Conceived in hazy agony
The path to the city of gold stretched endlessly into the mountains
My father walked it once, and I think I'll stay home
There is an eternity between each of my words
And in that space ghosts wait impatiently
For me to cave in
The American South is all ablaze
And two headed catfish swim the Ohio River
Appalachia's lullabies end as bitterly as they begin
Life comes together in fragments
And ephemeral cycles reach their waning stages
God took pity just this once, and the following day brought apocalypse
An ending fit for songs that would never be sung
So glorious they never could have saw it coming
But I'll drink to it regardless

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

Fluorescent messiah born in a haze of marijuana smoke,
Baptized in stale beer basins to be sacrificed to the hallucinogenic sunset
Half blinded by the stars like iridescent angels swimming in the reflecting pools at the edge of periphery
And of their blood and body the people lined up for miles to make offerings,
To pay tribute at the feet of the once and future king of the wasteland
One by one by one the wisemen wept and the shepherds sang blind hymns to the flock
And the Sphinx was the only one brave enough to ask the question,
If the form is blessed and the essence black, should the Son be blamed for what the Father lacked?
Swept up in a tidal wave of holy disgrace and blissful in deranged glory
Hallelujah, he is Risen!
Like the flag hoisted above embattled Eden
Kicked in like a broken door by savages on the prowl for petty victory worthy to hang above their mantle
But indomitable still, even crucified, martyred on a cross of felonies
And on the day of Last Judgement, when the Second Coming is at hand
Will Paradise echo the elation of the believers?
Will the kingdom of the Most High relive it's former glory?
Will the wasteland know peace again?
Maybe, brother
Maybe Eden is for the birds, and Paradise is better off burning
But the faith, and the love, are not so easily destroyed

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

Sing me to sleep, Allen Ginsberg
The entire fluorescent universe pulses and breathes in your chest
Or mine, or his, or Hers, particularly Hers
And I wish nothing more than to be nothing
Or everything
Tell me, were our souls cut from the same stars?
If I trace the hieroglyphics of our scars will I reach some understanding?
Will I ever look upon your papier-mache mountains or caress your Mohammedan angels?
Will the blood red sun burn my bitter heart out before the Benzedrine kicks in?
Tell me, will I touch the face of God or grasp at phantoms forever?
If this is the apocalypse why do I feel such discontent?
I wish nothing more than to be the center of gravity
At which all things meet, and break, and fall away
To drift in to emptiness like crumpled up phases of the lonely moon
Tell me, are my veins pumping gasoline?
Was I born to die on the road, and what manner of Valkyrie will lift me to my rest once I do?
And who will I thank, once I am there
For the opportunity to sleep?

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

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

Start slow, deep breaths, shallow steps towards an end, means wrapped in chains and gasoline, the smell of fire itching its way up your nose, the taste of blood tickling the back of your throat, take off running, the forever kind of running, the dead set straight ahead hell bent full body immersion in a fever, pray for your wake, pray for the ones left behind and not for the ones ahead, the journey is holy and nothing, nothing is sacred, let the wind tear holes in your jeans let the cold slice your chest into portions, you are born whole and spend the rest of your life in grieving for that feeling, you search for it everywhere that veins ache and hearts bleed and spirits wait and debts go unpaid and lights stay on, all the time, to ward off ghosts, you cry for it, you write for it, you scream and you pound your fists and you take up arms and you become, in this way, enemy of everything - other, mirror self, target in crosshairs, mugshot, *******, and you fill your days of rage with buckshot and sawdust, while your nights of lust kiss prophecy onto window panes and cheeks and alley ways, read this, understand this: The fury is the only language you have that can't be used against you, no one will ever correct the grammar of your fists, no one will ever tell the barrel of a gun it has misspoken, and when it speaks there can be no mistranslation:
*******, understand me
When I leave I will take this sky with me and never return,
When this burns down I will never think about it again,
I might be full of hatred, but I ain't no god of war
I will throw this feeling away and I will forget where I buried it,
I will make a home in the ruins of something greater than myself,
I will make better from worse or die trying,

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

End times upon us, great, crushing, inevitable
Black dawn sunrise in the west
Evil walks fearless on hallowed ground
Holly wreaths wrung out tied nooses
Hollow gallows for hollow men
They're all ******* anyway
Holy of holies in radioactive decay
Brilliant and brutal
Atmosphere is the enemy
Headlights hostile pedestrians hostile
Mirage from heaven hostile!
Abhorrent destruction assured
All sides hostile!
Nerve endings fire fire fire
Senseless mindless
Waking reality constant violence
Have mercy on me

