The CoOpt If they can put a face to the movement They can blacken both it’s eyes If they can hold its hand When the photo’s planned They can frame it how they like If they fashion us an idol Then the limelight floods our sight And they can pose beside the movement With a cardboard picket line In a crowd of paper labor dolls With copy-pasted signs On a safely guarded soundstage Of Bezos’s design Where the Fortunes of 500 CEO’s have been divined There now rise words that curse the movement’s limbs for all of time That, For all its strength of labor it will walk with withered step And will wave a rusting Sabre as it heaves a laboured breath As it coughs through all the cancers born of Bezos’s request Who’d prefer your starving neighbors locked in civil war for crumbs he left But, soon, your cache of crumbs will mark your slums for violent theft From those who act directly on behalf of those with insufficient limb to lift their hoarders heft Landlords order mortars sworn to render boarders’ torsos cleft Now tune that down a quarter-step Ego, Soul, and Organ Death Any month that ends in embers Rot, through every crop, has crept Nothing fit to eat, at least there’s lots of JP Morgan Reps I remember when we lived on empty promises through every winter Now, The grapes of Wrath are plump, and they are harvested directly out of Martha’s Vineyard Where the soil’s awfully rich and all the fertilizer’s even richer My pallet’s not chromatically balanced, It’s a cavalcade of crimson and it paints a pulsing picture It is gritty and it’s ugly It is viscerally stunning And it ain’t fit for consumption Like the water in your cistern Go and ring your Congressman, and tell that pig it’s his turn Poverty awaits, and there’s a seven-dollar wage for him to sit and watch his mansion full of shit burn Although he won’t be paid directly; he will soon receive an email that’s supposed to have a link, but, when it finally shows, it’s empty, so he’ll have to call support for confirmation that it sent right, and THEN he’ll get a shortcut to a poorly-managed website where he’ll submit a claim that must be notarized in person All to finally be denied Because he made too much the prior year to qualify for reimbursement And now he knows the bitter taste of just a single day that all our Retail workers face. He knows the kind of day our Teachers have The kind of day the janitors and lab technicians share with all the nursing staff The kind of daily struggle that’s a constant state of fear for all the working class The white noise in their heads that’s born of stress, and turned to bursting glass The constant thought the other shoes about to drop, the size of half a city block, that wouldn’t stop for you, you’re just a worm to smash You’re just another massacre they’ll call a clash You’re just a frozen passenger before the crash You’re just another Afghan holding frozen cash Assets all immobilized by Joseph Biden, King Of ICE, the self-professed Iconoclast Hosting dinner parties for his parasitic donors with some Donner Party Party Snacks Nothing short of Hearty, if you’ve heart enough, or lack thereof, to call it that. But Who’d have thought the meaning of the average persons life Was to work, and sweat, and die To keep the Blackstone Holdings wallet fat? Or even worse, that some are turned to chum to serve as Powerbars for bureaucrats Psychopomp and circumstance Every time you sign your rights away, you’ll earn rewards, and at a hundred thousand points, you can redeem them for your purpose back And it’s None the worse for wear except a heavy coat of surface cracks Courtesy of those who chose the path that dips its toes into the Jeffrey Epstein Virgin Bath Courtesy of Congress and the Persian Gulf Expansion Pack All our rations held for ransom, Kept alive on honeyed words that slowed down all our actions Til we’re helpless when the ants attack Stripped to little ribbons and then scattered to the winds like the million little secrets the oppressors shadow hand redacts The million lives it stamped out in Iraq until it’s hands were black machinations sacrosanct, and cancerous, and flavor-packed We’ve got just the blacksite for your whistleblowers Baker Act Somewhere in the weeds, Beyond the pines Somewhere, oddly, Google somehow knows just how to find It’s right there in the file they’ve compiled all this time With the 7-trillion thoughts that ever came across your mind And everything that ever turned you on, Or made you cry Your truest deepest fear, and all the shame you sought to hide The thoughts you dare not speak aloud Lest they be weaponized Have been loaded in the chamber, and they’re aimed between your eyes Meanwhile, in your cell at home, they’ll confiscate your blinds They’ll say you’ve waived your privacy They’ll show you where you signed Now You don’t control your thermostat, It’s locked at 85 And You can’t refuse the dermal graft That logs you into Prime You’re just another wretch they’ll come and fetch from out the Vermin Camp to mop some bloody floors and give a couple boots an oral shine Oiled roots that move and writhe beneath a redlined human tide whose viscous sheen and toxic slime exists somewhere between a kind of Diet Coke and Turpentine The last of us are first in line The curtain’s up, we’re streaming