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

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

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

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

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

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

Smug *******,
Slick ******* in leather,
Lace, black eyes, something to prove,
Howling wolf, barking dog, ain’t nobody in the neighborhood slept in years, and the moon just hang, basking in all this wanting,

Something about those songs, the fangs of cold, the taste of something familiar, ghost hymns of a different life drift in visceral on the wind,

And suddenly,
I believe it all again,
I believe in him like never before,

Silhouetted against the stars, knuckles cracked, lightning veins ignited, infinite energy, purpose, poise, a story unfolds from his lips and by the time it hits the ground it is already legend, an entire mythology of strife, defiance, divine power subtracted from the divine,

And so what I’m really saying is that,
Yes, we can take one last ride,
Yes, we can crack the walls and split the street,
Yes, we can spill out of our bodies and into something greater,
Yes,
We can raise hell sometime,
In fact we can raise so much hell,
That nothing can ever hold us back again,

And dawn breaks, as it has to, on every night we’ve ever fallen into
never expecting to fall back out of,
And the very last punks in town,
Light a cigarette off the sunrise and
Wait, with baited breath, for the night to fall once again,
So they can dust that record off,
Put on their best leather,
And return, reckless and inevitable,
Into the dark that raised them

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

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 saw God in a cheap motel
& He said I was trying too hard
He told me I should lighten up
But I was too preoccupied tracking time through vibrating echoes in the air
Rapidly evolving and devolving
And screaming out of my ******* head
My consciousness deserted the hollow husk of self
And like a gas, expanded to fill the room
Shattered the ****-stained windows, and expanded to fill the world
Laughing skinless skulls filled up the tessellating skies
& their hysteric soundwaves penetrated the oceanic depths of my mind
Where Machiavellian machinations revolved ceaselessly
Circling unattainable ends
I need to release the pressure
But my consciousness has grown so colossal I no longer know ******* it
I **** out all the venom & vinegar I drink
And my lungs refuse to give in to poison fumes
& I cry out in frustration
Will I ever meet God again?
I wanna tell him I lightened up

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

The Hierophant stands stoic and looming at the alter,
He is Father, Patriarch, Divine Daddy,
Secondary mouth of God and arbiter of his will,
His hands are twin bridges offering you two choices:
Walk the path of obedience and you will be clean and holy eternal, golden armored against the beasts of this world, promised heir to the ever burning horizon of an infinite kingdom, you will be chosen and righteous, you will walk the verdant fields of bountiful harvest and reap your rewards from this life to the next,
Walk the path of strife, however, and you will become the heretic, pariah, enemy and other, outcast and tied to the stakes of the pious, scapegoat for the evil that dwells within, you will die a thousand martyred deaths before they lay your restless spirit to damnation,
As he stands before me, his face is at once reassuring and mocking,
He is my father, he is the president, he is the unknowable face of creator and absolute authority,
He says, boy, take the easy way out, it is the only chance you'll ever have
I don't know what it was that pushed me over the edge then,
Whether it was the midnights spent crossing myself in the Lord's Prayer out of sublime terror,
The smell of formaldehyde as the most pious woman I've ever known was returned to the dirt under a benediction,
Bruised knees, ****** knuckles, diagnosis or spite:
Regardless, I made my choice there,
I choose strife,
I choose the unending chaos,
I will walk this path to its end,
And when I meet my maker there,
I will tell him that it was worth it

And I get my head sorted out walking the block in the cool city rain, flowers pushing up through the cracks in chalk outlines, bones rattling all the way down Vine,
I’m thinking about home, about all the times we leave before we stay gone forever, about everybody who ever said a prayer for me in the dark of some bedroom, everything so quiet now, I can’t even hear the longing anymore,

And maybe that’s how it goes with things we love in the night, maybe they’ll all be post-it notes left on coffee tables in the harsh holy light of morning, stray paper in an endless archive of those who have forgotten,
and those who are forgetting,

And my blood hums softly in these rings of light, ready as always to become something else, sustenance to the ravenous hunger of another, something to pass the time,

And lord, I don’t mind,
Everybody’s gotta get by, after all,
Sedated by something, whether it’s a hand finding another hand across a crowded room,
Lips finding another set of libs beneath the glow of something neon and prophetic,
A few lines on the weekend,
An entire constellation of glass bottles, lined up on a countertop like condemned men waiting for a firing squad,

