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?

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A crushed, half smoked pack of cigarettes
Three to four empty coffee cups converted to ash trays,
My grandmother's Bible, seams torn by the Great Depression and the backs of children's hands,
And maybe thirty dollars, some change,
All I have to my name,
I am 15 and I am setting fires, busting out the windows in abandoned houses with my skateboard, spray painting anarchy signs everywhere I think will send a message, growing my hair out, reading Ginsberg and Karl Marx in detention every afternoon, I am angry and I have fights to pick and a system to overthrow,
I am 16 and I am driving fast late nights down backroads with the headlights off, I believe I do not fear death, I believe I welcome oblivion, I believe every word in every song I howl the words to, I believe I will die a martyr and they will hold parades in my honor, I believe we are fighting a holy war, I believe that we can and we will overcome, I believe that I believe in nothing but my leather jacket and the switchblade in my pocket and whatever punk song is on the radio,
I am 17 and I am speeding out of my mind off razor blade lines on end tables, my bones ache to destroy, my veins pump gasoline to a nicotine heart, I shoot guns all night pretending each bottle is a cop and each round hits a politician right between the eyes, pretending that if I can do enough damage I can free us all from our chains,
I am 18 and I am voting as far to the left as I can and I am still bitter because it is nowhere near close enough, I am singing dying songs for friends and pouring my heart out to strangers, dancing around fires, making blood oaths to never surrender, telling fortunes for beer and dreaming of open warfare,
I am 19 and I am getting ****** in parking lots, tattoing my heroes visions into my arms, trying to save my city by shouting at it until it wakes up and takes to the streets, burning my home to the ground in hopes of a glorious revival, passing out before I can convince anybody of my beliefs, cursing my enemies from the porch and seeing how many puffs of smoke I can get out of a night before I become just as greedy as the rest of the *******,
I am 20 and I am drinking alone
I am tired and I have lost my voice,
The prophet of my folk punk day dreams slipped away, into the night with no explanation and no destination
Erik, I will honor your memory the best I can,
I will carry you into battle everyday until I can no longer clench a fist,
I will scream your words until there are holes in my throat,
I will build you a funeral pyre of my love and rage,
And from the ashes, I will rise again, and so will you

I cried when Barack Obama left office, and I cried for Joe Biden too, as though I'd lost parents of mine,
But Mike Brown and the others had it coming, they were probably resisting arrest,
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

I go to pro choice rallies and I chant about female anatomy,
I retweeted a #blacklivesmatter tweet once, I think that's just as good as a protest
But don't talk about revolution, that's going a little bit too far
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

I cheered Bernie on the whole way, but eventually settled on Clinton,
I would do anything for free healthcare and education, as long as my taxes aren't too much more
I love all the minorities too, as long as they don't move next door
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

The people who voted for Trump, should all hang their heads in shame,
I can't understand where they're at, John Oliver should set them straight
But if you burn an American flag, I hope the cops take down your name
So love me, love me love me I'm a liberal

I read Huffington Post, and Rolling Stone too,
If I vote it's a Democrat with a sensible economic view,
But when it comes to rioters in the streets punching nazis, there's no one more red white and blue
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

Once I was young and my heart bleeding, I bought every Coexist bumper sticker I saw,
Even marched alongside the socialists, thought I could bring the system down with the power of love,
But I've grown older and wiser, and that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal
Love me, love me love me, I'm a liberal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

0.
Friends, lovers,  co-conspirators, criminals, junkies, artists, vigilantes, killers and heroes and the ghosts that haunt all indiscriminate, I write this in your blood, for you alone,

I.
I saw you each to each pressed together in a crucible, growing callouses in a garden of fire, fingernails black from digging the harvest of ashes, and when the lord came near you boarded your windows and cocked your guns because you could no longer hold stock in a strangers promise of love, not since your father branded his name into the tender skin of your back and told you, you are only as good as what you own in this country, and by covenant you belong to me now, some nights you still see his face in clouds of smoke when the cold chill of predetermined destiny kisses the back of your neck, other nights you watch the sky and wonder which parts of you will be left when the birds have had their fill

II.
Mercy and desperation,
Concentric circles divided by zero around a sacrificial pyre,
Something here cannot coexist,
Something here has to break to fit,
In longing the martyr dies never knowing what for, and in sacrament he is chewed up and spat out
In longing the basin fills, and in sacrament it breaks to flood the earth
In longing I carve out my insides, and in sacrament they will call me a museum
That is to say, the difference between a museum and a graveyard is a still beating heart

III.
Lear looked among his children and saw only sharpened knives,
Castro looked out over the ocean and saw only crosshairs,
I look out over the city and see only cupped hands,
Our grandfathers could level nations to prove a point and our grandmothers could only cower before men of such rage and power,
Make no mistake, these streets have witnessed genocide and remained passive,
Driving fast down these empty roads after midnight, you can almost make out an apology from the wind,
She says,
You have to understand what it's like to be gutted in appeasement,
You have to understand what it's like to become deadly against your will