live With censored scripts and sponsored rights Subject to changing overnight On Pepsi’s whim Or Pfizer’s spite Or Lockheed Martin’s bomb supply Or any time we need to breed some fear to get the stocks to rise For those who need some distance, wedged between their public image And the list of those who’ve visited the global child concubine A client list that shall remain nameless A client list at least a dozen pages Of honeypotted Politicians ripened for the knife twist Once you’re dead, it’s safe to say you don’t present a flight risk Once your lips are sealed for good There’s zero chance you might slip And spill the beans about your recent string of overnight trips Dropped from heights you can’t achieve without a little nitrous Down beneath the roots of truth, tenuous and fibrous The currency of youth would seem a tier above the Midas Christ, I gagged a little as I wrote “The Currency Of Youth” I’ve yet to find the music that hath charm enough to soothe My eyes are open wide, And I’m at terms with what I view Until I shut my eyes at night, and see it, too. Phantom limbs of reminiscence twinging like a sickened witness twisted in the spinal cringe the traumatized revisit every minute Every statement picked to shreds before it’s finished All their dignity diminished All their liberties relinquished All your furnaces extinguished All your means of warmth are flickering off into the distance All the ways you know to make a living growing listless All your savings spilled to fill a chalice meant for Pfizer And they’ll drink it’s vibrant ichor Like they’ll down a round of blood from out the last Sumatran Tiger Light a nice cigar for every man they left to die awaiting trial up in Rikers Do a line of blow for every drug offender turned to lifer Do another line for every Hybrid Judge and Agent of the instrumental Prison Profit System that they’ve hired They’ll wear your movement like a Mech they get to pilot Yelling “Hot Labor Summer” Through a microphone inside it So all our eyes were elsewhere when the parties both collided and they formed a wave of fascism that somehow dwarfed their sum provided A danger greater than it’s parts combined A danger made the greater when the honest source is buried, but the narrative is wearing platinum labels saying “Trusted Source” that cover up its Warning Signs If you’d have told me all of this at 40 Sunday Mornings, I would like to think I’d meet it without disbelief, but really, might have struggled just to reckon with it, grappled just to ratify And wretched a little bit to glimpse the bigots that we’ve gratified Just hit fourteen hundred words, and, Kid, I’m barely satisfied I’ve hardly started carving bars from off this chunk of Malachite I found, and claimed, and Vandalized The rest is better left to settle one on one, just Gates and I I’ll desecrate his tesseract I’ll deconstruct his great design And build upon the very spot on which it stood to touch the skies A statue in his image Wrapped in Tapestry of tannerite So Bill would get to see himself immortalized then blown to bits in record time Blown to scraps of bronze that he can touch, and hold, and recognize Face to face and frozen side by side immobile Gemini This must be that ‘Self Reflection’ people had suggested that, instinctively, had always felt, to you, like being patronized Cause, if we talk, I’m talking down If I speak, it’s at my feet, like you were six beneath the ground I’ll address you where you OUGHT to be, and not where you stand now My gaze won’t meet your eyes, much less your crown. My praise is not to bathe in, it’s to drown. I bet you didn’t know that you could overload an ego to the point of blacking out And that’s what it’s about If you can kill a man with kindness You can smother him with clout Reverse his engineering at the hands of hungry crowds He who bought up all the farmland and, is casing, now, the clouds Police will be the farmhands paid to put us out to pastures That are shades of gray and brown I can hear those bastards fast approaching, screaming fills the town An occupying army of Abuser, fascist clowns And some lachrymose millennials intent to vote them out I laugh for those, and pity those, who vote with zero doubt Whose destinies as living ghosts they’re all embracing, bowed The cops are inching closer and they snuff out every sound And all I had to do was shut my mouth I’ll let you guess the tragic end result of Jesse Jett who tried his best, but ultimately failed attempts to hold his tongue Who couldn’t find the will existing anywhere within him to begin to douse the fire rising up inside his lungs Born of watching ignorant and educated shits press impressionable lips to boots that, just inside a month or two, will kick them from the bottom rung. Home is anywhere you lay your head, once the oppressor’s hung Soon we’ll cleanse our memories of the songs that the oppressor sung And, One by one, the words will turn to dirt that cannot hurt you Cannot infiltrate your movement Can’t impress upon your Sons Can’t convince your daughters they’ve no power of their own No agency beyond the task of keeping up a home When the last of all the lobbyists is laid beneath the loam There will be no profit sewn in fields of bone We will only reap the sleep and stolen wages