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

I'm a slave to my hair, my hair is a construct of ego, ego is a construct of superego, superego is a construct of id and id begs for release -
Water and space and light and room to live free from context, ravenous and unsatisfied, I reach stalemate on the come up and surrender unconditionally on the comedown, I'm getting sick I'm getting sick I belong in jail, I belong in an elsewhere that never manifests except in the moments half awake between waves of sleep and dreams, and waking light on skin I can't recognize, did Christ recognize his own skin on the cedar? Could he tell his body was holy slick with blood and the lashes of whips and nails driven deep into hands? Could he be honest about his situation then, and if not, who among us can be honest? Who among us has not sunk our teeth into something unreal and sweet? I want this, I crave this kind of waste, shot up with suicides and Americana, what is more American than apathy? Don't you agree? Don't you see you're just like me? I want a new way, I want pure energy. I want something so raw it bleeds in my hands. I want distant shorelines and lines of demarcation and I want to run full speed into something all night and never get there, aesthetic and substance, fighting for power over two guitars and a drum beat and a voice, droning out platitudes about forgiveness and an abstract sense of love, I don't resist anything in this way but rather become submerged in it, allow it to roll and crash over me as long as my breath holds, fire a rifle at the sun and call it a small victory but phyrric because it took more out of me than I'm willing to admit, and for nothing,
I'm coming unstuck, America you're coming unstuck with me, I address you as judge and jury and executioner when we both know I am guilty too, I deserve that mercy seat as much as you and I can't look you in the eyes anymore because we look too much alike, who pulled the trigger, who gave the order, who payed the taxes, is this blood on my hands? We've both built our egos on an idea of beauty that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, but the clinic is all full up tonight run those tests tomorrow, find out where it went wrong and smother it

Take the poet out of the voice, what is left?
What happens when we force honesty for qualitative judgement?
What happens to an art form when we force it to dance for us?
What does it become?
Is this a process of bastardization or a fulfillment of prophecy?
Take the poet out of the poem, what remains?
I want to know if this will outlive us, if we became Prometheus martyrs for something or nothing, or a story on someone else's walls, in someone else's heart, in something not so easily killed,
Or are we jerking off into a void? And if so, is that wrong if it works? What price is too high for honesty of expression? How much is too much?
This pen wants to die,
This notebook wants to die,
What have I done to them?

The pretense died at the foot of the stairs
On the flip side of where I stood in awe
Between ***** glass and an impenetrable divide
Locked out in the cold with the devil's company and my last few cigarettes
I close my eyes as I inhale because I can already feel him grinning at me
I know he thinks he's helping, but he's ******* everything up

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

Elegy for a life of war,
21 guns of Brixton firing an all night salute, the bitter irony not lost on anybody, as the very last gang in town tucks switchblades back into leather jacket pockets and decides that violence just can't pay the bills anymore, our brothers and our sisters and our fathers and our mothers will be expecting us home and we will carry our scars back to them with pride, we will talk about this fight for the rest of our lives, where we went wrong and where we really made the ******* feel it, and maybe one day we can win, but we have lost so much blood we owe ourselves a night of sleep at least, in the morning we will be powerful, we will be crass, we will be unstoppable, we will light cigarettes as the flames engulf London and creep across the Atlantic to tickle American nightmares, we will watch all the young punks in their new boots line up itching for the damage and the energy, we will kiss them each and every one as we send them off to die for the cause
I heard your rallying cry coming through the radio when I was a kid, and I want you to know that I will be ready any time you call, and I will come armed to the teeth
And Joe, when the riot comes, I will save you a place among the chaos

And I know, or at least,
As much as I can hope to know,
What you must have thought of me, then,

Wasted on pretense with all your illusions dispelled, you watched from high above the world as a country devoured itself, and it was like all at once,
It all became real for you,

As the skies burned,
the streets grew teeth,
the police bullets fell,
the infernal jackboots of the great fascist Other pressed against your door,
And kicked,
And kicked,

And you thought this would be it,
That hell had finally come to collect on all that which you owed,

And I know, because I was there too,
I, like you, am afraid here,
And I, like you, haven’t known peace since that night,

But you, desperate,
Looking for a martyr,
Found nothing to blame it on but me,
And your eyes,
My own brother’s eyes,
Found nothing in mine but blood,

The deep, irreconcilable blood of a whitewashed history,
Misrepresented context,
The propaganda of hegemony,