And yeah I’m still getting through it,
Doing better about it most nights at least,
But every now and then a howl will rise in my throat, some old curse come round again looking to get exorcised,
And ain’t nobody left around to show mercy now, the wind picks up, we talk all night in circles,

And she says,
Honey, it’s time to go home,
And I linger on the threshold,
Just long enough to watch the sun break over the rooftops,
And I give myself over, again,
To the terrible momentum of release

I chose an eternity of this,
Sunken eyes, deep divisions, stranglehold of memory and fondness, melancholy high, morning after in radio static chaos, nothingness with vividly painted imagery, something from nothing again and again,
I feel you in my chest, in all pockets of mind and body, like Siamese twins joined forever, I cried the day we were born and now I place bets on which of us will go first, me in my wrath, or you in your sorrow,
Your hands run up my back now, in the dark somewhere far away, cold lips on my cheek and hot hands around my throat,
You're asking me, what color I'll be buried in while I scream at the night,
Is it always like this?
Is it always like this?
You pull me into the floor,
I hold on and I sink,
I can't remember now, which one of us was holding the steering wheel,
Which one of us twisted the cap on the pill bottle,
Which one of us held the blade,
Which one us was nothing, who didn't need who anymore
Which one of us decided to destroy ourselves, in order to destroy the other
But I remember screaming,
I remember throwing my head back and releasing you into the air,
And asking you again,
Is it always like this?
Is it always like this?
I catch you on the comedown like we were trapeze artists,
I hold you close and you kiss me hard,
And you whisper,
It is always like this,
It is always like this

XIII-II. Death: The Sound and the Fury

I remember vividly losing the faith of my grandmother, I was standing holy as you like over my great grandmothers grave as they returned her to the Kentucky dirt that raised her, and my grandmother, one wrinkled hand clutching mine as if I were the reaper himself, the other wrapped so tightly around a bible I didn't know whose skin might split open first, hers or gods, and then I walked to the edge of the world and looked down, into a canopy of tree tops so dense no light could break through, so strong and so intertwined that neither man nor machine could pierce within, and when it began to rain there I lifted my scarred veins to heaven and I begged for absolution, I begged to be washed clean of sin and diagnosis and become pure, later, when my best friend plunged a needle into his veins for the first time I couldn't watch, I looked instead to that same Kentucky sky, I thought about how maybe God goes by a different name to everybody, I thought about how that sky must have looked to my grandfather as he charged across this land with horse and pistol and saber, and if he thought God meant freedom or a new empire of chains, when I look around here I think about all those people marching towards death all thinking they might be the one, the one to conquer time and become greater than, to live out eternity as the archetypal hero, the one who brings sunrise to an endless night and lifts the world up off its knees, I think about what the air must feel like to them as they die, thin and sharp and nostalgic, with the hint of a promise broken the last taste on their lips, and I want to visit each of their graves and ask them if it was worth it, if they had won or lost or if victory was an illusion made for fools and politicians, men of sound and fury, signifying nothing, and by the time I at last turn back towards my friend and open my mouth to tell him this, he is already gone, he is gone now and the land desolate - the sky holds no more hope than the soil here, and so I wonder when he started digging the grave they put him in, and I wonder too if I've begun digging yet, where they will lay me to rest, and when, but here I am with no one to ask so I wonder, I go on and I wonder

