TICKS out in the heat Done with retreat Getting engorged Feeding on you Trapped out in their midst Top of their list Carted away Buried beneath See, see how they crawl With all of their gall Bleeding you dry Until you’re dead Goose step through this Hollow hubris Bring out gallows Useless halos Grinding machine Authored fury Wander out of the mist Hedonic glottal abyss Fire blaze with a hiss Melting climbing again

JOHN BROWN drew a mighty saw Into the flesh of mangled law The blade was lodged in bone Morphine dulled the righteous pain The years moved on but nothing’s changed He molders in his grave Now law’s arm is back again Strangling the life within He is rotting, forgotten He’s not plotting, forgotten Memory fading His name a footnote Fading out Into the void Legacy to be destroyed Work as hard as you can stomach Then work harder: life long spent Be a soldier, small business owner A self starter: there it all went Consecrated, never sated Blood in water, chum your scent Howl and holler, be a father Be a martyr forgotten Father of a failure plan That's outgrowth is a tangled land Breaking down the pearly gates Shattering the dinner plates Food for fodder in the slaughter Trampling police blotters Gathering the grains of structures With hammers drawn the poultice ruptures

THE FLAG OF CONVENIENCE above rows of rusty containers View in the morning: horizon line swallowed by red sky Bad information, a system of accidents waiting Out on the ocean, job insecurity in the wind No one will ever know Go where good sailors go No one will ever know Forced into service: no wages, no food, and no way out A storm closing in now on a voyage doomed from the beginning The cargo is shaking and still they must stick to the schedule No one will ever know Go where good sailors go Down Ships carrying and crewed by the kidnapped and press-ganged, names that we’ll never learn Attribute it to the human element, that’s easy for some to say Those who make the profits will wash their hands of suffering And water eats the evidence, drowns responsibility Attributed to the human element It’s flooding below decks, the engine’s failed, soon there’s nothing but Acceptable losses. Everywhere, every year, it’s just business. No one will ever know Go where good sailors go Down There's a seabird alighting upon an island of trash There's a windowless room no one enters where the bankers boxes loom Somewhere a bottle is smashed and a ship tumbles out and money changes shadowy hands and it happens again Bodies sink, merchandise floats

TYPING AWAY My soul for pay An office filet Until I spin out Hours drag on The day remains Misery cakes With mundane icing Water cooler A place to stay And waste the day As my life drains out This is built on ersatz ground all held up by hollow cogs Printers make a screaming sound Coffee churned into the ground Clacking keys of misery An hourglass with many holes is Draining out as I grow old With every minute I am told that I could stand to work some more But I don’t run a charity To take my time you must pay me Fill your cup with my best regards Drink it up and leave me drained out It needs done so finish it Time is worth commodities So have it on my desk by 5 and Never ever feel alive I’ll glue you to the telephone and Follow you with a drone You’ll never ever have the time your Piece of mind is now a crime So dry your eyes and close the door and Never think of having more My best regards to you It’s time that I am through

OUR SOLE DELIVERANCE in coal mark fingerprints sealed up forever–all we have is the floor Laws and consequence will grow as heaven sent till field of accidents no plan can afford River struck from stone colonial rages home. Old seer shown none but your own face in the sword. Death dreams deeper than our mines and questions reach: in state, in corporate, and in why or wherefore. Sow your seed against the day of recognition, turn the open grave, make peace with our lord It's too late to be graded, it's too late to be helpless, for sake of the waste for the making of war The course is set and sent To Tartarus on our bent backs Plotted, paid grace, the sky waits Fury changing hands Eumenides taming plan tracks through the Forest laid waste and made safe Time machine descends from the cloud to the ground Cyborg steps out, says it’s already right now But as they’re hopping back in, getting ready to bounce We’re not convinced or decided We say thou liest! Centuries later a steamship heaves into view Smokestacks all smoking and so are the crew Passengers dancing under night sky darkest blue And then the iceberg and the panic It’s titanic! I’m coming out of my blackout in the pouring rain To stand and be judgèd before the chorus in shame But I lost my glasses so can I truly be blamed And may I be somewhat forgiven? Oh it’s a living! Terrible namelessness, gloved and assumed Who’s behind us and who’s in pursuit Pray spur onward, in flesh lives the boot- heel. Who dances and who calls the tune? Be reincarnate in carnival state Sublimation wherein stay the age Of chained Erinye’s children brought up on stage In the future which we’ve entertained Hello murder, hello forever, here I am in rising water Numb eternal sleepless drive into the storm