And I let you go on,
I let you make me whatever kind of monster you needed me to be,
I knew then, as I do now,
How badly you needed to feel once again like you were in control,
That your enemy was small, and laid exposed in front of you,
Begging to be destroyed,

Brother,
I know now that you are gone,
But even through this,
This impossible distance,
I cannot apologize to you,

Brother,
Mine was never the path of reconciliation,
I chose the path of strife I knew you could never follow,

I don’t believe we’re going to talk our way
Out of this,
Or anything else,

I don’t have faith in the system which gave birth to this,
This endless parade of monsters,
To save us from them,

Brother,
If you need me,
I will be in the darkness with you,
Not clinging to it’s walls,
But trying, with every beat of my still living heart,
To tear them down,
So that the light may come in,

Brother,
Until that day comes,
I will keep a candle lit for you,

And when it doesn’t,
You can tell me I was wrong,
And I’ll reply,
At least I died trying

I am a revolutionary

And you are a revolution

We collide because we must
We cannot help our own velocity

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

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

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

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

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

I ignite something holy and inhale, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive and everything else is dead,
Everything that was truth is speculation now,
I trace the patterns in my premonitions and lose the math, equivalence, exchange, endless abstractions and animated characters, a full reset, a new era of movement,

It comes in waves, gnawing at the edges, only what is real is holy and it’s breaking through the walls, begging for a seat at the table,

I open my mouth and it all comes back to me, I’ve been asking god all the wrong questions,

Love, carve out a place to exist through me, I am transparent and constantly shifting phases, I’m real enough for now, I’ll be smoke by the wedding, look for me where the spinning stops, look for me
where nothing else remains,

Greater powers, leviathans of divine purpose I love you, I love the way I surrender to this, something impossibly large and revelatory,
how sweet it is to know that
none of this was ever in my control,

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

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

Strangers in the cold, maneuvering the night and its labyrinth of nostalgia traps,
The holy ground of memory,
I remember, I remember when everything was so,
Underwater,

I was somebody else’s ghost, crybaby angel of death, corner booth of the donut shop two minutes past the clock tick of the witching hour, I’m feeling the heat,
Electricity jumps from neon sign to stainless steel countertop to the back of my throat and I swallow premonition
after premonition,
until my hands tightrope walk over blacktop abyss of their own volition and the floor,
just drops out,

I’m spiraling again, getting ****** up on the collapse trip,
I’m afraid to desperation and I don’t have the drugs to sort it out,
I don’t know how to tell you what is wrong because I can’t even explain it to my dreams,

and sleep hangs heavy like the shadow of the gallows, my caged ****** blood sings to me of electroshock nooses and I’ve got this entire genealogy of disappearing and I know I have to run,
I have to run and keep running and only my body remembers why

Azrael Azrael sweet angel death, send your body unto me, let me partake of ritual and rise, flawless and enraptured, into burning sky and hysteria

Pink haired staccato speech acid tripped tongues and twisted mouths you were conflicted, you were conflicted you were and then you weren't

Fallout of frat house suicide party remixed to ****** birth, holy degradation raise your weak and trembling wrists and want for more

Opiod mass epidemic and rising real estate costs, everybody wants a ride on the wheel until it drops off and takes everything in the periphery with it

I'm singing, I'm singing Mary mother dear Mary, will you come to reclaim me, I have waited here forever for a sign

Can you feel this, lover?
I am your death mask
I am your ghost and I speak through you
Kiss me hard with your open Judas mouth
Pray forgiveness into me
Cauterize me
**** me like an open wound
*** into oblivion and never wash your hands again

I am vessel
Open mouth begging hands
Drain into me so I may exist

Empty spaces in childhood bedrooms,
Abscess of feeling **** of spirit
Pure ******* energy
Siren call of the solipsists and the narcissists and the junkies at the church and the poets at the bar and the once sacred twice ****** ego
Nihilist **** and surrealist *****
Somebody has to clean up all this mess

Hit a last high and coast down, come together, shatter
Natural symmetry of becoming and unbecoming
We are working towards an end we will never see

But I can almost feel it coming, yes
I can feel it rise
Christlike and bleeding from the tomb of want,
Raise me, raise me,
Sanctify and cure
Strip me to naked soul ******, light
Light, heat, beginning, beginning,
Send me higher
Send me infinite and screaming into a moment, world historic and vicious, let me emerge ****** but alive, steel and gunpowder