that we’re owed And commence The Great Unpaving of your quarter-mile driveways Terraforming Tarmacs, and industrial roads Paranormal contracts dissipate to mist and disappear amidst the gloam Disconnect the phone Fist connects to stone Somewhere in the thicket hums to life the buzz of crickets into one combining drone But, narrow down your vision, and you’ll see that every cricket, is, in fact, a tiny drone Coming to inform you that you must proceed directly to your designated zone, or you’ll be tazed until you’re prone Til you’re Pissing blood and whispering to no one in particular, just all of the particulates that occupy the air The only occupants you share this giant coffin with, At least you win the Arguments Cause they’re too busy hogging all your oxygen to care Hell, you’re hardly cognizant, there’s really nothing there. There’s nothing close to conscious In your stare Your eyes look like you’re off in old Oahu Where you don’t have ANY problems where you haven’t given thought to all the aquifers below you full of fuel enough to launch you back To when you eyed Hawaii, And Hawaiians told you NOT to A little like the Mayans, Humankind will leave a lot to deconstruct from what we kept behind to represent our legacy Less the stoic temples, Less the gods resembled, Less the carven lions standing watch Above a vine-entangled mezzanine More the arid soil, More the sea of oil, More the mark we leave behind is best exemplified by finding out Lake Mead is slightly caffeinated Methamphetamine Warped and shifted Torn and twisted History revisited The storm that buried Kennedy, Swept the streets of Medellin Stirs the strongest synchronized, synthetic, sleeper-cell emotions center mound at Wrigley Field, and harnesses the energy WE call that ‘Conditioning’ THEY call it ‘Serenity’. Those who crave obedience. Will swear they aren’t your enemy. But LIVE to see us orchestrated Moving like a centipede Full consent. Submissive cadence. Terms accepted, Didn’t peek. Needs neglected. Couldn’t speak. Speech affected. Only leaded fruit to eat. Only fracking gruel to drink Two for One on 40-Weight At Exxon-Mobil Smoothie King I tried to do the movie thing I walked away and flicked the match But never heard the ‘Boom’ to match Just Boomer waves of Schumercrats But humor’s futile self defense Against such brutal facts: That some will never hear the words Before they see the ax. Who’ve never heard ‘Protect & Serve’ and checked behind their backs And who trust in politicians Kept alive on purely Duracells & Duramax A little dash of ritual, A jug of pharma cocktail, A Little splash of Burning Man in Nursing Class So let this be the call that stirs the hearts of the emerging class That churns through the recession’s dirt to rise, reborn in wall street’s ash We must shake off the pedagogues And Pentecost the Plutocrats And there is no salvation without doing that. Now, in the name of clarity, The Pentecost that I invoke Is just the part with flaming tongues, And not the Hope of Holy Host It’s mostly for the imagery of all these bloated, greedy folks Who break our backs, and snake our taxes, treated like a weenie roast And I’d take any bet that if we let our captors cook You wouldn’t see a bunch of struggling single parents show with worried looks, like “Someone help, we NEEDED those!” “If we don’t have the Plutocrats, then who will raise the interest on our student loans?” “If we don’t have the Plutocrats, then who will cut the staff to pay for bonuses for CEO’s of Senior Homes?” “Without our noble plutocrats, then who would gut the budgets for anything providing education to the public?” “Who would neuter innovation that could benefit the nation cause it wouldn’t turn a profit, so it wasn’t worth discussing?” “Without our precious plutocrats, then who’ll ensure that poverty took hold of our enlightenment, and never let us see the Sun, or ever smell that rain was coming?” No one’s gonna stop and if they did, they’d say “the warmth is nice” Or “God, the flames are stunning.” Cause who would miss or pity all those monuments to nothing? Those who’ve witnessed cities turned to husks the wealthy drained with but a touch to pave the way for a development that’s “easy money” that never seems to trickle down to someone hungry Or anyone beyond their inner-circle-jerk of golfing buddies And i’m not here for slinging mud, it’s what you DO, it’s what you LOVE, you’re only PIGS, I do not give a SHIT if you’re a little muddy. I need to see you destitute, and see you struggling. Desperate just to feed yourself a scrap of SOMETHING. Desperate to the point you take a bite of crow and know a taste that’s truly humbling. We only can begin to tear the old foundation down once we confess, that, yes, it’s crumbling. And we all know it’s crumbling. We can see collapse as plain as day on every corner. Neath a veil of thin decorum Like a blueprint overlaid Made by the economic forum The Plans they’ve drawn, and quartered. The graves they’re counting early, and the million more back-ordered. I would rather take a stand than live and die by their accordance I would rather see the Forest ONCE than corpses formed of brick and mortar. And if the band you’re in starts playing censored tunes, then I’ll see you on the dark side of the border.