My generation is sick
Rotting inside long before the expiration date
Walking around like the dead men they saw on TV
Looking for God
Between the lines of a ****** romance novel
With some protagonist who teaches them that your life only matters
If somebody loves you
And dies a martyr
Or in some silver haired, silver tongued figure
Spewing second-hand reassurances that their anger is justified
And their voices will be heard
And a return to traditional values is coming
An open palm in the air, while the other itches to drop the bomb
Or on a tiny screen injecting radiation sickness directly to their brains
Mesmerized by idols dancing like marionettes on vile strings
Spewing filth and mindless drivel
Taught that ignorance is trending
Taught to hate by the hollow blonde shell of some Ubermensch
Recording himself vomiting obscenities for their amusement
Looking for God
Everywhere except the ******* heavens
Where shooting stars and celestial bodies
Pass endlessly through their periphery
Ignored, leaving a generation of wishes unfufilled
Buried under glittering detritus
Rotting to be accepted
Rotting to be trendy
Rotting while their parents give them the world
And they can't be bothered to glance upwards
Squandering fortunes on popular hedonism
Awash in a narcissistic sea
Where the lowliest wretch can gain more disciples than Jesus Christ
A generation of men
Devolved to beasts
Who will pounce at the smallest hint of exposed flesh
And cry out injustice because the prey asked to be devoured
Who will equate chivalry with chemical imbalance
Tattooing false hearts on their sleeves
On their knees begging to be loved
& A generation of women
Content to be objectified
And content to objectify themselves
Hearts bleeding for the plights of the lowly
& beautifully, blissfully blind to their own
The harlots & the sinners
Projected larger than life into the subconscious of
Children with no larger ambition
To sacrifice themselves, and be reborn a cheap photo copy
Full of style and confidence, and devoid of essence
Angels that burn like neon lights
Extinguished quickly, to lie dark and dormant forever
Hell is full to bursting
With all the souls sold for social media
& a forged prescription for Adderall
The madmen are the brave ones
Howling at the sky
That none of this means anything
And none of it is okay
Howling for some ******* reason
Howling for some ******* peace
Howling because nothing else makes any ******* sense
Our society's ship is anchored
And still the current drags us back
Endlessly, and forward again
Repeating history
And our Captain is dead, we've murdered Him ourselves
And of his flesh we made a feast
Of praise and adoration
For the blind, the deaf, & the decaying
And there will be no bleeding hearts
And there will be no expanded minds
And there will be no saviors
And there will be no promised tomorrow
The once glorious future is a funeral pyre
Our ancestral utopia is a ruin
Spray pained red white & blue
Littered with the corpses of the ones who died believing
There's nowhere left to conquer
There's nowhere left to run
There's no room in this Hell
& There's no room in the next
Only the madmen remain
Howling at the sky
Asking God where the **** he's gone
And the heavens shall remain silent

Fever induced haze stole the dreams from the onset of sleep
Turned them to cigarettes lit at the gas pump
And indignation down both ends of the street
The first day we ran like bats out of Hell
The next we collapsed entirely
Swallowed by the Little Miami, ending up somewhere new
Like we planned it all along
All eyes averted as the calender hung itself
For the last time, and cried for November the twenty fourth
But the time stamped behind our eyes remained
Deep December year round
No fire came from the skies to melt the lonely West like the preacher told us
But we'd stopped listening long ago
So who knows how the speech ended, or if it just trailed off in tepid resignation
I suppose we could always just wait for the world to melt itself instead

Omens,
Warning signs and aching bones,
Dark clouds and distant thunder,
The house will fall tonight and take me with it,
Spill me into the street to wash away come rain,
I sit at the table, watching cracks form in the ceiling over bowed heads and quiet contemplation,
I feel myself lifted from the floor,
I am formless in the living room, transcribing conversations to my skin in dead languages, my body a desecrated temple of hieroglyphics nobody can read,
I am breathless in the bedroom, feeling the heat of passion on my skin and absorbing none of it, fault lines manifesting under my fingernails as I sink into someone else's tragedy,
I am weightless on the porch, dreaming of one day being swallowed by something monstrous enough to have me, swallowed by something monstrous enough to profane the sky with its arrogance and come out the other side steel, unbreakable, sharp and remorseless,
When I return to my body I am deathless - I am the unwelcome traveler of worlds, a ghost haunting my own life, these friends and lovers have been host to a parasite, a restless thing of no shape and no blood of its own,
I resolve to surrender to the coming storm,
As I rise, they fall one by one,
My brothers to their pride,
My friends to their rage,
My lovers to their desperation,
And as I walk out into the street, I am caught by flashes of lightning and moonlight, and I turn back to watch the house crumble, brick by brick, into the lonesome fog of forgetting

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

Waking up from catatonic states
In another catatonic state
Held aloft by razor wires
Attached at the arms, the legs
The back of the head
I float through acid clouds
Mingling with the ghosts
Of the maniacs who hit the gas and drove off the overpass, their screaming families in the back seat
Of the maniacs who overdosed searching for the American Dream in a cheap hotel room
Of the maniacs who put guns in their mouths and blew the demons out the back of their skulls
I am surrounded by maniacs
God, America looks beautiful from above
The city lights like fields of stars and planets
But this planet is foreign to me up here
America, I am a ******* alien
America, you are a ***** beneath me now
Gliding o'er all
Gliding o'er the blind, the deaf, and the decaying
But America, could you be beautiful?
Could some of the wretches below
Truly lift their mad gaze to the heavens
And cry out
"God is dead, but we can rebuild him!
We have burned down all the mega churches and TV prophets
And we have built our own churches in ourselves,
Wild temples where love and beauty still hold power over ignorance and hate!
We haven't given up on you, America!"
And Hallelujah, their cries came to my ears
In the ******* loveliest melody
I descend from on high, to better observe what I have heard
And oh, what a sight
I see a generation that is sick
I see a generation that is rotting
But I also see a generation that is growing
I see a generation rising like a tide
With flowers growing strong in their bones and fire burning rampant in their hearts
The devil and God are raging inside all of us
In all of us are Nazis and cannibals and politicians
But we are all ******* heroes
And we are all ******* Gods
And we are all ******* saviors
And we are not all ******* lost
So God bless you, America
I've never felt so alive
So God bless you, America
I will howl no more at the sky
So God bless you, America
Dearly departed no longer will I be
So God bless you, America
You've finally set me free
I will find my broken body
I will make myself whole
I'll be your hero, America
I'll pave your streets with ******* gold
Again I feel my chest begin to pound
And the old ache sets in my bones
I'm wide awake, it's morning
And it is the most ******* beautiful day I have ever seen