Take me in all my pieces,
Ash tongue to golden hair,
Magician to magic,
Life to death to back again,
Take me by my cinder burning hands,
and teach them how to explode

The alchemy of liberation,
a violent restructuring of the self, upheaval of desire and history

We speak truth in the lexica of negation, subjugate our demons and project them onto the sky, phantasmagoria of dreams and nightmares, visions, fetish, reality consumption,
And this, too, is a god state, an architect of *******,
altered chemistry and planes of being,
Assuming total control over synapse and viscera, sublimation of cells and holy organs,
Feed the burning engines of will and achieve a greater porosity, togetherness,
Free flowing energy between bodies and burdens, from hearts to hands to fists,
Passed down generationally through endless struggle,

Ghosts of a zeitgeist,
spirits of spirits,
hang restless like guillotine blades thirsting the flesh of something weak and divine, to be profaned, chewed up and spat out into the grinding wheel of industry,
god machine reaping soul machine,
conscious machine chaining freedom machine, naturally occurring fascism of the mind

Place your hands on our everburning turbines and turn your face towards brilliance,
Unsurrender hell, be carried to purpose on the shoulders of devils who once enslaved you

Forge in the crucible of uprising, a new identity, of steel and bomb shell casing,
A new language, born of rope, instinct, survival

Enter the twisting vortex of feeling and emerge as your own father, with all the trauma and fresh pressed suits that implies

Melt down that which oppresses to its base elements,
fear, rage, alienation, loss, want
transmute them into air to breathe,
water to drink,
earth to build,
fire to warm,
or gold to share,
In this way we shall grow rich off that which once killed us,

Make your misery a hammer,
And set to the work of reconstruction

Who did they name savior,
At the ****** church and was it,
Your father, priest of desire and,
Fulfillment, how he scratched,
Every itch the neighborhood ever,
Felt and they built altars on every,
Street corner in south Louisville where they,
Still got stigmata, they still drink the blood and,
Pray bowed heads into the wind,
The last party I saw you,
Break your body into pieces and,
Nobody went hungry that night,
Not like they been starving every night since,
In the light of cold morning you were,
Crucified a martyr, and nobody knew,
How to dig the nails out,
But you did, three days later,
You got down off that cross, and you said,
I did this all for you, and that no tomb,
Ever built of stone or marble,
Could hope to hold all the light,
Burning through your veins,
And this is how I first,
Learned of the art of resurrection,
The congregation named you a heretic,
But I know by now,
The difference between a parlor trick,
And a miracle,
I saw you,
Rise from the grave, and into the sky,
So I’m lighting candles in a,
Deep midnight mass, waiting for a,
Rapture, or another resurrection,
All I want to ask is,
How you did it, and if there is a place,
Somewhere beyond heaven,
Where we are free of death,
Where finally we might,
Laugh, and mean it,
Where we shed our mortal skin, and become,
At last, a hallelujah that never ends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I come before you,
As nothing in particular,
A great and tangled mass of feeling and want,
Something undefinable and abstract,
A question you can't answer,
I can't answer,
I know what you want it to mean,
And I don't know how to be that,
I only know how to be other,
I only know how to be outside,
A box you hesitate before checking,
A few seconds of doubt before you fall asleep,
I am a living Rorschach test,
What do you see here?
Something with weak wrists and skinny legs,
Too much hair and not enough ****,
All stomach, no guts,
Too much expression and not enough substance,
All mirror, no heart,
Some days, I'm a field of your mothers favorite flowers, sweet and delicate and light,
Some days, I'm your father's rifle, cold and brutal and everything you were ever right to fear,
The truth is, I can't tell you what I'm made of today,
I can only tell you that whatever you're thinking is wrong,
Today I am too much energy and not enough direction,
Today I am certain only in uncertainty
Today I will look in the mirror and I will see no damage,
No man, no woman,
No father, mother
Son, daughter
Husband, wife
I will see no evil at all,
And so I ask you again,
What do you see?

