Anxiety is not a bad thing to share Neither is neurosis Both make for great icebreakers We met in a crowd smirking twitched miliseconds crack crack knuckles, thoughts and heads suddenly found the floor fascinating But when we faced, a fallen power line found the ocean and smoked the ozone between us: "You don't want inside these eyes" The only story I truly know is my own That is to say I know nothing, but I speculated that your's might feature similar content or keystrokes At very least, the margins bowed and swelling against the rough, curved letters of our mutual un-knowing, hack scratch scrawled past page's end and the story for future anniversaries bleeding into the tabletop Which is as far as we got A brief, brilliant flash made impossible by too many things we refuse to be medicated for Anxiety is not a bad thing to share Neither is neurosis Without both, we would never have imagination

Hip Hop didn't save my life Its just one of the things that helps me live it We were born the same year 1975 While I took 9 months and 36 hours to emerge screaming into the American night your conception had been hundreds of years in the making The child of two proud, round black mothers a Jamaican father , acting as mid-wife synchronized their heart beats, and gave you form in 5 elements Your screaming mouth One hand spinning, the other spraying fingers and 2 chubby crazy legs We were both breach babies The doctor got me turned around in time but you you came out kicking, didn't you? Sister I know how you've been Your upbringing has been well documented We've been through so many of the same trials Youthful arrogance to party times to activist intelligence and yet turned out so differently I got sick of explaining to folks that fraternal twins look nothing alike That's no excuse for my distance, but just one of many reasons Do you know how hard it is to have a more sucessful sibling? I couldn't escape my own inadequacy swallowed the bile until I spit acid speech over every mention of your name and wrote off your blurred signature in cursive, until it looked nothing like mine I didn't even blink when they said you were dead I knew they were wrong Your coffin rattled too empty You are not the first person to fake their own death when they see what atrocities are commited in their name But you should see what good works it inspires There are millions waiting for your return have proven themselves worthy by sowing your lessons into a society in and of itself and just your presence could keep it from its own destruction But more than that, I need you to forgive me You never saved my life but are one of the things that make it worth living

Cracked a pack of cigarettes, removed 5 minutes Unraveled those 5 minutes and was left with an old question Opened that question, found a new home Ransacked the house, discovered my running feet Followed the tracks they left until I stopped at the heart of 3am Caressed the hour's heart and it pulsed out too many bad ideas Lobbed them at the nearest wall and their dying graffiti dripped w h is p er Hissed this through my teeth, spat out silent adolescence Talked at that until it blinked out its balled fists Took their swinging, swallowed blood and distance Pulled the thread on 16,000 odd miles ending in New England's quietest night The sky over's constelations formed oh so many faded spotlights bathed in every single one until the dark was no different I looked back at all of these wound them back up into one long "He Loves You" then turned around, smiling

THOUGHTS ON A STATUE OF GLENN GOULD The most glaring omission is the fingers The sculptor has painted them a lumpen whole, none of the individual, the tap tapping articulates that dissected Bach put his innards back together, smirking at the sound of the master's coffin tumbling Even in this an idealized, forever bust he still doesn't look comfortable Not even a torch could carve him at home in himself We are not drawn to the eyes Nor the telling wrinkles of life lived fantastically devoted to the sound slippery divine Instead the cap the scarf and gloves a neurotic uniform hiding pockets filled brim with prescriptions, a mouth unaccustomed to marriage proposals Lucky for us this shrine lives nestled in downtown's bustle on the edge of the bench, his image and idea bearing the brunt of our prayers and pictures, leaving his mind and marrow to wander a Salvation Army estate, left alone to conduct the moon rising

VOLLUN How many times have I been mistaken for Death? Well, how many hands have you? While he is the bringer of Nothing, I am its warden, standing in the aftermath of expression Dry charging behind brick, stone, and mortar Any time someone utters: If these walls could talk I am whispering pigeon flocks in the rafters I have no other voice but the shutter of blasted out windows groaning floor boards and the shriek of neglect I am what once was While possibility drove up the rooftops the disappointment in their felling is my realm Not all Gods are glamorous nor their kingdoms great but I live in the hearts of builders and every so called urchin in any city's back alley, wrong track side A congregation of squatters, gutter punks, bat shits, dreamers and schizos Every language has hundreds of words for what resides in a haunted house, but they all mean me I am no phantom I do not believe in ceremony, that is what drove my ancient brethren out of buisness My altars are not pristine or sacred my scripture unwritten Just lay a pigeon feather behind you upon any thousands of empty door steps and we can pray directly to each other I am not Death He is definitive End and in End lies relief I preside in Forgotten a never ending, completely brutal kind of forever

