Reding is phun

If you look at Glenn Beck's library
record, you won't see...much.
Kanye West has admitted to
never reading books,
although he wrote one.
1 in 15 Americans
can't make sense of a newspaper.
Every first world country
teaches at least two
languages to children starting from birth.
And we don't know our own.
Where did we go wrong?
Did television announce itself
as a deity?
Did our busy hands move too fast
for our eyes to see?
Did we trade poetry
for portability?
Or was it when we knew?
When we knew we were smart enough.
When we knew the coldest wars were over.
When we knew how to advertise.
Maybe.
But maybe,
the end of culture should be blamed on us,
the weak.
The death of our language happened
when we were far too bold to listen
and far too scared to speak.

4 minutes, or damn near.

In the passenger seat of a
Chevrolet Cavalier, one of the
greatest gifts I've ever met
confesses they call her bipolar.
I tell her I am, too.
They just haven't caught me yet.
If they set a trap made of
6-pack rings and suicide attempts
I'd be fucked.
But they won't.
Instead, people become uncomfortable
when I tell them I was a canceled abortion.
Do you get it yet?
I'm not supposed to be here.
I drank a bottle of nail-polish when I was two.
Gave my mother a week before I tipped
the aspirin pill case back.
Stomach pumps are longer than you'd think.
But perhaps you can tell me what
it's like to have a purpose-filled life.
I party with the best of 'em.
Which means I drink alone.
If you ask, I'll tell you it gets
rid of the headaches in my chest.
Some days I feel like a latex balloon
no one has the breath to fill back up.

So where's the ambulance?
Where are the white apes in white jackets?
I respect this world enough
to leave it
with one less dreamer.
One less chance.
And you can doubt my wings. I wouldn't expect
the lot of you to
see anything you couldn't proclaim a war against.
For calling yourselves believers and faith healers
you sure are blind to a love
built on empathy.
Pull the bit from your mouth
before you speak to me.
If you're right, I'll hang myself from your reins.
I've wanted nothing more
than to watch you watch me
suffocate in a hope chest.
Tucked underneath forgotten birthday cards
and a first marriage wedding dress.
The only thing worth hearing about me
will be my eulogy. It will read
like a grocery list for insomnia.
They'll decorate my coffin with
Parisian cafe charm because
I was an artist,
and artists adore elitist culture.
But if I have my way.
they'll march my body to a landfill
so I won't ever decompose.
And there I will lay, staring at all the stars
I threw away.
The sun will rise
to broken promises dancing on my grave.
And I won't blame them for holding a grudge.

I want out of a world where
your sins outlast you
and riches are held in currency.
Give me a world
where Raskalnikov weeps
and New York can finally sleep.
I want truth stitched into me
like a Star of David in the ghetto.
The Gestapo better bring their rifles.
I have no intention of going quietly
into the night.
I encased my heart in iron bars
that rusted when I cried
I pried them apart.
So don't call me a tin man
I have miles of love inside.
I'll rip open your permanent
record and stamp
"Too Gorgeous To Die".'
Just like the sky,
your eyes hold the stars in line.
Don't shut them, yet.
Sacrifice complacency for
acceleration.
Put your lead foot on the
burn pedal until
we all catch fire.
Mimic the sun.
Chase down the dreams you had before
they told you it couldn't be done.
They are trying to cut off our fingers
so lets all give them one.
Lick the teeth of your heroes
and call it a kiss.
Spit on the wrists of
anyone who tells you fairy tales don't exist.
Because we shouldn't be here.
We dreamers.
We rogues of a new dawn.
We love-song singers
and tear-hiders.
We were always told
to fall in line
so we leaped out,
foreheads glistening in sweat spelling out
"we aren't beaten yet".
And I'll keep
playing psalms on the harmonica.
And you'll keep painting smiles
on nativity sets.
And before this shit gets
us in the end,
we will weep passion
until those empty veins
run red again.

My grandfather was 85
when his wife left this world
and him.
He told me it wasn't enough, anymore.
He had stopped moving inside.
And I said "Grandpa, I don't blame you.
True hope in this world doesn't
come often. But I know,
for all the things that
want to kill us in this world,
when we love,
we find the only
thing worth dying for.