La Mort Boheme (Walter Cronkite, George Bush, and Clint Eastwood walk into a ritual…) A tinted caravan is coiled under Onyx skies It weaves the wilds, winding deep within the Forest’s bowels Where famous faces, every one of which you recognize Are all encircled, every one adorned in scarlet cowl And in the center of the circle sits a sacrifice With 30 robed and hooded figures stood before a massive owl It’s face is caked in moss, the torches light; the flush of life is rushed into its carven eyes, as horns exude a wounded howl And, soon, there grows among the wealthy crowd a thunderous swell The feral mouths of power, blackened words on blighted dirt They heave communal dirge unbodied more than tongue could tell A kiss of Saturns gas; in Satyr flames, the Grotto bursts And, soon, the CEO’s will swirl immoral sarabands And, soon, The Oldest Guard will bloom a grove of bacchanal And, soon, the truth of power stares up from the bearers’ hands And I would see too much to ever feel like I came back at all I’d see too much to not return there in my every dream. I’d see too much to not see cultists on the silver screen To feel like i’d returned the same man i’d departed as, who didn’t see the words of binding spelled out in the autographs I can’t explain to those that couldn’t grasp the half of it That didn’t SMELL that sacrifice That didn’t HEAR the baphomet You’ll never speak the words If you can’t comprehend their alphabet To hear the Ataraxia that calls to all the rhapsodists You don’t know the exodus of all the earthly morals The Triumvirate Trismegistus would purge before the start The invocation ALWAYS was intended as a choral And they carve you all but hollow so its words might fill your heart What rites they have, to immolate and purge their worldly cares So they are never bound by sympathy To see or hear our pain they can edit out the screams of children piercing through the air They can bound it, black, in Muslin wrap, and wash it all in flame So, Cronkite, Bush, and Eastwood walk into a ring of runes While Longfellow, and Holmes are lying, buried, in Mount Auburn they cry aloud “Cremation!” neath a silver sylvan moon and set their effigy ablaze that it may satisfy their sovereign An offering to providence Presented in a coffin By those who rose to prominence through War and Entertainment The Gala glow of Pageantry that hides a private auction That we don’t need attend because we’re there in form of payment Maybe that’s their whole arrangement, made to keep the dream alive, Perpetuate enslavement, and still find a way to sleep at night Now we know the measures that they’ll take, and WHAT THEY DEIFY Never break the chain, and don’t let Cheney near the Hematite Somewhere beneath the gaping onyx sky Where a beast was brought to raucous life that never truly dies An Owl is standing vigil at an altar in a grove And the hoods all cover faces that you know.