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

The bat is still gone from the bell tower
Was it really ever even there?
Is this bat symbolic of some long silent God?
Or the silhouette of a real ******* monster
Skulking down the sidewalks and alleyways of my demented subconscious?
And just where the **** has it gone?
Does it streak high above on sunless skies
Screeching its demonic secrets to drown out the roar of ceremonial rockets
Shuttling the newly ****** & departed across the river Styx?
Or does it hang inverted from stalactites in the tomb of some long surrendered ideology
Filled with no riches or spectral guardians
Only this ******* bat to stand sinister vigil?
Is it something sinister or something sacred?
Or is it just a ******* bat?
Am I just filling in empty spaces with sub-par symbolism and psychosomatic horrors?
Hell, I'll probably never know
All I know is that the bell keeps tolling
Whether there is something there or not
And I think it's gonna drive me insane

It hit me like a nuclear war
While she was on the floor, with her voice rolling down the walls
And her sickly sweet blood dripping from the ceiling
Her hair is a supernova, and her eyes are the Big Bang
Setting off infinite unseen particles on an atmospheric trajectory in to the widening gyre of my consciousness
I cannot contain it any more than I could put a leash on the sun
I am the new original sin, and I'll **** humankind to their home made Hell with a smile on my face
Paradise is right outside of my periphery  and I could not care less
She is queen of beast in a dream kingdom
A howling nightmare for the pure of heart and the porcelain of skin
She is love that rips flesh from bones and I laugh as she consumes me
I'm surrounded by fangs on all sides and bathed in brilliant radiation
My body is dead but my brain is alive
With electric currents coursing through kerosene veins
And gravity bows in horrified awe
As I rocket upwards through subspace shattering the speed of light
Shattering the walls of sanity & safety
Unleashing celestial leviathans in to the screaming maw of the universe
I shed my skin light years ago
No longer am I human
No longer am I made in God's image
She is queen of beasts and I will be her king and in my kingdom I will need salvation no longer

As a child in a church pew I would study the ceiling, anxiously looking for cracks,
My grandma would always tell me,
"The way these people act, in God's own house, is shameful,
One day He's gonna tear the roof right off this place"
I took that **** seriously,
I waited for fault lines to manifest in the stained glass, shatter, rain down shards of divinity to slice my sinful body to pieces,
I never let that feeling go, that inevitable collapse,
So when I saw it happen for real I knew that a prophecy got fulfilled that night two years ago in Orlando,
An electric heaven filled to the brim with bodies performing the act of holiness the only way they knew how,
Pressed against each other in testimony, a sacrament of blood and sweat and love that knows no forgiveness or need thereof,  
And then, the ceiling caves in just like we always knew it would,
To be young, and queer, and uncertain,
Is to be a church that is always collapsing,
A home that is always burning,
And a heart that is literally, always bleeding
We are all out here,
We are all dying inside of this machine,
By the time I knew I could be in love with another boy, he was already dead, six feet beneath Kentucky dirt and ain't nothing left in the sky after that y'all,
Nobody comes to mourn for feelings like that, I guess,
There's only so much room round here for caskets, only so much dirt left unsoiled that we can plow our sorrows into,
And what could possibly come of this, yet?
What will they bury us with when this country has devoured it's fill of us?
And, will we have a church to return to when this is over?
Somewhere bright, where our fathers can still look us in the eyes?
Somewhere everyone we've ever been afraid to love is, in their best clothes and looking to share a dance?
Somewhere the foundations shake with the force of our hymns,
Our songs, sweet and holy and entirely ours,
Rock the doors and shake the windows,
Wake the dead to come dance their pain back into living,
And the roof, y'all,
The roof there never gives in