IV.
In dreams a vision of Ginsberg, playing chess with his demons on the fifth day of a three day psych ward stay
Vision of Plath setting fire to her own head rather than have its contents laid bare,
Vision of Wolfe watching trains roll by paralyzed by fear of the future and his own hand in it,
Vision of Van Gogh unable to express love in any way other than to destroy himself
Vision of Virginia atop the lighthouse demanding payment for the transgressions against her
Vision of the poet as a saint performing miracles after death, vision of the poet as the archetype of madness realized, vision of the poet as divine mouth and unholy ghost, vision of the poet writing his own obituary and praying for silence

V.
We are blessed with the ability to tear down our monuments when they no longer stand for us,
We are blessed because we can justify anything we destroy
When Jacob's time came they carried him to Canaan and the Lion of Judah went on to fill its stomach with the blood of anything innocent it could sink its teeth in,
I take this to mean that there are some hungers that can only be sated by devouring everything you believe in
But what do I know,
I am a crown without a king
I am not much for devotion
I pick up the pieces of the monuments that once stood here and I sanctify them in hopes that one day this will mean something,
And if that day ever comes,
We will live again inside of something everlasting,
And until then,
I will carry this with me wherever I go
It's the least I can do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strung out on the dream,
Cars pass, flashes of light from windows,
Fragments of memory, a broken summer come home to lick her wounds,
Winter presses the needle down and the record sings, the blood sings, the street sings, black sky sings, god, it’s no wonder I can’t sleep, I want it to be quiet, I want it to be so quiet my beating heart becomes a firing squad, no, I don’t want to talk about it,

Familiar feelings, cycles of rebirth and devastation, oh god, oh god we’ve been here so many times before,

And while the neighborhood sleeps I am waiting, a savior from the sky or money in the bank or a real connection, there’s demons rising from the sidewalk and I’m feeding them scraps from my table, I’m looking to get recognized and carried away on the back of something stronger than I am,

And round the block the silence is the sharpest knife in the drawer,

Something vicious on the wind,
Something we just can’t talk about,

I look to the sky and,
I watch angels falling,
And I try to decide,
If their wings are broken,
Or if they found the only way,
To make it all quiet

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the depth of pagan nightmares, rose the shadowed curtains of my doubt
To choke out the nonchalant sun, aloof on the morning sky
Two deaths, I died last night and a third might bring good luck
But for now I am alive and I feel like the Rapture
Tracking time through ticks on my track marked clock-work veins
While dead buildings mock me through the streets
Where has my supposed talent gone?
Some specter lingers, inverted above my bed
Number 12 in poise, but not quite enlightened
Frenzy is in my muscles, my ligaments laugh like high hell
My teeth burn like the Ohio River and I've bitten off all my nails
An atom bomb in a gilded cage
And a real tear-jerking ******
If you haven't put the pieces together by now,
Don't try

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

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

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

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

Light up a smoke
Start to cry
Relapse just enough
Rewrite your reality
Present a better narrative
Take stock of your surroundings;
Friends, lovers, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, memories, psychoses, vices, recurring nightmares, moments of brilliance
Words that keep bleeding no matter how many times you write them down
People that keep calling no matter how many times you change your name
Spirits that cling to skin, absence of escape routes, confessions that never solidify into repentance, apologies that never pass through lips,
Heretic heart burning vicious under black sky
Bones aching for the weight of mourning
Take a breath
Stop freaking out
Keep your sense of humor
Give it teeth and let it draw blood
Dig yourself out
Kiss your lover
Kiss your friends
Kiss the sunrise as she relieves you of burden
Find the furthest corners of your mind
Keep a candle lit to view the writing left on the walls there
Take photographs of each moment in the event you find yourself missing it someday
Release yourself shamelessly into the night
Reinvent your language
Speak over people when they stop respecting your voice
Bleed it out bleed it out bleed it out
Fill your page
Fill your lungs
It will be enough someday

I. Palingenesis: The Spirit We Inherit

We were born on top of graves,
Headstones from sea to sea,
Some places they put flowers over their coffins, some places they put gold plated markers in the street, some places they don't put anything,
No matter how far you run, you are not faster than the ghosts of this land
No matter where you go you will pay for the sins of your fathers,
You will incur their debts on top of your own and you will be wrapped in this when they put you in that ground
They will tell you that this isn't your fault
They will tell you that this isn't their fault either
They will blame this on The Other
They will tell you who your enemies are, and you will believe them
They will tell you to defend your blood, your soil
They will tell you that this is what your father did, and his father before him
They will tell you that patriots do what they must, and so must you
They will out that gun in your hands, and when you pull the trigger, they will tell you it is your fault, that they just don't know,
Where you inherited all this violence

II. Kenogenesis: The Spirit We Create

You will speak up,
You will tell them, in no uncertain terms, that you will not carry those crosses,
You will not fire their guns,
You will not tie their nooses,
You will not die for your fathers legacy
You will not surrender to your history
You will climb the rib cage of empire and spit in its eyes
You will wave whatever ******* flag you please
You will learn, you will fight, you will burn, you will live, you will love, you will survive and you will become greater for it
We were all born on top of graves, but that does not make us mausoleums
Let us not be haunted by our heritage, let us weaponize it
Let us say never again and let us mean it, never again, to anyone, anytime, ever
Let us be stronger than our fathers,
Let us pass through the crucible and come out steel, diamond, and fire
Let us drag ourselves forward, chains and all, and never look back
Let us break through the clouds, and watch the day rise upon this land, and let's remember what all those people died for, and let's make them proud of how far we've come