The Sound Of Sirens Hello, Blacklist, my old friend I knew you’d show your face again And toll the bell for decent men Amid the sound of sirens In restless dreams, I walk alone Down newly-unpaved county roads Past newly-empty rows of homes Amid the sound of sirens The words of the prophets Have been edited to bits Censored, spun and shadowbanned And flash-banged in the blitz Condemned for every speech Before they have the chance to spit That their spit might dare to touch The sound of sirens And all our slaughtered prophets like some human hailstones, fell, and drowned in liquid Afghan funds That Biden froze himself For hours, we endured their voices Crying out for help As they echoed in the well of Sirens Their words were scrubbed from subway walls Fed to the tigers of Tammany Hall And our constitution, encompassing all, within the sound of sirens And all our leaders bowed and prayed and mourned the corpses they all made, lit candles at their pauper’s graves And blessed the Sound Of Sirens They wrung their hands to empty air Since they’d allowed no cameras there, And nothing changed, and no one dared Disturb the Sound Of Sirens “Fools,” said I, “You do not know What tempest, in this country, grows That soon will swell to lay you low Consume you in its undertow” “What human waves, what human foam Will wash your gorgeous, gilded homes As far away as Ancient Rome, and drown the sound of sirens.” So use your voice, that it might teach, these numbered days our voice has reach and cry, that all might hear your speech, Above The Sound Of Sirens

Tyrant Tartare A symphony of occupying sirens Strike before you’ve fired up your irons Drop you to the dog pack, slice you up, divide you up amongst the lions Everybody chasing, for a tiny taste of the lifestyle of a tyrant Me, I only want a taste of tyrant I like my meat rare Where the red’s still vibrant No one wants to work, so we’re now hiring any hungry product of impoverished environs Who’s Desperate enough to eat to work a 40-hour week and still not make a single end that meets another end beside it before you even knew to speak, your poverty was long decided Your future preordained into a potter’s field the state provided Heaven sent, and laser-guided Straight into the mouths of those who saw the truth, and kept it quiet Right into the parasite that works the nerve that bought their silence Somewhere undisclosed within the Virgin Islands Where stomach-turning Irony’s the likeliest of private pilots Drop a little weight off over open-oceans rolling mileage Never ask a sleeping Agent what’s behind those rolling eyelids Never ask a decent act of Joseph Biden Never ask a Voting-Blue-No-Matter-Who Democrat about their favorite politicians finance Or just how many licks until they’re crashing off their Vyvanse And Comedown to the brutal truth Of shackled feet and tied hands Rolling amber waves of piss That soak your Broken Promised-Land For worse, or better, I will live and die an honest man Who crawled, and clawed, and fought to stand where truer words were contraband Where Human Birth was in demand, Regardless of your circumstance So you were forced to term By laws that never saw a doctors hands So, A plague on both the houses of the ruling class May all their shifting sands be burned to pools of cooling glass So, everywhere they look, their own reflection’s drooling back With hungry eyes, unrecognized, unverified, and Bible Black.

What Serves As Vanguard No, intro, folks, I’m rippin’ in Opening my Notes app like a vat of acid; Let’s begin Point me to the journalists I’m dipping in- Wait a minute, Holy shit, Something must be wrong, it’s just a couple kids Not a single wrinkle on their privileged skin Couple whiskers you can JUST make out through all the clout that’s dribbling off their little chins The Vanguard charge of a Red Rose Strike Force, Mouths wide open as they charge into the Hype Wars Now, usually I’d be obliged to take my time And savor every moment of the movie of me stretching out this 2-piece Til I eat it like a 5-course Usually, I’d lift them up then drop them twenty-five floors Strip their image back, expose the eyesore But its Sad to see the DSA make cattle of the pre-pubescent Sad to witness Jimmy-Dore-Derangement-Syndrome-addled brains of adolescents So Maybe I should cut some slack, and throw them back Like, once they’re done maturing, they might get the message Maybe once they’re All Growed Up, they’ll learn their lesson Maybe they’ll look back a couple years from now and cringe Just like I did the day I found those old Obama pins behind my dresser Your Vanguard’s just a couple drips, No ripples to be made I guess if you carry water, You’re an honorary blue-wave Defending our Democracy, like anything survived for you to save So, Arbiters of good intentions Tell us who is TRULY leftist Let them wield identity like such a holy weapon And let no one through the gate Who’s unordained While you’re both Streaming live with boot-receptacles agape A couple overzealous Paladins, Decrying ‘Bad Faith’ Here to show Kulinski you can fit your whole fist So his size 8 shoes aint shit If that’s what serves as Vanguard, then your army’s got a lot to lose Except for the respect of those Who’d jump at shining Schumer’s shoes, Those who treat the issues like a pleasant conversation that they’re having on a dinner cruise But never once, in my whole life Has punching up Felt so much like it’s child abuse Like maybe I should save my scorn For those whose lobes are fully-formed Who aren’t just human moths that swarm the brightest clout, to keep them warm Maybe it’s not worth the mess Of moppin guppies off the floor Strike a nerve, then CPS comes knocking at my chamber door Cut em loose, wait it out an album cycle, maybe four If they didn’t learn by then, I’ll proceed with no remorse Once they’re just your average centrists Drumming up support for wars Ask you for receipts As they both cite a state department source The pipeline’s pretty short from Clueless Faux-Progressive Larva, to the fragile Centrist Chrysalis where criticism’s trauma, To spreading wide your liberal wings, To shit on all the fauna, as you host your weekly brunch & Sit-down chitchat With Ro Khanna You’d both do well to listen close, and look me in the eyes: My words will spare you only once: I don’t show mercy twice. My lyrics aren’t the kind of place where people leave alive, But I don’t eat low-hanging fruit, I leave it for the flies.