BAR RULE #1 Satan does not fear televangelists and fundamentalists as his destroyer or successor , just lesser imps worthy only of a pat on the head and a "Go get 'em tiger" because they make his job so much easier They have forgotten the gentle nature of faith and believe they are doing their God's will so blindly and that makes them dangerous Faith, is simple It is accepting something purely despite all evidence to the contrary Faith is round and malleable It is just as easy to hold tight as it is to share Belief is where it gets tricky Belief is sharp It is angular, shaped fire forged and folded a thousand times unbreakable You either grab it by the hilt or take it in the neck This is not piety but pride I live less than one hour from the Devil But that might be giving Focus On The Family a little too much credit We are so many hours from Topeka, KS The nest of Westboro Baptist's Spitting King Snake, Freddie Phelps He may be poisonous, but lacks the savage intelligence of the Morning Star These petty demons have stolen the air of a God they claim to serve and use it to broadcast hatred in the name of a Christ they could never hope to emulate and for Christians, y'all seem really obsessed with the Old Testament Whatsa matter, fellas? Does all the love and forgiveness of the New fucking bore you? Not enough wrath and brimstone? Have you forgotten "Let he who is without sin..."? If Time has shown anything, its that the lot of you have enough bones bouncing behind locked doors to hold a fucking barn dance It is not enough that you ruin people's lives but can't even give them the decency of a quiet burial So, gentle men Quit crying that you are the easy target If you truly believe that, then climb down off that cardboard cross wipe the bloodied bulls eye off your chest It is not stigmata, no matter how much you wish it to be It was the fire forged spikes the sharp, unbendable spear that did Jesus in What brought him back from the pit was his unending faith in his father's plan for humanity So, Freddie Phelps, Ted Haggard, Jimmy Swaggart and Jerry Falwell, who I pray is tending his own little half acre in the hell he believed in so much: If I have offended you and you truly do follow the example of Christ then I ask you to prove it and forgive me

Steel Before the fire, it had no name No shape, memory or purpose Its only blood was Possibility With the forge came structure Limitless prospect etched into 5x2.3 centimeters Intent's determined face stamped into being Still, without label these could have been windchimes castenets 26 bead rosaries, with a mirror at its end to reflect the true face of God But then the letters are struck and Identity is given indelible and unfortunate They now will carry name, rank, blood type They will be worrying stone albatross prayer clutch wistful souvenir the last CLICK CLACK before shut eyes and a walking tombstone the only way to know that your child had come back at all Only when steel goes back to ground does it remember its Possibility and weep for the fire that would bring it back

FIGHT SONG For The It Gets Better Project Rainbows did not kill them The colors of their noose were red, white, and blue Tell me again, why? Was it their vibrant color that set bulls to charge? Maybe the Bible seldom read, never once grasped and bereft of Christ Like we use god forsaken for emphasis and not its true meaning God did not abandon these 4, 5, 6 or thousands before That, would be us Those who vowed to shepherd all lost souls to heaven condemn them to burn Who swore better lives for their children but drown their color in ashes Those who inherit parent’s hate like good silver spend it into fists And the rest of us who bear all other epithets keep lips sewn silent Only so much silence can be born until action is all that’s left For you, with hues locked behind your teeth, remember it will get better The priests, parents, and pundits who demonize you will soon be punished They, have to live their whole lives, as themselves This is your vengeance They will all work for you one day and you will give them money but they will pay This is better than any fist you could throw back Live, just to spite them Speak bright, bold sparks while their grey ash blends to roadside and irrelevance Dance brash and loud, live love wide as your arms will go Live, hallelujah Live joyous, like you never knew its antonym You are not alone Remember the best form of revenge is living I am begging you, please just live

ROAD MAP Sound only echoes when its got walls to cage it When the din of 3am blasts out past my ears instead of shouting down the band I curl up into a ball, still as the night outside Providence Meditation is yet another process which cinches anxiety into my neck in fear of getting it wrong, and therefore useless to me Nostalgia shares too many letters with Insomnia to not be related Both keep me up two hours past Reason Some time past 27 both my eyes started to drift, craning so hard to look behind me that I have better memories of the back of my skull than anything that's happened since Desire doesn't live ferocious under my skin anymore I only see orgasm as function, a compulsion that clears my thinking My sexuality, now nothing but a rolling, roadside snowfield 18 wide and gusting, past loves memorials' mark its turns like white picket crosse Silence is only possible with clenched teeth to shelter it God is now a rubbed raw penny dirty and comforting Oh, Great King/Queen of the Clouds please keep my prayers tawdry I'd rather have my menagerie lit seedily, then blasted lifeless by Noon's cheer Give me the distinct rattling of neon throwing holy rolling halos over all who walk beneath it A bright rapture without a dark set journey at its beginning is ultimately worthless Life has cast me from 45 to 90 degrees of SIsyphus, impossible unattainable, then just as quickly as Atlas just before the buckle straight back, world perfectly balanced on confident shoulders Dawn makes sense of the swirling debris left in the wake of 5 am, giving the reluctant communion of Sleep to all of its late coming choir Bells can only peal, if you give them enough hollow to swing

