I know a kid who left Catholicism behind but he carries chalk in his pocket Every once and a while, he'll stop and draw a steeple on the wall behind him This lets people know its not graffitti, he's just praying There's another who got sick of gone green skin from electroplated fool's gold around her neck so she up and tattooed a crucifix on her chest Now she doesn't have to to take it off before sex, and every time she screams "Jesus!" it means a hell of a lot more One thing I learned being homeless was how to sleep sitting up, shiver swaying in the Denver winter night In those dreams, it was never cold I was just dahvening These days we take prayer where we can but we never call it worship God has come down off the altar and talks to us right at eye level The fading Mosque brick and crumbling stone Synagogues have set new foundations in the air five feet around us Before there were churches and printed words to be misinterpreted we prayed in glottal stops and melody Only now there's keystrokes in our gospel divinity and digital, synthesizers and god hollering not up or down but out Out of our throats, out of our limbs spinning eclesciasticly Out of our eyes red and watering Outside of ourselves, inside prayer is the chance to be everything This thing we give no name to It don't care for manners It don't punch a clock and it don't take attendance It don't take to preachin' and I'm sorry if this seems that way This is just my way of an explanation Us thumbed monkies fear a lack of comprehension but we don't need to understand just accept, isn't that what faith is? We singing, dancing students of I don't know what do not apologize for our convulsions nor deny you yours And if your brick and mortar your wood, nails, and rooftops go flames up or come tumbling down, leaving your worship in ashes, we invite you outside There is so much room out there and yeah It gets cold, sometimes The wind and grit will whip you blind, sometimes We all have to wander shut eyes and compassless, sometimes We'll all have our lost moments but faith will find other flailing hands Sometimes, this world ain't pretty, but god damn is it beautiful

A handgun is a machine moving, interlocking parts analogue The barrel and cross hair resemble the modern electric symbol for power It is a marriage of one and zero A gun is binary bullet, one barrell, zero A gun is power Suicide is binary A noose is digital a one (straight rope) and a zero (looped knot) Suicide is a switch on/off/on/off day/in/day/out Ian Curtis was analogue A spun gun cylinder is a random number generator A freely lived life is analogue A fish net is digital The Zodiac killer signified himself with a crosshair symbol a mandala, carving a zero with a series of ones The Zodiac was a switch A halo is a zero floating above a one Angels are digital, servants to a program Humans, carved from angels 2.0 Mankind is a glitch DNA is analogue God is binary A gulliotine frame is a one and zero the blade, a relay Execution is digital A surveyor's compass is binary, cross hatch A vacant lot is analogue A sailor's compass is a one and zero Maps are a random number generator Magnets are analogue Death is death is death off off off, death is an error A gun is a switch A noose is a relay God speaks disaster A hurricane is power An earthquake, analogue Lightning is power, Electricity, digital AC/DC, digital Reproduction is binary Trans is analogue Church, digital Prayer, analogue Murder, binary Man Woman, flesh War, 011101110110000101110010 Humans are strung code on/off/on/off day/in/day/out We are moving, interlocking parts our open mouths, a zero Body Mind Heart, one We are a circuit

To the hipster dipshit who took my haircut for something more than it is Ayo! Captain Fixed Gear Mr. Mustache Handlebars sucking down overpriced organic micro brews at the local vegan bar You cracked spit your underbreath joke about Zeig Heils and goosesteps so low only me and your colonial throwback beard could hear it Well, allow me to retort with a coupla facts that will (hopefully) make you choke on your red and black pack American Spirit I'm Jewish, Russian, Polish, German and Queer What say you now, Mister Bluster? Blew your Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky quoting, never actually read either, mind a little bit didn't it?! Motherfucker Now you might take me for self loathing forcing myself to look at the bald headed black boot image I was raised to fear in the bathroom mirror every morning Don't read so much into it Mr Cliff's Notes Un-informed Limp Little Pencil Dick Spare me your overwrought first year armchair dream psychology It ain't that deep, son! Its a hair cut Not an ideology I live cheaply $30 hair clippers, Ramen, and black 20 pack t- shirts DOES NOT make a National Socialist, just a art minded, hard time economist, dearie And these boots, these $4 thrift picked no brand shit kickers with laces not red or white but black in fact they're not even laces, they're $2 a foot parachute chord Dipshit What's that you didn't say? If I'm not a Nazi, how do I know about this coded language of laces, braces and bomber jackets Well, since you didn't actually bother to ask I'll tell you, you slackjawed jackass Know your enemy or you're doomed to be conquered again I can never forget Birkenau, Auschwitz, Dachau, and the millions and millions of mine sent to burn down in the ovens So I don't sweat the uniform, kid just racist intent, thoughts, and actions Never again Awww narrow your little doe eyes, Bambi I'm not the huntsman who shot your mother, just a loud barking, well informed pacifist Take away from this at the very least the one lesson I've learned from 37 years of hard fought intelligence: Next time know what the fuck you're talking about before you speak