**** 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

There is a story here, if you'll have it
In the haze of deadbeat ghosts and week old smoke that clouds my judgement, I have witnessed prophecy
And now I cannot return, though I once thought myself King
I can only move forward, in step to the funeral dirge of Father Time or some other holy ******* they call master of puppets
So I am forced to contend with the notion that I am a pawn, after all
Which begs the question, am I less a puppet because I can see the strings?
Do you believe that God lives between every set of parallel lines?
And if I sing, how loud must I get before someone stops me?
So to honor my brothers and sisters, and a generation at war with apathy and glamour, I raise an appeal to SOMETHING or someone in the stars to wake
And take my hand, for I am too weak to tread the surface of the sun alone
And if I ever manage to return who will be left to sing?
For the puppet and the master, to this fiery waltz are we destined towards eternity
And should I look upon his face will we know each other, naked beneath the armor and the smoke?
And will we laugh like old high school acquaintances, or will he press the lips of a gun to my temple and tell me I had a good run?
I'm afraid I'll die not knowing,
Never looking back, not even in the face of Armageddon
I only hope for some scrap of paper, crumpled up and tossed by the side of the highway
Written by someone who knew all along the way,
And who deigned to let me in on the joke
I guess that'd be alright

The stars rained down Hellfire just across the boulevard
While Galileo turned the world over
Once, twice, three times in his hands
Then set it down, to light a cigarette off the sun
And there were young girls on the front lawn
Singing along to an antique radio
That called to them by name
And they kissed in the dark with intangible grace and whispered,
"Lord I never loved another heart like yours"
The halls are silent round this time at night
Save the generator buzz of angels
And the sky outside pulsed electric indigo
And laughed just like a child
The city is either haunted or blessed
And it is so strange that anything is anything at all

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

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 Western World split open and out from the acid washed sky spewed forth calamity, bright and feverish
And from the ever dimming divide emerged a crow, with a face like Christ and Charon's crackling throat
And he spoke sweet apocalypse, like caustic vinegar dripping down my body, burning holes in my hollow chest
"Come join the ******, wayward brother on the razor's edge of ruin!
Come drink from the lip of the sunrise and watch the nuclear bombs rain down!
Come burn down the courthouse where they put your youth on trial and sentenced your weary heart to hang!
Come exorcise your evils on the altar of our blood and conquest, my love, my seraphic saint, and be reborn in the water of the sinners womb
Drink down poison and spit up fire into the lap of every **** and paramour and prosthetic companion you've ever had
And let them wonder how you escaped from prison,
Exhume the bones of the demons you aborted and hoist them victorious over your head,
Because you ******* earned it"

And I listened, I took to heart
And so here I am, alive
Here I am 19 seasons in the abyss later and bursting with electric heat
And in case you haven't heard,
I'm ******* vicious now, honey

And I won't mince words here so here we go:
On the first day you were conceived in a flash of cosmic brilliance, unveiled to the ****** Earth like the masterwork of a sculptor
On the second day you calmed the raging sea and brought the mountains to their knees
On the third day you blew a fiery kiss to the circling specters of your fallen heroes
On the fourth day you signed an autograph with your sugar tongue in the small of Satan's back
On the fifth day, you took a ******* nap, ****'s exhausting, no one blames you
ON THE SIXTH DAY, on the sixth day you raised a rallying cry to the four winds, for the artists sculpting chaos from the car crash wreckage, for the anarchists burning bridges to nowhere from nothing, for the young streetwalking heartbreakers, the desperate twitching addicts, the ******* and the dying black boys all unvindicated, to JOIN THE ******, to pull the trigger and let the world go supernova, to shatter your nervous breakdown heart and scatter a thousand pieces of yourself to a thousand different heavens because you are a being too ******* brilliant to be contained, don't even try it
ON THE SEVENTH DAY , on the seventh day, you held it all in your holy hands and became something new entirely
On the seventh day you became the most powerful version of yourself
On the seventh day you put every dead star still burning out in the palm of your hand
On the seventh day you laid your weapons to rest and for the first time, the first time you knew what peace sounds like in the early morning, drifting in with your first smoke of the day
And I'm not a betting man, by any means
But in an arm wrestling match between you and God
My money is on you, every time