I woke up this morning
Two years older
With the epilogue to a stranger's eulogy etched up and down my arms
And through the cracks in the window I could see clearly
The ashes from last nights cataclysm
Drifted lazily on the cold breeze to settle on the front lawn
Without much of a commotion
I haven't felt clarity like this in a long time
And honestly I never saw it coming
Nor could I have, I hope not at least
And I hope today I don't feel the need to be
Anybody in particular
And I hope today is one of the days I don't need to obsess
Over the symmetry in the way you light your cigarettes
In the passenger seat or the back seat
Primary or secondary
Revolution or complacency
It's all the same dilemma you're going through, really
And it's none of my business but it keeps me up at night regardless
Two years older and not a ******* inch closer to anything

Dark energy, mangled head space, recollections of fear and loss, love in the abstract, undefinable characteristics and no direction - future and present tense, tense, building up begging for release, a prisoner awaits punishment, a martyr is being born, when we know we know and when we don't we pretend, where is the future in all this, there is so much space and no anchor, adrift in a great abyss I saw them brilliant and pulsing, saints of a mystic power, in service to something incomprehensibly beautiful, I'm waiting here for a sign, some kind of blood or some kind of contract, I'm levitating off the ground, endless fire and unholy machinations, waking light on the pale skin of southern girls and I remember, I remember the way she cut through the tension and kissed blood and fire into all the ghosts haunting my body, it was the greatest magic trick I've ever seen, the separation of nervous brain and holy self, the unconquerable will of the unconscious shining through the leaves of trees and heavy clouds spurned by moonlight, I'm enraptured like this and swallowed whole, it is so easy to be consumed by all that context, trauma and bliss, dancing slow around an ever-exploding star, ******* what a light show they'll think of us, I think of Los Angeles and her bleeding sidewalks, I think of San Diego and her unmarked graves, I think of Chicago splitting its seams and revolutionaries all around, we're all praying for an end, we're all praying to get off the ride, we're all out here, we're all starving for something, I wanna know what your disease tastes like, I want to become so powerful I consume everything, I want something real, I want and that makes me alive, let me see where this leads

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

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

And we're driving through the suburbs outside Dayton two ticks past the minute the witches woke up and abracadabra'd some life into this place, caught up in the magic of watching streetlights reflect off the face you were too scared to kiss in the dark, searching those streets for a sign that tonight's the night, you know, the one we've been waiting for all those years,
For something to happen, for something to split the sky and the street and swallow us up inside of a greater purpose, we've been longing to be devoured ever since we learned what it's like to be alone,
But, there's a lot of dead ends around here, too many rooms and not enough exits, hallways and picture frames and backyards and driveways and messes that somebody is gonna have a hell of a time cleaning up one of these days,
I guess we can't get caught up in all that now, all that doubt, but when my shadow catches up to me on that long drive home he tells me,
When you stop moving, it'll all be over,
So I'll hang on past that exit and the next, waste another sunrise on some eyes too tired to appreciate anything beautiful, keep hell in my pocket till morning when I can let it go just long enough, just long enough to drift off on the promise of a day,  the day that all these candles blow out and we close our eyes and say this, this is enough, and someday you'll thank me for it

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

When I grow up, I wanna be a heretic
Save some rope for me, all you hangmen, all you executioners, all you arbiters of holy justice,
Grab your axe and cut down this forest,
Use the wood to build the biggest pyre the world has ever seen,
Chains around my wrists and my feet,
A crown of thorns staining my golden hair red,
And that blood is the last vestige of my humanity, running down my chin and dripping onto the grass
It is the last thing I taste before you light me up,
The fire opens my skin like a present it's been eagerly awaiting all year,
Takes its fill of my blood and ***** what's left from my bones, and seeps into what remains
In that moment I become one with my destroyer,
I become that which scorches earth and blackens sky,
I am the inferno that swallows empires,
I am Rome 64, Chicago 1871, London 1666,
I am the prophesied beast,
The end of days,
I am apocalypse and I come for you and yours,
I am the anti-life, and I will leave your cities in ashes and your fields barren
I grow a hundred feet tall then, screaming up into the night like Hell come calling,
You will watch me wither to nothing this way,
You will sweep what is left of me into your dustbins, something you will dispose of with the rest
But do not mistake,
Wherever you go, and whatever you do,
You will never escape that night, when you lit me up, and I became something endless,
You will always be living in the shadow I cast

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

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

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

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

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

Daybreak through tree tops, smoke and mist and morning chill and pale,
Some nights I dream of war, cannon shells and walls of fire,
Some nights I dream of shadows, grown so long they might cover this land end to end in twisted cold caricatures of selves,
Some nights I dream of love and hope to die inside of it, to wrap myself in it and in doing so become it's avatar and archetype, to float formless and weightless above these cities and take in all that pain, all that waste and ruin and in this way become a bulwark against it,
Leonard Cohen said once that there is a crack in everything, and that's how the light gets in, and so when I close my eyes tonight in that great expanse, in all that raw energy and all those people swept up in it, in that great wave of history and turmoil, I will pray to be lifted, just this once, into that open mouth where earth meets heaven and heaven meets stars, and crack it open with my bare hands, so that the light may come down