Union Drip I came to be a prophet, but I’ll settle for pariah We filled the air with DDT and called the wind Mariah We cheer on every victory in the war against Goliath Watched them model Christian Smalls and pose him with Zendaya They’re gonna milk that Union Drip Till the very last Simp Takes the very last sip And when it’s all wrung dry And it’s not worth shit Then they’ll leave it laying right where it is You can watch them let it all drip into the ditch Here’s the sitch Biden will invoke the witch of January 6 as a quick fix Tell you that she’s here to fill your bellies with some twigs and sticks Rocks, berries, and a capitol brick Concurrently, he’s finger-wagging all of the republicans while sucking their proverbial dicks Fluff em up a couple of concessions in the flick of a bic Just need lights, and a camera, and prompter, and someone to monitor the prompter who knows his shit Joe’s gonna open the show with a few short words to be chanted by old white folks, wearing old white cloaks, who will March in a circle around a progressive political star who is purely a place to spit But it’s all good fun, and there’s no harm done when the banks yell ‘cut’, and they’re calling it quits It’s all flint water gone under the bridge Outta sight, outta mind, and dissolved in the mist. Joe’ll only need a flick of the wrist and the throat of the movement is slit It’ll sputter and gurgle and choke for a bit bleed out in a viral clip And as the last of its life force flows to the floor, he’ll say “THAT’S my idea of a Union Drip” See, the eyes are a glimpse of the soul So it says a whole lot if they aren’t exposed And your message is branding you stamped on your clothes And the media storm is wherever you go Then you go meet Joe, and you laugh at his quips and you shake his hand with a nice firm grip, And you cry “Good Trouble” through the loafers on your lips Too true, that’s a Union Drip. Who knew that the victory gift for your Unionization’s a DNC script And it’s nice and precise like a sniper Who’s trying to cripple you right where you live The target they lead is your wallet, they seek to dismember your hands so you can’t feed your family Or pick up your kids While they flatter themselves into orgasm feigning respect for our Unions, who wired our grids Who welded our ships Who died for our rights to not witness our children conscripted to 12 hour shifts in the mines from the time that they’re FIVE When they know damn well that the Union had THRIVED til they shattered its hip Showed up and handed out Pinkerton slips Now it’s as simple as status and symbol and making the star of the movement so bright that the movement itself is eclipsed. Now our mouths grow dusty and dry on the promise of Union Drips That trickle down out of a wealthy fist That is squeezing the heart of the working class hard as it can til it finally ruptures and splits Punctures a valve, and it laughs at the sound of the squish. The way that they laugh at the sight of us Making a wage-slave wish To a man on the cover of Vanity Fair saying ‘Eat The Rich’ So This is for those who rely on commissions Or toil for tips watching their bosses drink bottles of profits while all you get offered are jugs of their piss If you seek out the soul of the movement Or proof that the movement exists Try looking in the eyes of Chris And when you find that you can’t, then the answer’s as simple as this: The movement is never one single face And a drip is a leak to repair or replace We won’t eat the rich to suit expensive tastes, We’ll consume cause survivals at stake.

Consider It A Wynn Our hope is growing hollow, and our patience wearing thin The sun is being swallowed, by a dusk that grows within The heavy slab is sliding shut, soon light won’t filter in So if you choose to be the torch, consider it a Wynn. ~ Before they censor every thought through sensors in your skin Before they start the fire, though they’ll never mention Flint Before our hell is frozen and the ice as thick as sin If you have heart to bear the torch, consider it a Wynn. ~ If you had voice to protest, but were drowned out by the din and you should choose to rise above as embers on the wind go smear the court with soot and carry ash on swirling limb go fill the lungs of bastards that they know the smell of HIM Burn bright, and be the beacon that will light us home again Should you so choose to be the torch, consider that a Wynn. ~ Jesse Jett ~ Rest In Peace, Wynn Alan Bruce ~