Go and find a stone Put it in your pocket Call it Purpose Every day feel the reminder of its weight Let your work keep the stone's shape, but don't let it grow into Burden I learned this at a friend's workshop I've spent every minute since trying to remember this Some days, the stone grows coal fire Inspiration Other days, the cold density of Doubt And there are weeks where it shrinks pebble chip into Routine and Purpose Before this I never believed in Alchemy This stone now has so many names that a well meaning friend suggested I simply call it Hope No I carried that skyscraper weight so long on bleeding shoulders until it became the blasphemy it really is Oh, bright bird Hope hook fanged jackal Hope and every monstrosity in your rolling, consuming, circus zoo Hope All teeth, tongue and throat your virtue lacks stomach Every single little beastie carping that your bright death would end cool, delicous darkness and fly this balanced crystal existence into entropy, I say savage You birth more fear than certain mortality Death is shroud in black and Devil soot smudged decadence But Death is inevitable and the Devil merely temptation Neither make you do anything You hold hostage entire lives Patience's cohort, undeserved its myth holy virtue You are sibling only to Larceny Leave me My door now only open to Faith and Result, Imagination, Urgency These things are me, are Growth and Bloom Divine Result Oh, Violated Fable Hope, myths die for a reason and i bid you to take the hint My days are nothing but Inspiration Routine Defeat and Alchemy The stone I chose was Purpose Now Hope get your fucking hand out of my pocket

SHRAYEN For David Blair and the city of Denver Somewhere in this apt building a guitar is being strangled not the erotic asphyxia of Hendrix but the rope a dope of a past prime boxer who sounds like he still has his gloves on I say, Rock on Marciano if it keeps you from beating your wife The same wind hotter than molasses ass in Ju-ly sends me sickly smooth jazz from 16th Street a group of perfectly nice people are commiting the worst type of hate crime against Motown, beating the round off it with pillow weight hands, Jim Crowing that historic house into corporate sculpture And the outdated trains bring rhythm And the too many cars rumble bass And the screeching club girls lend tenor And the relentless, keening harmony bounces 5 Points to Foothills disjointed and free form a cacophony of intrusion a song of trespass, the wailing cry of progress brought to Denver in the throats of railroad workers golden in the eyes of prospecters blackened in the bellies of miners and finally bashing crescendo against the grey steel and digital of now 'till the night closes its ears and la la la's out another sunrise 9 am church bells peal the groans of a thousand hang overs the tire whine of another underpaid workday rolling a new libretto over the whisper of native phantoms' ground down bones that pave these streets, our operetta may seem bitten but these notes cannot be anything but unique The jagged mountain sharps colliding with the flats of attempted metropolitan trappings and attitude following the odd meter of our history, shot through with explore conquer slaughter banish strip mine Wild West Klu Klux's Colfax Klebold Harris too many dead children and yet we still sing The unique altitude swims the heads of transplants and native born and we all move to it We are a city of samples Today today roared in with a black cannon gut punch a vast wail The last aria cried from your shining, Chrysler grille of a throat has left my city silent David I am afraid there will be no parade for the likes of us Those who attempt to gild, gold leaf this cold calamity of an existence There is no collection of marching polished brass that could herald your too soon legacy, but I will try I will weep I will gnash I will davenh I will Kaddish I will Shiva I will dance I will celebrate I will Jubilee I will remember I will climb to the tallest point of this Mile High and let the god wallup of your going shoot ticker tape through my teeth each shred stamped the words Golden Royalty Skyward and then finally, I will scream the sky violet, like you always wanted But I will not sing, today and nor will Denver Today the sky and wind over us both will be as static Today the streets are scrambled, untuned, slaveship radiowaves Today will be the silent procession for a gorgeous monster Tomorrow maybe tomorrow I will remember beauty as the chorus this city bellows joyous beneath my feet will return, reunited with your Detroit gracenote The symphony of every piece of machinery in the Chrysler plant that tried to eat you alive raising their twisted metal arms to heaven and coming down BANG a choir of sparks to carry you home Tomorrow maybe tomorrow We will sing

Adolf Hitler's hopefully rotting bones keep being exhumed,rattling like a saw dusted rust sabre and ordered to dance His name a barbed wire pricker bur cutting the throats of those still named, numbered, and living Saints, have not the vanity for even their own small altars, but the lesser little beasties want their every single atrocity carved marble and monolithic And while I'm sure this wicked little skeleton chips itself in delight over every buzzed bald 'Zieg Heil', I can't help but think that he would like if his broken surname passed through a few less lips That his twisted hall in history shook only with the names worthy of his genocide Mussolini Amin Alexander Pol Pot Genghis Khan Caesar All Hail I know that we must never forget but there is a time and place for necromancy Evil is evil but there are varying degrees and I think it is about time that we give the devil his due The systematic slaughter of millions of a people does not equal health care reform The "purification" of the physically deformed and mentally ill does not equal higher taxes An unchecked, Nietzcheian will to power does not and will not ever equal politics The greatest benevolence and the most sullied malfeasance do not reside in Heaven or Hell but are conceived in the human heart and mind Both deserve their own Regard and Perspective This is what reminds us that Petty Annoyance and Cataclysmic do not intersect or even share the same trajectory You can weave as many failed metaphors as you like Parade your props Play Illuminati Connect The Dots until the cock crows at midnight and you will still never be right He who bestrode this earth in a pale impersonation of Colossus now resides in a hole six by six, just like the rest of us will The screams of the millions he sent to the same place and the spit of their survivors will never allow his soul to rest, as is their right But you must now let his name, bones and banner finally return to the dirt that they are worth