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

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

Reaching towards the sky,
On my knees, my palms begin to bleed
As well as my feet
A stigmata instigated by my self destructive tendencies
But just what does that insinuate?
Am I another sick starved madman with a twisted messiah complex?
Will I end up stark & raving, naked on the Cincinnati streets screaming obscenities & salvation?
Is that the worst that could happen?
Is this the worst case scenario on the other end of my linear destiny?
But no, this destiny is not linear
It's thermo-*******-nuclear
Manhattan-like, I shall disassemble and reassemble at will
My revolution is ALIVE
A revolution of fire & chemicals swirls madly around my subconscious
I'm no pragmatic protagonist from any perspective
I'm a *******
A modern day strung out anti-hero
Spray painting realistic ***** on the walls of reality
Reaching for the sky
To **** the ******* sun

(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

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

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

In the great wasteland of my youth
I buried all my loved ones I'd slaughtered with my own hands
Every girl who ever loved me I shot right between the eyes
& All my brothers I knocked unconscious and burned alive
Why?
Why must I senselessly sever every human connection I've ever made?
Faulkner told me to **** my darlings and so eagerly I obeyed
In the great wasteland of my youth
I alone drift wraithlike from nothing to nothing
Just me and my ******* poems
Which I deliver like resounding benedictions to cathedrals of the ghosts I've created
Lord knows I always wanted a captive audience
In the great wasteland of my youth
I am king of nothing but broken bones
Broken hearts & broken homes
I rule scorched Earth and tattered sky
I command the cruel seas to rise & I command beauty to die
I am king of nothing
In the great wasteland of my youth
I am a demon of some repute
Seeking lovers incapable of love or objective truth
And objective truth I've only found in bottles of pills
Downed by the lovely girls I've later killed
Sacrificed to the emotional gas chamber of my bohemian holocaust
In the great wasteland of my youth
I've destroyed all the places I could hide
& am now forced to comprehend this monster inside
And what I've always suspected has been present all along
Brothers and sisters, I am an atomic bomb

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

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

"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.

they sighed
The 5 o'clock mass of late winter apathy
Borne ceaseless to and from and back again
To Salt Lakes to frozen sky to unfeeling supermarket self checkout lane
To the dawn that brought life and the dusk that killed again
From sea to shining sea to burning bush
and a grand halo for all the art majors,
scathing editorial for the industry people
On the freeway passed out stone black sinners under veil of Southern sky
And narcotics agents circling up and down the block
Cancer dependent martyrs all,
The Saint, the Wolf, and his ****** Lover
Trash can fires turn to frozen hellscape
To Babylon out West past the Rockies and North of the Gulf
Mother of ghosts slaving away at an impotent family supper
And she let a single tear fall and whispered,
"This one will bring me luck,
It may not be much now, but just wait
There's gonna be a ******* riot when the Wolf comes home"

Art is filthy,
An angry breath of smoke
Post-***, full of shame
Bad joke in stoic company
Aborted attempt at playing God
It is starving hysteria,
Naked and afraid
But it is all I know
So I'll sing it to my ******* death rattle

You are in the waking light that hits the pale skin in just the right way, seraphic
And the hazy nostalgic appreciation for the way it can slice the room
The first cigarette of the new day to take the grating edge off
And every cigarette after

You are in the sigh released just after sleep and just before dreams
Pure and total catharsis
Something just more than coincidence, and just shy of fate
The York Peppermint Patty after some grand victory

And I watched you fall in love with the music you've known since childhood
Mystified as if it was the first time
Breathe with the room, the world and everything in it
And sing, from coda to coda in the cadence of your own vision of angels

I watched you laugh through the narrow streets just before the dawn,
On another spectacular adventure
With the knowledge bright and vivid
That your thrill of life was still alive

And blessed or cursed as we may be
We don't have to talk about it
Because the lights are on for both of us,
And we truly just know
So if this curse is my cross to bear
I'm lucky to have you
And if you need me, I'll be on the outskirts of the world
Waiting to throw popcorn at the stupid ******* players
In their stupid ******* game
That you and I
Just get