LIVE From The Hall Of The Undead Hold the phone ~ The end’s not abrupt, like an overdose It’s a year in slow motion, like a, well, sort of like an overdose Sort of like you’re comatose Watching, out of body, while they blow the donors, close the polls, and Say they’ve saved the nation’s soul, Safely from the comfort of their mega yacht Which looks a lot Like someone took a motorboat and bred it with a summer home It floats at peace, somewhere alone, somewhere beyond the dogs and drones and all the noxious toxic smoke that’s in our lungs, and blood, and bones, This island Earth, this Thunderdome The undertow In our undertones Have gun, will travel to sack Damascus take half of their oil, then have to roll Come back tomorrow for the rest to-go Got an axe to grind Got a grid to roam Got a world to police On behalf of the half of the one percent Who craft raw consent That you will never own a home In their paid op-eds I’ve been slogging through the trough of bots and paid ops and obvious fresh feds Lobbyists break bread with the salt of the earth Coming to you live from the hall of the undead Constituents unfed The policies promised were unsaid come sunset, Unacknowledged and impoverished drudges who trudge the underground led around solely by the gaslight Brighter to our bleary eyes than halos made of tungsten Tighter than the knot that your tongue’s in Welcome to this country’s final form and it’s soulless sole function Bet you hopped a dozen homeless folks to catch your bruncheon You can keep your private clubs, I’ll wield a public truncheon Crack a house of skulls that only represent corruption Puppets made of shit and greed that all our taxes barely feed and all your checks cannot compete With that sweet education budget They’ll lay the Dynamite and detonate at early light and all we are, from that day on is a silent movie firefight A Cold War by the fireside Vanities all burning bright Sort of like a mosh pit on a starless night Sort of like a molten curse I wrote in words of diorite Sort of like a spoken verse I hoped would serve to spark the surge And instigate the type of purge That burns their perch, and plays their dirge, and shepherds our oppressors to the dirt from whence they came Every word I’ve written is a version of my name An extension of the purpose I am taking to my grave I’ll be silent as the earth is, with Democracy’s remains While you’re marching on the surface for the hope of Roe V Wade Trying to push your leaders back to where they’d always stayed, Wondering what made them change their minds November eigthth Deciding that it’s just a couple DINO’s playing fake, So, NEXT time, we can vote THEM out, and things will be okay! Try kneeling with an open mouth, the boots might go away! Like every politician, whether left, right or center’s not a flea-infested predator that’s Playing with their prey Loving every moment That we’re struggling to keep going But then, once we finally die, the thrill of hunting’s not the same So they’re off to greener pastures Where they’re after tougher game And there’s no attempt at husbandry - The meat all goes to waste They don’t come to fill their stomachs Just to fill a trophy case They don’t really like the way the peasants taste Besides, they’re full of plastic, anymore, it’s hardly safe Better off to eat their raises on a bed of interns, poached and braised Too drunk to hear the crying of the ghosts of slaves Fossil-record Frozen wage Rosencrantz & Gilded age Existential pressure-plates A Presidential motorcade Followed by your owners forcing you and yours to procreate And then the donors press ‘reset’, the villains alternate, And go the way of Lieberman Who skipped out like a stowaway Now, 9/11 was a holy day For brokers of the war brigade and hawks atop the stock exchange It’s Economic growing pains for working class with taxes paid But, past the gates, the scent pervades Of record- breaking profit gains You’ll huff it, drooling, till it dwindles down, and off it fades And, God, it Smells like it was worth it’s weight in office space It’s just a glimpse Of how our jealousy indoctrinates How Elon’s smug and mocking face Exemplifies our Rodent Race It shouldn’t take a lottery to keep your place You shouldn’t need a miracle for groceries. You shouldn’t have to ration out your insulin, as someone’s greed necessitates, that’s not how it’s supposed to be. These ancient fucks aren’t sacred saints, they’re mafioso potentates Who don’t deserve devotion, or the mercy born of pity’s grace The singlehanded scavengers of life from every cityscape Who wave the ol’ inflation wand, like: “Here’s your cost-of-living raise” And, on command, the drips that form the righteous Democratic wave are crashing loud, their voices proud, to gush and moan their praise. God bless the lesser evil that has numbered all our days.