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

The resounding noise in my head pounds out wicked rhythms on a heathen's drums
Unholy ghosts ******* holes in the hallowed curtains of history
As I burn the images into my wrist
Detailing a hieroglyphic history of chemical dependency & psychopathic tendencies, of which I've got a few
In my fevered dreams I put a gun to the head of all the filthy parishioners in their their pews
And they've all got my ******* face
Am I actively plotting to ****** my own faith?
Or is the devil's choir singing to me
Moaning joyous hymns sweet and slow?
I will not have it
I will not sit here and be stabbed in the ears by any more serrated symphonies
If salvation is what I need I'll make it my own ******* self
All the angel-faced harlots & devil-headed preachers in the world couldn't wage a winning war for my sick sad soul anymore
I'm not the devil & I'm not God I am something else entirely
I'm a revolutionary revolver with six shells saved for the Son of God
And I'll fire blindly out into the universe
Blowing holes in the inconceivable unknown
Until Someone asks me to stop
Or I run out of bullets

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Transformation, altered state and revolution,
All heads bowed at the church of violence, vicious men worshipping the shadows of their fathers,
No one speaks a word,
Our language holds no words sacred enough to name our dead living and i know this, but I will catch myself meeting my own eyes in the mirror at midnight,
Letting every ghost that slipped through my fingers fall from my lips, dance a slow burning waltz around my bathroom, and collapse into my bed,
In this way death is not solid, it is a fluid parade of transition, a transfer of power,
The clocks will not stop for me or anyone,
The scales will level out

When I was young I was told the Holy Ghost lived inside me so I opened my wrists, to let the light out, return God to the sky and dull the Devil’s fangs,
I call this a ritual, but anything that drags the demons from the body and forces them into conversation can be called an exorcism,
I listen and I hear the Father scream,
I hear the Son weep,
I want to find out where it went wrong

I want to release the pressure,
To be adored, neurotic saint of the suicide machine, hung up in a museum adorned in my finest clothes, the site of every pilgrimage for every lunatic ****** artist this side of hell,
To spread my caged ****** blood like a plague across this land, to father a generation so jagged and broken that all they know to revolt against is their own survival instinct,
To become first flesh, then blood, then ash, then spirit, then eternity

But what do I know, I’m nothing without this,
I authored my own fate and lost the plot,
I can’t speak for you or your blood,
I don’t know what it sings for,
I don’t know if it aches or howls like my blood,
All I know is, when we are drained of it,
When the light leaves our eyes,
Our graves will be the same size

Easy
It is so easy, to fall into something larger,
a mouth, more monstrous than the one you were born with, separate flesh from blood, become energy for some terrible purpose, get too real on the come up and dissolve entirely on the comedown, it could all be so,
Lucky,
It is so lucky to be anything, to solidify, crystallize in your own body, connect to all points in time and hold a note, beautiful enough to be sustainable at last, to reach some higher place, some understanding outside of your own context, and isn’t that what it means to be so,
Free,
There is nothing so free as this, the art of disappearing, a release of expectations, submersion in a feeling, blurred images of self and dream self, fingertips meeting at the mirrors edge, escape from wanting, desire’s vicious processes, dead as the night, just alive enough, to cherish what remains

Is it worth it, then,
To sin, if only to be forgiven,
If the burden is lifted, transmuted,
To the crucifixion of a stranger,
What is it you seek if not,
Punishment, a sentence fit for a,
Ghost of a crime, created somewhere,
Between your mother’s vacant bed,
And your father’s hands, Father,
Was the first name you learned for regret,
I met you swinging rosaries burning,
Sage for the spirits you said you needed,
To be purified, something,
Was haunting your bedroom, hanging,
Around long after the party,
Ended and the confession began,
When you said quietly but surely,
I will live forever, I will live forever,
There is a place where I will rise again and,
****, when we last spoke your eyes were all,
White like you were looking for some kinda,
Light somewhere you might’ve missed,
And I didn’t know how to go,
To your funeral, couldn’t meet your father’s,
Eyes, couldn’t cover up the mark that brands me,
Beast, just like you, just like the,
Feeling you were always running towards,
In my dreams that night we were in a,
Eucharist, drinking the blood of a,
Fever that caught us once when we were,
Young but had since died,
You broke a loaf of bread in half and said,
This is but a step forward, a new path which I must,
Face alone but you can always find me,
Wherever you need me to be,
And I woke into the silence of the church,
Through the stained glass I could’ve sworn,
I saw you ghost walk across a burning sky,
Resurrected and unafraid, untouchable, and
I walk to the end of the world and I ask,
The sun to return your body to earth and she says,
Sweet child, this is all that keeps you warm,
Some day you too shall serve as,
Kindling for the endless fire but,
For now, bask in it, keep it close,
To your heart and always in the faith,
That whatever savior you believe you need is,
Just above you,
Waiting to come alive