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

The Midwest trembled at your departure
And the way the wolves howled that night will haunt me till I die
This valley was wild and mighty once,
Now it's scorched Earth and holy floods as far as the eye can see
And morose the sky that fell, and sent the ravens all away
They used to mock you every day
Catholic school left you with knuckles bruised and heart bleeding,
And you were never really the same
Hell has thrown it's jaws open wide
And the view is the same from either side
But the ***** continues to flow,
And if the Lord is truly our shepherd then our cup should runneth over
An Adderall fever set your bones aflame as you screamed south on 75
Like you thought if you slowed down for a minute the ghosts would drag you back
Writhing, to the town where you were born
And you never apologized, nor should you ever
For the way your fists were always clenched
Or the way your jaw was set
Immovable and impassive as the slate gray sky
And the parking lot you sold your burdens in
What could they have known of it then, or now for that matter?
They were tossing salt over their shoulders for luck
When the news came through the grapevine
And I couldn't help but feel relieved
For the lone wolf dies when the winter comes,
And here the winter never leaves

On the corner of 3rd Street and another downward spiral
The ghosts of saints drift above the haunted concrete,
And blood like cathedral bells stains the skyline
And they allowed the city of pariahs a goodnight kiss
And to die, by night and be reborn
Three days hence in resounding glory
But their utopia was stillborn
The sky stank of gasoline and there was a ****** on exit 52
The taste of cheap cigarettes was inescapable
And sic transit gloria mundi!
Tagged on the cathedral wall
The wind that howled was frightened and the skyscrapers echoed the cries of the abandoned
Hallelujah, haligh
Let them join hands and sing!
Let them meet unholy demise with divine grace!
And let their voices be carried off on the lonely wind
To disappear like so many ghosts in the snow

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

Bohemia
When will you be angelic?
When will you empty your graveyards and let your cities fill with the music of the ******?
When will you sing for me, for you, for us?
For your children looking for God in the halo of a street lit drug deal gone bad?
For your forlorn lovers shooting up with sub-par sadness off the street?
For your crying, bleeding masses that scrape their knees ****** at rock bottom?

Bohemia
I'm addressing you, directly
Devourer of culture, ******* of pretense
Let they among you without sin be the first to burn
Hold you nothing sacred?
Have you not the decency to scatter your ashes somewhere clean?
Somewhere beautiful?
Somewhere perfect?

Bohemia
When will you learn?
Is there no context to your suffering?
Is there no reason for your guilt?
Is there no honor among street rats?
Where are you going with this, anyway?

Bohemia
I am not your prophet
Not your God or your king
I am your vessel
Speak your will through me

Bohemia
I need to feel it
I need to see it
I need to HEAR IT
For the mind destroyed by madness
For the heart shattered by shame
For the spirit, for the blessed ******* spirit
I need to HEAR IT

Bohemia,
Let me hear you
If you are outcast drawing the curtains on your insecurity
Let me hear you
If you are restless heart itching for the next sunset
Let me hear you
If you are just barely scraping by
If you are waiting for God to explain himself
If you are sick of sacrificing your mind to television screens
If you are just trying to make it in America without selling your soul
If you are broken, beaten, or damaged irreparably
Let me hear you
Let them hear you in the streets
Let them hear you in the grave

Bohemia
You are angelic enough
For me

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

Sing me asleep, Allen Ginsberg,
Now somewhere wrapped in plastic and oak, splinters of eternity under fingernails,
and hold a note high enough to peek into heaven but low enough so that I may climb into it, and live there, breathe there, believe there, flower of the world, open and take in the light, let me take it with me to dreams of machinery and wake new, oiled and energized, into a vast and endless morning, all sunflowers and tall grass drinking rain to hangover, get me heatsick and dizzy in the aftermath of a sunrise and let me wander these streets all year, plucking daisies from sidewalks and watching news through storefront windows, wishing on crime scenes, putting up posters on walls of the names of the companies who have gutted this land dry; I, and you, and we collectively, built these cities from scrap metal and twine, and when those hearts howl into that space who will answer them? Who will orchestrate this night when the angels retire? When I close my eyes will the valkyries come down? Who can I thank for the opportunity to rest?
When I close my eyes in that night, I will think of you, beat and never broken, Benzedrine prophets and papier-mâché mountains, sitting there in the center of it all and I will long to join you, to become the point where all things meet, connect, and are intertwined, and in becoming, to know, and in knowing, to find peace, and in peace, to rest

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"