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

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

Drown Cincinnati, drown!
We sang from the balcony,
Give up your blood and sweat and be cleansed!
And as they drowned below they called to me for help,
But I'm sorry brothers, I have looked in to the gaping jaws of Hell and I cannot go back!
Euthanize your idols, burn your high fashion statements!
Build a bonfire of your vanities!
Your ancestors ***** the Native American people and now you bear their graven image on your T-Shirt
Oh but how they were HOLY
Holy is the slogan sewed in to the denim
Holy is anarchist ideal held together by safety pins and hairspray
Nursing at the breast of punk's decrepit corpse,
You read the eulogy, screamed "Anarchy in the UK!"
In to the microphone
Although you never left American soil

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

I learned how to love the same day I learned how to run,
Cigarettes make the first part easier and the second a hell of a lot harder
So on nights like this where we run out of breath, for one reason or another, we make **** sure that the radio tells us what we wanna hear;
Kingdom come in somebody's eyes, a straight shot up from the highway into the stars, a kiss from a red haired girl with the sweetest melodies,
A place to run to, a place of our own, a place where we can know what freedom is and not just what it isn't
Our dead friends in the passenger seat for one more ride, alive and electric and singing loud enough to wake heaven and let 'em know what they're missing out on,
Our dying country stretched before us like a Norman Rockwell painting while we live like characters in a Springsteen song, wild and desperate and without a home to hold us back,
Our lovers waiting for us somewhere between the sunrise and the B side of the album, all open arms and 4th of July lips to kiss clean our worn and ***** souls and deliver us from our evils,
So on these nights where we suffocate under the tremendous weight of living,
We still have each other, and we still have the radio,
And we can still remember how to breathe a little easier

Down and out, broken like so many burned out automobiles
Yet blazing infinite with immeasurable conviction &
Rapturous with the weight of destiny
Manic hysteria drove them off the overpass
Hipster Valkyries raised them to avant-garde Valhalla
And the eight o'clock news made messiahs of the lot
Nirvana sold last weeks newspapers on the side of the highway
Rolling with a sweet glimmer of a shark toothed smile
On the horizon hunting for a high that can't ever be attained
Holiest of Holies on a red lipped mountain top
Or a supermarket bathroom stall scrawled with ****** madness
The Lord's Prayer in black ink, brutal and simple
There were misty eyed girls on the morning train to some great and unenviable elsewhere
And by night the crows circled six times, once for each of the dead end dreams swallowed that day
Candid and conscious, where the wild ones roam the city
Burning the flags they wave and waving the flags they burn
America's sweethearts on the run from the police
Sawing at heartstrings like bows on a twisted violin
From the mountains to the valleys the winds screamed senseless in their joy
Liberation and the kiss of a lipstick Judas were on everyone's mind
Martyrs a mile a minute, a dime a dozen
Down the line the angels wept gloria mundi
For the sinners sung with passion, the saints stoically mourned
The revelers and the rioters and the street kids looking for a ride home
The toxic kissed stars that set the city lights the shame
And the masochists, blessed with a gypsy goddess' double edged kiss
And broken down like so many burned out automobiles
Yet blazing infinite with immeasurable conviction &
Rapturous with the weight of destiny

THE REAGANS KILLED MY BEST FRIEND

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Baptize me
All lace and white fabric on pale skin
You tasted like July the last time,
And the smoke has lingered ever since
You dyed your hair and cut off the dead ends
My fingers can barely recognize it now
Your attention explodes across my awareness
Like a shooting star, because for all of its brevity
It is ******* enthralling
You made a holy fool of me once
And here I submit, on my knees
To be enfolded in the judgement of the crown
You sigh like the wind in Appalachia
And sing like the old gospel choir
And you whisper in French in my ear
You don't know much, but it's more than me

$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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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?

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

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

Black haired silhouettes dance in recollections of August, strip naked, strike a pose-
Driving up and down Vine with a head full of acid, every passerby looks to be the death of me and the city smothers stars while they sleep,
Darkness about something on the radio, lost in hardwood floors and slanted ceilings, laying flat on my back in the depths of a Janis Joplin howl of pain,
Talking in rhythm and never rhyme, drawing inspiration from the atmosphere and picking poems from the tension, collision course ego trips clocked in at under zero revolutions per minute,
Revolutions that begin in ****** bars in the suburbs, continued into parking lots, to the front seats of cars, culminating in bedrooms the way all things do,
Fragments of lost phone numbers and sunrises on the highway, crash into me, break all my teeth, show my face to the world,
Just make sure I can still stand come morning, all tomorrow's parties won't wait for me or anybody else
And don't let me forget this, no matter how much I beg

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

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

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