Redline White Power Blueprint They Strung us up, and gutted us, and wrung us dry and gray And they never broke their gaze As they sanctioned all their citizens, whose battle cry is “Thanks!” For every thousand pensions burned, they earn an Abrams tank that aren’t intended to defend us, they will just be used against us once we’re sick of being dividends and dare to storm the banks And we’re kettled, gassed, and flanked Drowning, mouths agape, Saturated full of mace Thirsting even for the metal in the leaded glass Obama drank And THAT’S the closest thing to reparations they’ll accommodate They’re busy looking for Ukrainians to make it rain, killer swag from Raytheon, and cold stacks of compensation The Good Ole USA has quite a long and storied past of patting Nazis on the back, which helps explain the ugly fact a former Nazi headed NASA, one was NATO’s chief of staff, and one the Secretary Gen of the United Fucking Nations THAT’S the soul they talk about restoring in their speeches, and their banners, and their ads that run ad nauseum on every station And, no, we’re not the greatest generation But the greatest generation didn’t seem to care or notice Nazis making mass migrations This is the Final boarding call for the S.S. Assimilation Watch, and wave, and don’t connect the names just stay complacent Til you’re fast asleep, and can’t perceive the Fash-adjacent Tapestry of redline blueprints, from white power masons And the architects who dreamed each bigot brick in our foundation Who built an institution that colludes on base of race to see if, when you run the race, you ever make it out the gates, or if they start you in the winners circle, which case, you can thank your birth right, namesake, good grades, fresh face, and possibly the fact you didn’t grow up under occupation And that’s the very crux of the American abomination It’s what this country fucks into your head on every station, through faux opposing views of red and blue that serve the same predation The devil’s in the details and the implications The devil’s in the thinly-veiled intimidations The devil’s voted ‘present’ every session And attended every Oval Office conversation And that’s how things have gone since our creation And Will until we kill the last crosanthemum and numb the last sensation From the glacier to the streets From the river to the sea To a little stream in Ecuador, as black as it can be. I know it’s hard to watch the trauma On a tiny screen You’ve gotta pinch and zoom to catch them changing magazines Single-digit deaths in standard Def Just doesn’t sell the scene We’re gonna need it 4K Morte More Gore, More Hardcore, And a pretty heavy splatter-theme And now you’re satisfied If a bit desensitized You shake your head a dozen times Say we’ve run amok with crime And then decide police are gonna need Some more support, and more funds, if they’re gonna thwart the next seven Columbines You say this wave of violence is like nothing that you’ve ever seen Guess you’ve only been with us a couple weeks Guess you’d say the future’s pretty fucking bleak

DJ Daedalus Maybe in the future, I won’t fucking speak I’ll fall in love with the acquired taste of holding tongue and biting cheek turn the coffee off and finally give up fighting sleep Then, in a decade when my son is wondering what I did while they were squelching rights under the guise of finding peace I could tell him that I’d finally had enough and found a hobby where I didn’t grind my teeth Took my every passion and I stuffed it underneath a bunch of basic beats I made to sell for twenty dollars each Every line I wrote that felt a little too insightful, I ignored til they, eventually, were buried down beneath buried with a part of me that’s safely out of reach That which cannot do, and cannot talk enough to teach That didn’t last the siege And stopped attempting scores that told the all-too-honest story of the scene But, rather, kept it stupid simple, with some songs about a creek, and a love at 17 That, in 3 and some-odd minutes, doesn’t stray from G and D Whose sole artistic purpose is to end up on ‘repeat’ so it can help to pad your streams and That’s the whole extent of the intent of its release It’s commodified and trial-size, and harmless as can be Except one simple sample that my handler sent to me: A background noise for background noise, that’s not to be perceived But research shows the tone embeds in people’s heads for WEEKS And he said if it makes the single, then we’ve got a gold e.p. The kind of tune the unassuming Dance to all too easily the propaganda we don’t understand, but we believe, They call him DJ Daedalus, He’s famous in these streets Come Catch him live on Friday nights, the highest spot in Crete Can’t play you ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’, it melted in the heat His wax is to distract the mass, and keep them on their feet The beat will drop like Icarus, and plummet, Sun to Sea In a tragedy that history is happy to repeat Some write the songs that tell the crowd our prison’s something sweet I write the songs that warn the crowd we’re not allowed to leave. You can sneak it past the censors if you’re clever and discreet You just gotta add some ‘Woah-Oh’s on the fives and on the threes Like Icarus cried “YOLO” when his feathers felt the breeze And it was lit until his drip began to dribble more than freeze Like the whoop of the millennium when Sisyphus concedes And accepts the path before him and how powerless he seems The boulder isn’t gonna roll itself from ‘A’ to ‘B’ and embracing that will only set us free Not ‘Freedom’ like what you gave up your privacy to keep Not ‘Freedom’ like a flag with blood that’s dried in every crease Not ‘Freedom’ like Bill Gates promoting roaches over meat, Like Those locusts aren’t a plague, they’re just a substitute for wheat But Freedom like you’ll never have to pay for air to breathe Freedom like there’s no one there to force you to conceive Freedom like you’re safe, and have the simple things you need, like an overdue American reprieve