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

I fought the highway tooth and nail
But it always has a way of getting under my skin
The lights dragged on in lonesome streams
Hundreds of miles in any direction
Someone else's name is in my chest
And I'm powerless after all,
As a crown without a king
In retrospect all things seem just as cliche
Season unending, the smoke teased in the early morning sky
The moon collapsed as sailing ships left the bay
Again, and the tides were more or less used to it by now
But shock still sets in regardless
Expectation suffocated in the divide
Between those ******* city lights and the savages in the gutter
But the headlines read that the worst was behind
And the Dow Jones is up, so God Bless America
Everyone was beaming and the world smelled like peppermint
And it was like Disney World came to the Midwest
Or so you'd think to hear them talk about it now
It's all too much for me
I'm too nervous to look up
Or re-evaluate my priorities
Powerless again in the face of uncompromising uncertainty
I catch myself hoping that everyone feels this way
So maybe one of them can tell me how it ends

Red eyes, another early morning, another night split off from the whole of experience and
coalesced into memory, fragments of vision,

And tonight the ghost of my body rides shotgun in a chariot of fire, and below us lies everything we’ve ever known, and above us lies an infinite unknown,
and yeah just three years ago I thought it was the end, stood at the edge of the city and unraveled like so much thread,
and look,

I’m not proud of everything I did in pursuit of making it through the night,
and look,
I’m not too proud to tell you that all I’ve wanted was not to be alone in this,
And so here I am sitting up, resplendent in all the glory of an afterlife I never lived to see,

And I’m begging you not to let this become another poem about the past,
Another obituary hung on the walls for me to forget about come morning,
Breathe into me,
I want to come alive,
I want to begin for real,

Give me something real,
Quit smoking and start again,
I don’t know where to go from here but,
I don’t want to die,
To speak it feels impossible,
But I don’t want to die
I don’t want to die
This is a cry for help
Show me how to live facing the future,
At last, I’ve decided,
I want to be around to see it

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.

In this prayer I ask the oceans to consume me,
To be submerged in something greater,
A totality of weightlessness and power,
To fill my ears, lungs and mouth,
And sink, low into the basin of history
In this prayer I am washed clean and righteous,
Baptized by salt and born again,
I do not ask you to reach out,
I only ask you sing of the descent,
I do not ask you to take my hand,
I only ask you keep your eyes on me,
Keep my memory close and weave it thread by thread into the sails you will use to one day leave this place, when the wind is kinder and the waves calmer,
Know then, as you look out over the horizon that I will be with you until the shoreline
And that with this prayer, I may drown, but I may never die

A match is dropped and the Ohio River goes up in flames
And the smoke filled up the ****** lungs of sweet little lady Liberty,
Rose scented thrift store day ream turned black
Black like the street punk's spiked leather vest worn ragged by a lifetime spent running headlong into brick walls
And red, God how they saw red!
Red like the cherry tipped death inhaled by your sunset haired dream girl in the passenger seat
Hark! These herald angels sing
Drunken anthems to bar rooms of disillusioned art majors newly reborn as kings
Killing time by means of self obsession, searching for the newest thing to be offended by
And what home have you to return to, Prodigal Son?
Climb the police blockade and cry your apathy to the skies!
Lest ye be judged by a jury of your own co dependent peers
Scratch your writing on the tenement wall with nails painted black
Black like the flags flown high on blood thirsty sails far out to sea
And tell them, tell them how you wept for art and nature!
Son of rage and love, your blessed values were imported
Leave the sealed halls and sacred corridors of your ideological temple
And turn your blood shot eyes to the sky
To witness, a manic depressive pilot writing in smoke
"Help us God!"
But then, he felt pretentious so he circled back around to replace "God" with "Mr. President"
My love, your strung out serenades will never melt Bohemia's frozen heart
Set all the fires you will
Set fire to your vanity!
Set fire to your love!
Set fire to the Ohio River that raised you up
And return to the basin of your birth

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"

Travelling higher than God through my former wasteland
Skyline was littered with star spangled pariahs
and the Earth swallowed the bones of the believers
And for the street youth, burning rage into their skin and choking the ashes down for supper they left no shelter
These are the spirits that sing your soulless chorus
These are the ghosts that bear your unborn demons in utero
These are the convicts that kneel humbled outside your door, crossing themselves in fervor every time you walk past
These are the junkies that sketch your morbid admiration in dull sidewalk chalk
These are the con men that pace restless across your bitter heart
And these are the children you lead to ruin, baptized by filth and fury

Wasteland, I gave you my youth
The screams of the lovers I buried with you haunt me still
Though the cathedral of the ghosts I made has long since emptied
My brothers, my sisters, my dearly departed psychoses
For you all I will return, a martyred liar,
Crucify me atop the graveyard of my artwork
And paint shades of vivid gray with my ashes
Wasteland, I've given you all and now I'm nothing