Wide awake, hyperreal,
Drifting in and out and back, daze of dopamine and clouds of smoke curled up in your fingers and around your neck,
I can't help myself,
Cross myself beneath a bloodred sky, seven times for each sea and continent,
Close my eyes and I disappear into the space, I become formless and liquid and I dance across the room in perfect repose,
I solidify somewhere in your shadow, nervous silhouette naked against an electric backdrop, become tangled up in the nuclear fusion of a kiss, tongues tracing bones and bones buzzing hallelujahs for the street lamps to fall asleep to,
Heavy daze, marijuana moonlight, thick as liquor dripping down my neck just like, just like, just like honey, honey, what strong teeth you have,
You're hyperreal in this light,
I can taste your battery acid veins from here,
Like sweat and wine and fragrance,
Sweet energy, sugar cane,
Dreams and cosmic visions,
Starlight, starlight, come into me
Fill this space and ignite this body,
Listen to the sky, they're playing our song,
Shoot me again cause my soul is still dancing,
I lean close, heat and static,
I whisper in your ear,
All that is solid melts into air,
All that is holy is profaned,
Let us desecrate this earth,
Let us bring gods to tears

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

sometimes death is biblical and sometimes it is quiet

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

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

The valley is flooded and the filth laid bare
Crawl out from the shipwreck of your distorted ideology
And submit yourself to the judgement of the crown
With black x's etched deep in your skin
And knuckles ****** from self righteous vindication
March on to sew senseless violence
Goose stepping in time to drums of war
Played by misinterpreted ghosts of revolutions laid to rest
My boy, you wear the *******!
A threat too minor to register, pounding your chest and crying wolf to disinterested sheep
Reading the bible from outside the church through cracks in the stained glass
And you remembered half the Commandments, that should save you from Hell right?
Son of the North, America holds no refuge for your weary soul
Drop your bombs, wage your wars
Chemicals will flow on endlessly after your blood has stopped
And your ignorance will leave your grave unmarked

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

Blessed are we who have fallen from The Tower
Blessed are we
Scraping fingernails ****** on the glass ceiling,
Licking at the heels of heroes with broken knuckles who tried to bust through to heaven,
Burning sage for the sake of all the dead spirits waiting around to come alive,
Contemplating reality through thick rimmed glasses wreathed in flame,
Counting credit card taps on tables while buzzing out of fragile bones for the next high,
Sleeping half awake in dreams of red wine and brighter futures,
Hallucinating city lights on balconies in a gin soaked haze of grandeur,
Holding out for wayward outcast brothers and sisters to come by and hear us preach revolution,
Selling burdens in parking lots for the price of a pack of cigarettes and a ride home,
Sobbing on strangers shoulders on Greyhound bus rides to ruin,
Offering confessions at the feet of angels we couldn't begin to understand but loved regardless,
Zigzagging through tree lines on another half drunk run from the police,
Searching for Thomas Wolfe's spirit in boxcars and jazz records and visions of once romantic America,
Cutting deep in to the veins of holy purpose to stain canvasses until they resemble dreams,
Climbing bridges to taste the salt in the air and violent change on the wind,
Breaking into cars to search for an escape from our fathers' rage,
Painting nails black as we pick poems from every strand of young girls hair, trying to remember to feel blessed to have the privilege of so much feeling,
Coming home wreathed in the laurels of our stories, to be met with roared laughter from friends and vacant stares from our parents,
Picking flowers to sweeten the smiles of lovers with the only beautiful things that do not come from our own hearts,
Talking all night in circles until the cops come by to remind us of the world we live in,
Smoking *** on nights we want nothing more than to recapture the feelings we lost, and drift away in a fog of some old glory
Falling in love with rivers and the people we associate with our memories, working up the nerve to kiss them under streetlights in driveways where birds sing too early,
Forgetting the phone numbers of the people we used to call every full moon,
Leaving messages on the walls hoping someday someone will come by and comprehend the nature of the disease,
Tasting death on our birthdays and throwing up the sins of years past, comforted by the sins of years to come,
Shooting for the stars from the hip and blowing violent holes in the roofs of the places we called home instead,
Living indefinitely in the crawl spaces between endless Purgatory cycles of rise and relapse,
Blessed are we sleeping restless in the suburbs,
Testifying to the suffering in Dayton,
Swimming strung out through the Cincinnati streets,
Robbed blind in Columbus,
Hoping to leave Louisville fast enough before our ghosts drag us home,
Erasing memories of Lexington by way of moonshine and therapy,
Praying the South  might take us back if we just said we were sorry
Blessed are we who have fallen from The Tower,
Blessed are we who still have so much farther to fall

