AND THIS IS FOR WHEN YOU FEEL NOTHING

HAVING SEEN GOD; HAVING LEARNED HER NAME

STOP ME IF YOU'VE HEARD THIS ONE BEFORE.....

BECAUSE LOVERS & INFIDELS

OR THE IDEA THAT NONE OF THIS WILL MATTER IN 500 YEARS

I AM THE HANGING MAN; I HANG, I NEVER LAND

Early Swans was a tedious proposition.  Maybe that was the point.  Still, I was a young guy, I wanted something a little more kinetic.  I liked visceral, but I like it to have a little motion, too.  The disco vibe of “A Screw” was awesome, but everything else I glossed over.  Loved their artwork, though.  Owned a (Canadian?) import of HOLY MONEY, the gold embossing was luminous, the stock was incredibly thick and durable, and I loved those band pics.



Probably ended up selling my copy somewhere along the way to pay for a pair of Chelsea boots.



WHITE LIGHT FROM THE MOUTH OF INFINITY was the turning point for me.  Holy shit, what a technicolor album that was!  I’ve been a fan of everything they’ve done since, although that was the pinnacle for awesome album covers.  And it’s still the only CD I ever overpaid for to obtain a used copy, since it was out of print at the time, and my cassette version was nigh on dead.



But, to rush to the end of my formless tale, the new one is (again) amazing.  I like buying directly from Young God, just so Michael Gira scrawls on my CD.  Plus, they had the balls to release some of Lisa Germano’s stuff, and kicks ass nine ways to Sunday.



In any event, do yourself a favor, grab a copy of LEAVING MEANING. 



When have I ever steered you wrong?

the neon zero

wrote a book about god across
my lover’s pale back


laughed when she cried and when
she bled and this is where you
tell me i’m an asshole and
this is where i agree


this is where i tell you the
world is full of pretty girls


the shopping malls and
post offices are
just waiting to be shot to pieces


all of this freedom and nothing
for any of us to do but
abuse it like a child
left crying out in the rain

YOU AND I ARE NOT THE TRUTH

FUCK YOU AND YOUR EMPIRE OF CORPSES

THE PATH OF LESSER GODS

AND HOW IS IT YOUR DEATH WILL COME TO MEAN SO LITTLE?

A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS

So, I still have a Facebook account, but it’s been a while since I’ve done anything with it.  In this political climate, it all gets tiring very quickly.  Most of my “friends” there are artists, writers, dreaded intellectuals, so we’re all aware of what a feeble little cumstain Trump is.  I admit, back in the day I posted my share of anti-Trump rants, but it gets old.  As does nitpicking over which Democratic candidate should be The One to take him down.  Really, my politics are my own, and a 2-party system is pretty lame, especially when they both spend millions of dollars to squash any other parties (seems sort of non-democracyish to me), and one fat buffoon can come along and totally co-opt one of the 2 parties without really even trying, showing you how shallow their beliefs were in the first place.



Bottom line - he’s a sad, tired old windbag, and I’m pretty sure I’ll still be around when both he and his political career are long dead.



So, that leaves the artists and the smarty-pants and the actual WORK they do. Some of them show this work on Facebook, and I’m all for it.  Some of them post links to other places on the internet where their work has been published, and I love it.  Hell, I do it myself.  Or at least I used to.  I stopped about 6 months ago, because of all the above bullshit, and the precious attitudes of some of the artsy types I’ve meant along the way.



Do I really need to know that you’re on chapter 23 of your projected 75 chapter novel about growing up in a house in a town in a state in a country?



Do I need to know that you just wrote “the best poem” you’ve ever written in your life?  And when someone asks “Can we see it?!” am I really that surprised when your answer is “Oh, no, I’m going to start submitting it.  I don’t want anyone to read it until it gets published!”



And will getting it published somewhere actually validate its greatness?

Newsflash - throw a stone in a ½ empty room, and you’re going to hit at least 3 people who have either just a) written the best poem of their lives, or b) are currently ass-deep in some novel no one will ever give a shit about assuming it ever gets finished.  Which it probably won’t.

So, finally, after much hemming and hawing, the heart of my bitch is this:  are you really a serious writer if you spend a good chunk of every day on social media telling everyone about what it is you’re writing?  I assume you have to eat, sleep and shit at some point.  Maybe you even have a job.  So when do you work on this masterpiece?  Do you spend as much time writing it as you do writing about it?  Probably not.



I like the artists & photographers a bit better.  They tend to just show their finished work.  Maybe talking about unfinished visual art is tougher than talking about unpublished or unwritten writing?  Maybe.



In any event, I am currently ass-deep in trying to finish up a batch of poems that, while they might not be THE BEST WORK I’VE EVER DONE, are still pretty damn good (in my opinion).  Stick around long enough, you’ll probably see them once they’re completed.  Maybe here, maybe in a zine somewhere, maybe in a collection.  I promise not to bug you anymore with their existence, though, until they’ve actually made their way out into the world.



Sweet out.

BUT WHAT IS THE TRUTH, AND WHY DO YOU WANT IT?

THAT LAST SATURDAY BEFORE THE DISAPPEARANCE

YOUR PRECIOUS FREEDOM EXPLAINED

AHOY, CAP'N POOTIN'!!!!

A LOT OF RUSSIAN TRAFFIC AGAIN,

SO BUY, YOU BASTARDS,

BUY!!!