War is declared on the 8 o'clock news
By the dead-eyed ghost shoved in front of the teleprompter
The artists marched on the throne of God to vindicate their suffering
and called it alchemy when it turned to gold before their eyes
On wings of wax they kissed the sun risen high on the sky
and then ****** the night away
And they went and told it on the mountain,
They preached it into the sea
And held mass in abortion clinics and asylums,
And delivered brimstone sermons on the street corner where they sold opiates and muscle relaxers,
9 dollars 10 cents a pop
A Crusade on Wall Street!
And a Jihad on Main Street!
And the nihlists selling barbecued ribs on the side
Revolution! A maniac wielding a megaphone like a Molotov cocktail!
All of creation destroyed and recreated with almost historical accuracy
They called it justice atop the gallows and called it tragedy when it was in private
The writings on the asylum wall held comfort and good tidings, this time at least
And at least Hell lit a fire to keep away the cold
So the artists marched on
Awash in their Midas glow
******* into oblivion and forgetting to shower
Bringing God to his knees,
Crying for peace to the domed ceiling
With 50 dead spirits waiting in the wings

In this prayer I ask to be set ablaze,
Stripped naked strapped down gasoline veins cut open bleeding combustion into the engine of history,
I ask to be melted down to my base elements - animus, spirit, wrath, righteousness and judgement,
I ask to be cleansed and sanctified, to rise at last from my knees as smoke and heat, drifting above all things and in defiance of them,
I ask to become the heretic, the witch, the conjuror and the saint,
I ask to be consumed by an eternal fury and become holy - embers in the great kiln of becoming
In this prayer I ask to become - to know what it feels like to be created again,
To feel as the atom split,
The kindling ignited,
The match struck,
I ask to know what it means to be a light that cannot be extinguished,
And with this prayer, may I light up this night, and all the nights to come

An old man on the street corner proclaims
"The End is Nigh!" with a cardboard sign held high
And he's stockpiling ****** and ammunition for the coming of the nuclear winter
He builds a bonfire of his welfare checks,
Because what good is welfare when you've got no government?
And he killed himself with a strychnine laced cigarette
Watching the apocalypse party on a Tv in the department store window
His last will and testament was tagged on a tenement wall in black ink
Notarized by the gutter rats below
To the President he left his shotgun
To the Pope he left his bag of pills
To the pilgrims who forgot where Mecca was and dropped to their knees wherever it was convenient he left his compass
To the pagans he left his lighters
To the street youth he left his clothes
To the witches put on trial, and to the witches in the wild
He left his body to be used as they saw fit
Provided they burn it when they are done with it
Because to the wind he left his ashes,
To the earth he left his soul
And to the protesters he left his fortune
$2.27 , enough for a train back home
His tombstone is in the subway terminal
And they leave flowers every day

Indomitable like the sea, she rises and falls with the moon
Kissed by the currents which brought her here
To a sleepless fire escape night spent exhaling her immortal soul in to Cincinnati's open embrace
The liquor has run dry but the grass is truly greener on the other side
And it's a straight shot back up I-75
To the football field they thought they could **** her on
The first few times at least
And the prom night she spent spitting ash in haunted houses
Laughing loudest of them all
Drifting across the country
Across the lonesome west grown crowded with ghosts
And the Ohio River grown placid with complacency
Medicine angel in the mist with eyes to the stars
Because ******* she misses them back home
Not this home, the one she left her heart in
At low tide she's back on the road
To lead the skyline in harmonies sweeping up to heaven
And she may not move the stars to wake
But she will laugh the loudest of them all

I. Depression
Hollowed out black eyes pale skin,
Cigarettes for breakfast lunch and dinner,
You, are powerless here
You with your weak wrists and shaking hands,
You with your bones so fragile,
You with your light all burned out,
Drink in the dark, and descend

II. Dysphoria
What shape is this?
Bloated, rotting, gutted
You with your twisted spine,
You with your unnatural proportions,
You with your haunting figure,
Get sick, carve out your insides and replace them with slow burning candles,
Empty out until nothing is left,
Do not spare anything for the child you were,
Down here, we all starve

III. Surrender
This is what you are worth,
You, with your nausea heart,
You, with your revolving door head,
You, with your deafening absence,
Press that brand into your skin,
Mark yourself forever for your weakness,
Wrap yourself up in it like it is the only home you've ever known,
And sink, until you are strong enough to rise