I, the capitalist war machine,
I, the magnificent static,
I, the bomb shelter peace,
I, the twenty four hour news cycle, the rise, the relapse, the detox, the retox, the crucifixion, the rebirth, the disgrace, the continuation of the theme repeating ad nausea towards annihilation,
I, the caged ******,
I, the black boy bleeding to death,
I, the rioters in the street,
I, the Wall Street gallows,
I, the old money militia,
I, the yuppie **** appropriating culture from the scraps of endless genocide,
I, the shock value mockeries of conventional moralities dumbed down to be digested,
I, the blood spilled on sacrificial altars on holy ground,
I, the celestial body ignored, passing back and forth endlessly through peripheral visions,
I, the madman howling at the moon for some ******* peace and quiet
I, the pill popping siren choking on adoration,
I, the mass hallucination shared and reshared till it loses all meaning,
I, the Pantheon collapsed,
The downfall broadcast,
The television unplugged and still playing,
I, the crushing realization,
The devastating grip of ruinous apathy,
The movement monetized,
The victory shallow,
I have built this tomb with my own hands,
I have changed the channel one too many times,
I have let this consume me
I am guilty
You are no better
Lie still
Let it consume you

THE REAGANS KILLED MY BEST FRIEND

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

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

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

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

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

Now for the poem, let me be worthy
Let me roar and shake and rattle and tear the roof off the conscience
Let it rip me apart and bare my broken ribcage to the abyss unafraid
Let me fill with fire and speak the voice of the Divine, let the human experience be made lucid and the soul of the devil cleansed
Hold still in my Hallelujah visions perfectly captured Polaroids of the spirit, the fevered music that vibrates palpable through the air
Hold me to the standards of the giants upon whose shoulders i stand
And let the ones I love know that I am with them, stronger than any power empathy could provide
We are deities all and stitched from the same grace
This is for Clarity, for Jacob, maybe even the Prodigal Son
With tears in my eyes I submit to your mercy, baptize me in the electric current of a decade long cold war
Let us destroy and rebuild and create a new world to hold dear
Decorate it with the shavings of suns spent and discarded endlessly on repeat
Let us be the gods we see etched into our irises
Let us be the ones who write doom on the walls
Who else could we ******* be?
We are the same, irrevocably
It's on and we can't turn it off and so we'll push the limits until it all burns out

I am the truth,
The way,
The light,
One day I will prove this to you,
I will weave this world into mythology, watching from high as the golden strands of my hair reach down and wrap around everything, bringing it within me and me within it, I will grow brighter this way, I will grow so bright that I will blind you when you try to come close, I will rise unstoppable through the ceiling into the sky, I will float to that place in heaven where all my memories are and I will lather my body in them, I will be a mural depicting the greatest triumph this world has ever seen, stretching from Olympus to Venus, daring the sun to set on me, daring you to turn the page and move on to another story of vanity and power, and you, inevitably, do,
We all know what happens to Icarus in this one, we always know that at the end of this there is fire, then water, and then nothing,
There is a tragedy in all of us,
The one in which we die a thousand deaths, and one, before we know for sure whether or not we were worth it all along,
The one in which we never get any closure,
The one in which we grow so big,
So vast and untamable,
So bright and so holy,
That when something bigger, and crueler, comes along to crush us back into the Earth,
We forget how to teach ourselves to burn again,
So when I bury my pride,
I will ask you, voice shaking,
For a light,
For the way,
For the truth,
And when you give it to me, I will know what it means to be grateful, to be nothing, in the arms of eternity where I am small, and human, and alive, and imperfect, and in those faults I will at last know myself, and when we meet properly for the first time I will tell him,
"The fall is beautiful,
But down here,
You can see everything so much clearer"

