaim to the world,
These are the fruits of your labor
These are the lifeless things you bled your youth dry for
Sanctify them, sing their praise from the highest peaks
And receive payment in your next life,
A hundred hymns per heart broken, and a thousand pardons per spirit swallowed whole
Mercy for me, you know I couldn't help myself

III.
We are looking at the underbelly of an evil machine
So when I speak the apocalypse please know I'm being serious,
Lazarus has just finished his third cup of coffee today and he isn't even pretending to be amazed anymore
How could I get that lucky?
Could I unlearn the branding of my soul or am I next up to the chopping block?
If I ever hear the wind cry Mary on the downswing of the blade falling to take my life it won't be soon enough
And I will look back on all the bruises in creation I've left,
In milky white flesh turned deep purple,
In starry American sky lit up by dissent,
In innocence exposed to the fluorescent light of sin,
and yearn to leave each one again,
Just to experience what it feels like to stain something beautiful one last time

IV.
A beautiful boy drags his grandmother's ashes down his throat into his lungs to spit back up epiphany after epiphany, balanced on the manic edge of destruction
An angel faced girl dreams of mountains, the whole world a church to be celebrated
A harlot sings desperate in the street to attract just enough attention to make it through the night
The devil lights another cigarette and waxes romantic about the one that got away
These are the heroes to whom I give silent thanks,
These are the criminals to whom I give violent condemnation
These are the faces I pick out of the static behind my eyes,
These are the hearts I wear stitched into my sleeves
I'd be nothing without you

V.
**** me once more in the neon lit halo of your love and this time give me a shot between the eyes, just to be sure
For I have seen the end and I'd rather just get it over with
String me up between the billboards for life and loneliness and hold me still in the holy visions I have of a last judgement
Shoot me up once more with my drug of choice, the sadness I spent decades mixing in my basement till I got it just right
And let me explode one last time,
Let me be vivid and shameless, let me scorch their retinas and blacken their brains till they start to see things my way
Build me a monument worthy of the king they thought me to be, not the king that I was
Write my eulogy on the back of the receipt for my soul, and never let the ******* tell me I didn't get my money's worth
Martyr me again, and this time I won't back down
I promise
It's the least I can do

I never thought I'd need anything that I couldn't keep tucked in the inside pocket of a worn out leather jacket
Till I knew fear the first time, licking my cheeks in the dark
Gasping for air in the front seat of a cherry red Americana funeral hearse, going 90 miles per hour to crash the gates of Heaven
With life and glory spreading out onto the pavement
And I was afraid, like I would be afraid for the rest of my life
Till I drowned my youth in the muddy waters of a river I only knew in passing,
Which flowed from a point I'd never see, to somewhere I'd never know
But I never found a bridge, and I never let it go
And I shook, like I would shake for the rest of my life
Till I saw the ghosts of stars reflected in the eyes of a young girl, who wanted nothing more than to make me clean, and good, and happy
Who kissed like karma, cherry red remorse stains that took hours to wash off my face and my neck
Black hair on my black sheets, like a portrait I might paint if I could steady my ******* hands
And I turned my back, like I would turn my back for the rest of my life
Now I taste sin each time I wake, rolling through the timid mist of my days,
With the ache coming in next, and the smoke not long after
And I apologize to the Midwest sun,
I'm afraid I haven't been a good friend these last few years
But the night speaks so sweet, and she makes promises neither of us will ever keep
Our first sin was a lie we told ourselves
And now we're too tired to correct
So we'll keep the course wherever it leads
For this,
All that I’ve done, all that I’ve failed to do
I will stumble through the best apology I can give
But you won’t believe it,
And neither will I

I rise to the come of your poem
And fall stricken with fever to my knees, again
Fever is my veins and I am addicted again
And I will writhe at your mercy, as long as you'll have me

Carve your Hallelujah into my flesh
Break my throne, cut my hair
And still I will wear you like a crown of thorns
Three days hence, we will both be reborn

In the dark of confessional
Naked, you were worried I might ask too many questions
But all I can think of is
How many litanies could roll off my tongue
Before Heaven opened to receive my penance

While Eden burns,
I bless the scars crossing up and down your body
One by one kissed by angels with tongue
And signed in the key of some long forgotten saint

Sin, ******* you
Sin like you've survived the Rapture and you're just waiting for the end
Sin like Paradise bores you, like you were meant for the other side
Sin like I know you can

And so to this, my love, your alter,
Let me lay this last benediction

Cross my heart, lay me down to sleep
My soul is cheap but it's yours to keep
And should I die before I wake
**** the Lord, I'm yours to take