AND BEST OF LUCK TO

THOSE OF YOU

TRYING TO GET

OUT OF THAT COUNTRY….

ARRIVING NOWHERE AFTER TOO MANY YEARS LOST AT SEA

ONLY DOWN, ONLY OUT; A PHILOSOPHY FOR MOTHERFUCKERS

gauze

says to me says jesus rides again like

we both believe there are lions in the holy land,
like we both assume that all
children will grow up

september, you see and, the hazy light of

10:00 a.m. the screams of birds
and i have given up on prayer have stopped
memorizing the names of saints

wish only that the days were warmer

that i had answers for all of the

obvious questions gathering like dust in the
corners of my living room

and so i believe in the roots of trees in

fingers crawling through the dirt to wrap
around forgotten bones and so i come to you
with a handful of heartfelt lies

i turn away from my mother from my sister

in shame and in blindness

the doors of their houses

stand open against the cold

the mornings here are

nothing like the mornings of my childhood

being afraid of every last

fucking thing should be enough

ONCE WE WERE THROUGH FUCKING UP THE FUTURE....

A BITTER NOSTALGIA

OCEAN OF FEAR

AFTER THE BOOK BURNING, WE TURNED TO FACE THE FUTURE

CATHEDRAL OF BONES

cathedral of bones

what the dogs taste

is the meat of jesus christ 
and then they spit it out

what the junkies do is beg

but there is no room for symbolism down 

these empty streets

in the first purple light of five a.m.

children are dying everywhere and the thought i hang onto

is that my son isn't one of them

i have taught myself

the politics of fatherhood
after fifteen years spent trying
to escape the idea of the boy i was

i have built a cathedral of human bones

of meaningless words and angry voices and there is nothing left to put in it

there is nothing to see from the windows

but the flat white smudge of the sun spilling 
across november fields

beyond the fields are the factories

where nothing is made

where the dogs grow hungry in the glow of the neon cross

and home is

where you find yourself when there's 
no place else to run

OF ALL THE THINGS I WILL NEVER GIVE YOU

THE PRODIGAL SON SENDS HIS LOVE

THE INFINITE PRICE OF GOD

CRUSHED BY THE WHEELS OF INDUSTRY

king of kings no. 1

like fucking on shattered glass,
like you and i in the bleakest days of december
where i hide beneath a blanket of ash,
where you sing only words that have crawled through
the blood of castrated fratboy rapists


like the ocean


can’t swim the length of it and
so we drown


end up alone in some terminal room
with 500,000 others just like us


sound of broken bells
beneath a faded blue sky


sound of babies crying


let them grow up to be more than the
joyless wreckage we’ve amounted to

A GREAT SORROW

INTO THE PALACE OF LESSER DEATHS

...AND THEN NOTHINGNESS

imagined grace

weeds and garbage and barbed-wire fences,

nothing to keep in but poison,
no one to keep out but the dead and the dying
and so why do you stay?

where else would you go?

listen

piles of books gathering dust

in a curtained room

pale winter sunlight on the cemetery

follow the road that cuts behind it and

sink up to your knees in the muck at the river’s edge

consider all of the bitterness

your father left you

try to remember the last words

you ever said to him

pretend that they meant something

more than they actually did

in the kingdom of christ

feeling free just for a minute, you and

her, her boyfriend, his girlfriend,
bodies in a room in the heat of august and
one of you said or one of you meant to
say but didn’t, said no talking and
the others agreed, undressed and the baby slept

one of you was sorry afterwards and

one of you was stoned

brilliant sun in a dust-grey

sky, but no shadows

dead-end streets lined with weeds, abandoned

factories thick with
grease and empty premonitions and
one of you said this is a mistake even while you
were doing it again, even while you moaned
someone else’s name, while you screamed up
against the ceiling and, outside, just the
buzz of cicadas

just the stillness of time slipping away

silence like a smothering blanket and

one of you started to say but then one of
you said no talking, offered up lips or a breast,
the taste of sweat and the hum of electricity,
too may or not enough bodies and one of
you blind and one of you deaf and
always the absence of words

one of you without hope or without dreams, taste of

bare flesh on your tongue and the afternoon
brought up hard against dirty windows, the need
for language a thing of the past

(remembered saying i love you but

not to who and not how it brought you here)

(remembered laughter)

one of you feeling the press of someone else’s body

on either side of yours, hearing the news that the
bodies of 25 children had been found among the
dead, but this was a different day and so
why do you connect the two?

who is it that says the pain will

help bring you closer?

laughter, maybe, one of you or maybe

two, and a spilled drink

a broken glass and blood, not much, a

small cut and one of you licking the wound
and the silver sun and a heavy shroud of haze

(time stopped or spinning backwards)

(the one you know to be you crawling

away on filthy hands and raw knees)

a view of powerlines and rooftops,

shimmering trees and blurred hills, arms
around your waist, a hand at your throat and
another between your legs, a tongue, and
one of you says wait, one of you says
stop, and nobody listens

one of you has wings and one of

you wings tattooed

one of you roses, one of you sunflowers,

poppies, one of you the black iris blues and
if there is no father there can be no sin

(if there are no ghosts

there is nothing fear)

and one of you says this out loud

and one of you starts to cry and one
of you turns away

one of you still wants more

one of you always will