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

I 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

People I only knew in passing-
Lovers on a hotel bed, lost in the feeling of controlled chaos, ******* until the sun signals surrender, the stars burning holes in their memories that cannot be pieced together again,
Brothers in different hospital rooms, two halves of one whole engine praying for a spark, to be able to stand on ones own, IV drips trickling down dreams of a brighter morning to collapsed veins and broken synapses,
Sisters in opposing time zones, living out play acted scripts of the same drama in various adaptations, the first act the divine comedy, the second act the hellish tragedy, we all tend to fall somewhere in the middle with these types of things
I don't know where I fit into any of this
I once thought I could piece together the story from the fragments I am left with,
But they're nothing more than points in a vague interest, clean surfaces for drugs, nothing to write home about
Have you gotten thinner? Has your hair gotten longer? Have you slept recently? Have you left your house today? How long has it been? How many cigarettes? How many inches of rain? How many sunsets? How many phases of the moon? The last time you spoke to a ghost what did he say? Did he mention me?
I am living seance, forcing questions into spaces they have no business,
My art is the hand that murdered Absalom, the hand that cuts the lines of pills, the hand that slits the throat of the hydrogen future
The cool, slick ******* sitting wide eyed and high in supernatural pretense, in eternal condemnation of the enemy,
Don't you know if you're broke and suicidal you can just blame it on the alignment of the planets?
It could all be so easy

I hear the rain
From where I lay
     The filth ran off the surface and seeped into the soil
     In this way things are never truly cleansed
All the planets at once aligned
Save lovely Venus, who spun out into the black
      To dance with the ghosts of the hundreds of dead moons crumpled up and discarded
The swords of angels cauterize the crying wounds of nature
      And a ****** of crows descends on the Great Plains
      The last buffalo roared to shake Heaven and raised Hell instead
Of mountains that sighed and rivers that fed
    Mortal men shrugged at the meaning of intimacy
    21 revolutions around a singular moment, and clarity still escapes
Lie still and the sun will swallow you whole,
      If the Earth won't open up first
To **** and be killed is a dear privilege
But still there were vagrants up North, and 'round trash can fires the cities heard them sing
Father to brother to son
    Mother to sister to daughter
        Lover to loved to nothing at all
And nobody to wait out the night
Even the rain is unmoved

Heads swimming, tail lights spinning out on back roads, heels ablaze, daze of feeling and complexity - context that governs harshly, danger that waits, disease that lingers, hides in hair and clothes and bedrooms and comes out to watch you sleep, eyes behind glass, whispers in the dark, so slow it hurts,
Strangers in passing, lovers in waiting, stoners and liars and thieves,
I didn't know what to make of this then, ghosts of autumn haunting cell block courtyards haunt minds mismanaged and clouds of smoke, dangerous things that live here and don't pay rent,
5 chimes on a bell tower,
5 warning signs for 5 years,
5 roads traffic jammed to 5 kids funerals dead this year from 5 needles, one pricked vein is all it takes to collapse an empire of ego,
I remember when there was good in their eyes, now all I can think of is how fast I can drive home without falling apart on another highway,
Something is better than nothing I say,
Lured back to that place by the smell of something sweet, see, that's my problem,
I get too close, I bite in before I've taken the necessary precautions, I just can't resist the scent,
I catch my eyes in the rear view, leaned back and hazy with nostalgia,
You can't stay bitter forever,
You can't stay angry forever,
You can't stay here forever,
One time is all it takes, one perfect try,
So here I am again, dwelling on the threshold,
Asking the people inside if they know any good songs while they tie the rope they've been saving for me,
And if there will be light left in the sky on the other side of this,
Cause from where I'm standing, the night ain't slowing down for nobody

I.
The Plea

Dearest philosopher, circling your gaze round the sun
Grow you not weary?
In celestial bodies of constant revolution and esoteric motivation your passions lie
Invisible to your yearning eyes,
These things which are your blood be they not also your bane?
Grow you not bitter? Grow you not jaded or deranged?
Even now, hear the apothecary as he calls your name
He speaks, his voice in shambles, and says
"Come, oh dear philosopher!
Many jars have I gathered here, many substances contained
Infinite combinations are possible!
Tell me, friend, for you are my last and best of hope, how can I combine them to thwart the stalwart and unfeeling advance of death?"
And at this look you now to Heaven, dear philosopher?
What in the stars could move you to speak?
Grow you not sullen, defeated or weak?
Where comes your strength in your belief?
Listen now! For the mother is on the rooftop
And hear how she cries for your attention
"Oh dear philosopher, of your aid I am most in need!
For my only son has died, and indeed
My womb is bare as the rooms of my house
And so I beseech you,
My angel, my fate is for you to allow
How may I speak to my boy again?
With your help, may he yet live?"
Speak to her friend, but first speak now to me
Speak fast and speak true for time is short
I stand here on the edge of the Earth
And with these voices I raise my own
Dear philosopher, for my sins how may I atone?
My dear, dear philosopher
Tell me now and waste no breath
How can I make this life worthy of death?