Nothing will reinforce your idea of white privilege like a trip to Texas Forget the jokes, the wise cracks about pick up trucks, inbreeding or secession Far too often humor gives ignorance a place to hide, but so does Jack Daniels and Lone Star and unsubtle 10 year olds throwing shade at each other across a soccer field, the epithets slipped in beneath every "Good game." You can try to flinch Can try to feign surpise Try "Not me." Try "color blind" Try "one sixteenth" Try "some of my best fr.." Fuck it Try "post racial society" and see if it don't catch on the frayed noose stuck in the back of your teeth This is yours, this cellular inhertance Its not the Atlas boulder you claim to have cast off, but an unfortunate pedestal whose thin air height can hoodwink even the best of us into revisionists I know, because its mine too I used to think that I had the right to deny it That my blood, cursed since we were framed for the spear in the side of a messiah That my people hounded out of every inch of good dirt this earth holds arrogantly convinced me our holocaust was the first, only and since, that the barbed wire Star of David lodged in our veins branded us "Other" and "Entitled" The blue and white borders I fly have since bled into the rainbow banner of the men and women I choose to bring to bed and so many "Other" flags flown that my common blood red beneath all of this, has been bleached into gray But I can choose whether or not to show you this, to split the stitching and spill every bit of bi-polar, queer little Jew boy of a man at your feet Never forgetting that I have the privilege of camouflage I can...pass Even in Texas The process of owning this starts with questions genuine and concise Then try silence try listening try shutting up long enough to hear try realizing the difference between appreciating other cultures and holding them hostage try more questions try thinking try learning and then if your own camouflage tricks ignorants into thinking you agree with them try facts try reason try educating try reminding them of every chain rattled of every blocked border of every auction block of every internment camp of every holocaust Try taking every run together color underneath your skin and paint their pedestal so bright they can no longer deny that it is there

Predawn is all canine Reminding you of all the cowards you've been and not nearly enough angel I have thrown so many thoughtless fists to the dim lit air as to blacken both of god's eyes fighting to pull profound out of 2:30's greedy a.m. teeth My fear is that I will be struck down at the dull end of 3pm gasping ashes, lightning-less and statufied Death regardless of its speed is always sudden The undertow of all of last year's mornings is still pulling at my feet but to think one can run so fast you will change the direction of tides past is suicide incrementally I will not be buried before I'm dead I can't quit this bloodstream holy boiling caffeine and neon I got a club foot kicking behind my incisors A hunchbacked tongue, beautifully awkward and dripping with vocabulary carved out of evenfall, like this city's field hollers sung out of spray cans Lawless and sanctified My God lives in grafitti born moonfall and we are wed, bound by the same pin burning punctured sky that delivered us both A marriage made not in Heaven or Hell, but in Love, a resident of neither Hell knows not of it and Heaven too prissy perfect to allow it. In every dusk, I wake again erratic awkward holy vocabulary Burning blessed lawless and sanctified, shouting prophet crazed until The Dawn sets my body to walking while my essence goes back to zero waiting infant new and howling for the dark

Stop is one of the first things I remember being programmed and for good reason If I saw a red light/octagon/hand I…stopped and therefore didn’t get my brains dashed on the hood of a Buick But the side effect was that now Red meant Danger Blood/Red Danger Buick/Brain/Red Danger Panic Siren/Red Danger Dread Fear Before that, Red held only the meaning I gave to it Sun/Red Infinite Fire/Red Creation Anger Infinite Destruction Possibility “Changing someone’s mind” is figurative/literal/chemical When you marry image and name, you create identity a liquid tie between the two but you propose different name/same image you change someone’s thought A new neural link Next time they encounter the same image, they think Red/Infinite then Red/Stop and then they will question both and will never see that image the same way ever again At birth we are Tabula Rasa blank but then we are bombarded ABC’s Image/language/phonics flicker/flicker Television All of it Advertising: A Man watches sports A Man doesn’t dance Man shows no weakness Man equals Pride Man is Control Man/Strength Man/Ego Man/War Man/Fist Man/Fist Man is Red and God help the woman who loves him Philosophy/Propaganda The only difference? One offers a way, amidst millions to think The other, only one Stop Danger Once a symbol’s name and meaning provoke action without language, you have removed thought Raw Primitive The only organism that can thrive without the mind is Hate Stop Danger An image with no definite end is boundless Green/Go Green/Flourish Blue/Womb Yellow/Safe Sun/Red Infinite Fire/Red Infinite

Fame changes everything If you're a musician, you can practice umpteen bone bent hours, fingers bleeding shouting ivory keys to the third rail and never be heard But if you're a famous anything else they'll give you the ear of the world If you're a musican, they'll grant you a book An actor, an art show A dancer, a photo exhibit All these opportunities, bestowed for your other accomplishments A whim, perchance to dabble They'll call you Rennaisance and you'll believe it For every hobby you are indulged, there are those who wrap themselves in the plainest of brick and inexquisite bars banging their life given tin crown against them praying anyone will find the din transcendent and the sparks they shed beautiful We will fight you for those ears Those are our walls and eyes Give us back the bandwidth and pages We are taking back the dance hall Boom, for real