Flowers for loved ones

Reminders of mortality

Graves decorated,
The inconsistency of stories

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dragged out screaming, senseless from the hallows of martyrdom
My father's mother's wayward brother
Baptized in propaganda and searing lead
Kamikaze death machine to paranoia fever dream
A noble experiment in utter catastrophe
Half measure, interstellar tourniquet
Stem the free flow of blood like inconvenient statistical evidence
Dripping down born-again ****** America's chin
Vector-like, everything explodes outwards
And on trajectories like these only friction is holy
Murphy's law in ecstatic altercation
A furious life lived under an anachronistic magnifying glass
Truly the only thing worth decaying for

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

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

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

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

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

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"

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

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

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

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

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

I 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,

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?

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

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

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

******
Animal
Savage
Dead man walking, right?
You going to ******' score ******?
You going to ******' score?
You're ******* right I am
I'm gonna hit the lights and let my veins glow electric
I'm gonna turn my blood black and spray it all over the walls
I'm gonna sleep tonight in the abyss, baby

******
Are you hearing me are you feeling me am I getting through to you do I ******* stutter?
Are you ready to get out of my way or die *******?
I'm going to tear the ******* roof off this place I'm gonna skin you all alive
Till it's just me and the messiah complex dealer with the keys to the holy city
If this is a standoff then let's have at it if you wanna play cowboy I'll show you cowboy
If we were made in any image at all it'd have to be the rats, right?
Well I'm the big bad wolf now and I'm done ******* around

******
Deadbeat
Family man
Feel cool with that gun in your hand?
Feel cool with that hole in your neck?
You're ******* right I do
I'm going out in style tonight
I'm going to find the rawest nerve and plug it into an amplifier
I wanna hear God cry

******
Is this happening are you seeing this are you ******* kidding me?
Is there anybody even on the receiving end?
Is this a sick ******* joke I'm choking on ***** and hate and I have enough rage to bury everything
I don't want to rest until I watch everything suffer
Am I sick? Am I losing it have I lost it already?
What do I have left to lose?
What manner of beast is this now?

******
Wretch
Vermin
Is that it, huh?
Is that all there is?
Don't ******* patronize me
That's gonna be it, alright
I'm gonna finish it the way it began
Dim lit basement, flood of chemical angels
Beauty in the most high
And death will show me sympathy
Because junkies die alone

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

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

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

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

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

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