Something is alive here,
Something is begging, something is clawing its way kicking and screaming and biting and gnashing it's way into becoming, suffering the thousand sharpened teeth of transition just to know what it means to feel as though as it definitively is, rather than is not, rather than in between,

Father, I am sinking
Mother, I am coming through the floorboards
Brother, I have abandoned you

******* away eternities on porches and defying the skies of childhood, I saw you, red faced and vicious, a shadow sick of living in contrast, you yearn to be free, to shake your context and exist for the sole purpose of your own continuation, like paintings on the walls and objects in space, you crave the weightlessness, totality of purpose, absence of justification or need, divine freedom that kills the divine and births a new path


Walk this with me,
Stranger, lover, friend
We will know what it means to be unified,
Unbreakable will of the collective soul,
We will be human,
We will be grateful,
And we will be more

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

I.
I saw you in a fever dream,
Your ribcage grown sharp and your heart bleeding, you were contorting into unfathomable shapes while something droned on the radio into total oblivion, you told me that you remembered, about how all any of us know how to desire is our own absence, freedom from concern in a total collapse of context, how beautiful you looked to me then, light straining to reach you through all that space, all that time on the other side warped your head into a gladiator arena and you shadow boxed with your father there every night, some nights when nothing plays through the speakers but static I can hear you still begging for mercy but, I can't be bothered to sort out who deserves what anymore, not while the streets still burn and the sky swallows itself whole, yes, I remember now, I remember everything

II.
You and I are one,
We are only as real as our memory, and once we have forgotten this so too will we be forgotten,
I cannot separate myself from you,
I can only judge myself by relation,
Some days this anchors me, grounds me in a definitive state of being and presence,
Some days it sends me spiraling, careening wildly over the edge into abysses I can't hope to perceive entirely,
Most days it is all I have - that connection,
A tether to a fixed point, from which we can waltz eternally together as the moon discards her changing skins, the sun weeps blazing tears of guilt, and the world crumples and fades around us like so many unused sketches in a notebook,
When the music stops, we will fall where we stand, but until then we dance

III.
In visions I rise from the machinery of a home and into the wild night,
Explosive and immaterial, on a collision course with all the heavenly bodies of wanting,
Cataclysmic chain reactions and massive shifts,
Humbling change and mystic power,
I became dangerous when I realized I already possessed all the weapons I could ever need,
And I went to war just to prove I could win

IV.
I have been the Magician, uncertain brilliance channeled into futile cycles of rise and relapse,
I have traded tongues with the Devil, promising freedom in exchange for empty fates,
I have defied the Hierophant, walked the path of strife to the edge of the Earth and ****** off into the void
I have fallen from the Tower, broken my crown on the rock faces of total loss and returned ever the more vicious,
I walk now in the light of the Star, certain only in my own electric possibility,
I walk now with my hands intertwined like the Lovers, into the dark to illuminate whatever awaits and burn it clean

V.
You and I walk together in the night, across the vivid dreamscape of a world historic stage, our skin opalescent and shining,
The sky sings of Providence and the dirt remembers spring,
When next we decide to plant our monuments into it,
We would do well to remember the taste of gratitude after a bitter harvest,
When we bite into the first fruit to reach our lips unspoiled and sweet,
We will cry, a healing rain that falls all over this land,
And something will grow there,
Something beautiful and everlasting,
And it will be ours,
And we will find peace in it,
And until then,
We will tend to the flowers of this world, and dream of a new and glorious one,
It is the least we can do

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sweet dreams, milk, just like honey, ashes, lipstick, ever growing haze of marijuana smoke, violins swell, hallelujah chorus, gospel singers in a session band, guitars with distortion pedals, flower petals left as reminders on passenger seats, getting comfortable on hardwood floors, kissing through the night into the sunrise, clothes arranged on floors like exhibits in museums, pages of grandmothers bibles, hearts double time kick drums beating blood back to cold limbs, trauma sewn into denim like warning signs, cars left running, grass stains on backs, hands clasped tight around a moment, dogs howling, pale skin bruised golden by teeth, blood fresh on hands and tongues, I love yous spoken in triplets, words that never rhyme, reflections on themes, reflections on nights spent in awe, beauty as viewed through fogged glasses, present and future tense love, sweet dreams, milk, just like honey

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

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

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