Strange morning haze in a fog of unreality, certainty of feeling and liquidation of bodies, I think of you awake from your wine drenched slumber and holy, steeled and ready, as you piece together alibis from the latex wreckage of nights spent in bliss, I think of you as I watch the hills roll on towards eternity over a bright Kentucky horizon, and I think of all those people caught somewhere between here and there, I think I am one of them now and it is a blessing to be, I feel blessed to wake and breathe in the fumes of your ever burning engine, wheels pointed towards a future you dared to come, and as I watch you blaze across that sky I am reminded that to feel is to echo, and to echo is to live forever, and if that is my fate then I will storm this burning heaven and teach its flames how to dance

In the garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, Jesus witnessed firsthand the sins of all mankind,
He said,
Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by,
But father, if this cup cannot pass by, but I must drink it, your will be done
The spirit is willing if the flesh is weak
The spirit is willing if the flesh is weak
The spirit is willing if the flesh is weak
And so he went to his death fully secure in his purpose, then he rose, and he never stopped rising,
I've often thought about what that might be like,
To take it all in, all the colossal and insurmountable context of being, all the agony and joy, love and rage, and find your place within it,
To know where you stand in relation to all of it,
And isn't that why we're all here?
Isn't that the answer we're all burning for?
I ain't been a man of God in some time y'all,
My god got buried in the rain one morning in spring on the other side of 75 and I ain't sat in a pew since,
But when my god told me,
Never let anyone claim you if your name does not fit holy into their mouth,
I started speaking tongues wrapped in ****** so nobody could ever misunderstand me again,
When my god told me,
Never be afraid of the wind, for one day it will be all that is left to carry you,
I became a storm from which there is no shelter except my eyes,
When my god told me,
Never let anyone see you dressed in black who would be uncomfortable to see you dressed in gold,
I ripped up all the pages of my suicide notes and made them into armor to face whatever war may come, and yes I mean this, this is war, living is a constant struggle but I was born to do it, I wasn't born to die strung out bleeding on no sidewalk, I wasn't born to be anybody's sacrifice but I might just be somebody's martyr, I wasn't born to starve, I was born to feast, I was born to grow the sharpest fangs and use them to rip the throat of the world, grow wings a hundred feet long and use them to soar, glorious and defiant above it all, and when I tell you I found my purpose here tonight y'all I hope you can tell this is the first night my hands stopped shaking, this is the first night I've known what it means to be on fire and feel no pain,
So drink deep from the chalice of your purpose,
Go with faith towards the open gates of destiny,
Meet it wherever it may be,
And rise,
And don't ever stop rising

God told me to lighten up once,
As he strode through the door savior in a white suit, gun on his hip atop a horse of fire,
I've been watching door frames ever since, because I can't convince myself that any moment no matter where I am the apocalypse won't come two stepping through here telling me it's all over and asking me if I have any regrets,
By the fact that I write this I believe it is implied that I do,
I'm throwing up over a third story balcony while you're calling me, telling me through tears that you're sorry but something got in the way,
I'm watching your tail lights as you drive off three hundred miles and blood on the pavement, and I'm thinking about how you will wake tomorrow soaked in wine and a thin layer of sweat, and I will cross myself three times lighting a cigarette off the sunrise, and I will pray for your soul like the fool I've always been,
I'm watching you laugh and I'm doing nothing of any importance, I'm just going to watch your face contort into pentagram after pentagram until I lay my head back, and wait for the devil to kiss me in my sleep
I turn to face rapture and I ask him if mercy will come along with us for the ride,
He says,
There is no us, son
There is you, and there is the night, and there is a whole **** world waiting to forget
Like every dream before, and every dream to come, this will end before you are ready

Something else is here,

Something isn't right,

Imposter empires,
Gilded knives and false flags,
Come, let your towers rise

Fill my mouth with wine,
My ears with honey,
My hands with flesh,
My eyes with light,
Petrify me inch by inch,

The feeling hungers to be lived in,
It's teeth graze my neck,
It sings of blood and prophecy,
Epoch of an age-
Marked by moonlight cataclysm,
Drifts of smoke and drums of war,
The blinds open,
The feeling consumes

This is not my body,
This is a Trojan horse,
Omen of plague,
Biblical negligence,
Genesis of epilogues,
After the credits apology,
Consolation prize,
Fate cut short and luck run dry,
A type of magic nobody believes in,
Some revelations have to be swallowed whole,
Like police lights in the windows at the party,
Or locusts in the skies of Egypt,
You have to realize when you've gone too far, and walk away while you can

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

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

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

And at last when I emerged from the crucible I found myself,
Forged anew in the heat of,
Realization, and all the phantoms of,
Youth sang hymns for what we had,
Lost and all the dead friends,
Rose from their pews to lock hands,
And we walk together back into the light of being,
I in my warm blood and beating heart,
You in the grace of forgetting,
And by now I am,
Saint of all these small deaths,
This endless parade, of eulogy and,
Flowers, soil and silence and the stillness,
That can only lead to this, resurrection,
And when I had found reason once to,
Leave this world, I dipped my head,
Beneath that cool and holy,
Water, and was baptized, again,
Alive, again

Projection, astral themes and recurring images, this is a Dream state, this is a dream state, I reach out from beyond the veil of sleep to tell you, not to cut your hair, not to come home tonight, circle the block till god cracks the concrete and rises like steam from the sidewalk, you can't follow him where he's going but you will study the creases in your palms until you become convinced that you can, find some kind of nostalgia in futility, cycles of self deception and waves of mutilation, doesn't it just break your heart to be so - much, to be so vast and endless, to swim forever and never touch the walls of the pool, stroke, stroke, drown, surface, drown, and isn't that just another defense mechanism, it isn't my fault, I can't ever see where I'm going, some day I'll come into my own here, reach the wild velocity of desire and vibrate in frequency, levitate sixty feet in the air and hold, locked in stasis, until the feeling dies, and I come down, shatter, and dissipate like so much dust, tell me, is that a star worth wishing on?

I’m at war with the art form, conflict of the purpose and the self, I want to rip the most honest parts of myself out and crucify them on this stage, I want a spectacle so pure it gives you all nosebleeds, I want to make myself understood,
What happens if I can’t explain my position? How can I justify myself to you?
How can I explain to you what this feels like?
Feels like the highway lines I used to romanticize grew teeth, started dragging on like decades across wrists made ****** at the tip of a pen,
Feels like the distance crawled into my head, crackling like exhausted lightning begging to be recognized,
Feels like I could tear my rib cage open and light a cigarette off this ****** heart, yeah, desperate times & all,
I got a crime scene inside this body tonight, I’m hanging around waiting to get violated, subjugated, overcome with superior violence,
Strip me naked and love me like a firing squad, yeah I guess we all wanna end like this,
I guess we all desire power, or to be crushed by something powerful,
That’s why we give birth to God every night,
Drink deep of the waters of life, and live the **** thing,
Right? I should know this by now,
But here I am, godless and vicious,
Waiting on an apocalypse that shares my name, and praying like hell,
For the soul of the world to come, after all of this

Don’t you think I look so,
Beautiful?
My skin ******* in knots, tight enough to hang from,
A skeleton hollowed out, meat stripped from bone and taught to dance,
In the right light, you might even love me,
Yeah, in the right light I might swallow you whole,
But I don’t do that anymore, swallow,
So you have nothing to fear,
Just listen to my bones bend and scrape together, until they shatter under all this weight,
I carve my chest out with a hunting knife, trace the patterns of relapse on my stomach with blood and steel,
I’ll make a masterpiece of this yet, I swear I will,
Don’t worry about me, by the time you open your eyes I will already be gone,
Withered to so much dust,
And it’s better this way, you will forget this like you’ve forgotten every dream before,
And I’ll be nothing but particles, reflecting all the light of heaven in a dazzling display,
At last, bright enough to be seen for what I am before I dissipate with the wind,
Yeah, I guess what I’m saying is,
I wanna turn to the side,
And disappear forever