POCKET DOCTOR had a daughter Hearing missing isolation Masticating Mississippi Moving up to Sainted Louis Seeing breathing lack of feeling Pauper placement rotten dealing Wealthy status built on stealing Moving past it fosters healing Growing into revelation Battered unbent indignation Condemnation ruptures her life Mississippi made a Marxist The crackdown Bloomed without the war Hiding She went into a secret plot Paranoid silencing Lies sting Truth will out for everything Some things just take time and work Some things just take work and time

WINDSWEPT HILLS awash with dust Broklahoma bank and trust Foreclosed on their empty hands Breaking down the gates of legal plunder Thompson guns were made to tear asunder Greed and gluttony was their blunder Now the downcast are the ones who run the show Straw bosses are down Huffed and puffed like clowns Slandering around Lamenting their fading Landlords the real criminals The real robbers are the ones who Bleed the working until they’re dry Sympathy lies with him Dillinger a social escape man Blood soaked hills awash with death Starving wretched furied hands Dug his way from out the sands All he wants to be is a farmer In his hands a gun and he’s a charmer Reaching down through years he’s no one’s martyr Dillinger’s a name with noble claims to fame

WE NEED A STRAWMAN to move this along Plucking the strings of our siren song Radio Free is just doublespeak We’ll slaughter a nation to wet our beak When you hit a stymied channel Your ship will run aground again If you need to build a tunnel We’ll fill it up with dynamite If you try to fight against us We’ll cry wolf to humanity Building up a better world Is not an easy task Reading past the naked lies Is a simple ask Breaking crooked temples Will tear off their mask When you add up the cost Of greed and vice It’s less than the cost Of the masses’ might We live in a world Choked in blight We step on the lake And crack the ice Better worlds are struggling out now Construction is sigogglin Getting fed up with our platter Dining out on suffering Bringing forth the sword and plowshare Will grind them into mulch and seed

???

I'M A CONSUMER! I’m a market force Superhuman I’m a human resource I’m regressing To an earlier stage of development I’m not bored or depressed anymore--kneeling before-- Receiving the sacrament Think I’ll have a snack I’m having a snack attack! My reverie, a sampling spree When every thing else is trampling me It reverently handles me And then it speaks! How can this be? You thought you’d found affection Solace in a sweetheart’s embrace You realized it’s only your reflection In the glasses on some smartass’s face Have some of these molasses confections Seek thou understanding Or seek thou to pretend Whence cometh thy candy To spend perchance to vend And do you really want to know? Do you really need the answer? Would you rather be A hoity-toity Tootsie holy Roller Or a Jolly Rancher? There is a squealing scraping sound As smoke rises from the furnace of my bowels And the avenging angel from the height of the tower Is coming down on my gummy burial mound Fantasies at market rates, I’m eating Candy in a cartelized state

THE HOUSE was an empty box Overgrown with heavy locks Segmented from modern life Divorced from human strife Then one day a lonely soul Made that house a home Where she’d stay to rest Tiny little nest She was all by herself Trying to survive But she passed away Hidden night and day The landlord finally did Lease the rooms for rent But behind a door Body starts to rot This house is a graveyard plot Locked doors will conceal the stench But when the heat switches on Tendrils of filth lay beyond It is a shame to be so segmented Who is to blame but our landscapes? There is a flame that scorched our collective It has a name; that’s cagèd blight We all live in a graveyard Foundations are built on bones Be not afraid of coffins Lingering on our conscience Our cities are hollow blights Our communion fades to night These houses are lonely blocks Segmenting our greater flock

DANGER comes in numbers and Changes to our lusts and Labors - but we’re ready this time Hey can you tell that I’m still Shakin’? ‘Twas this very godfor- Saken place with that unholy woman’s Spells and familiar feline entwined She said, "Satan, while you’re on va- Cation deep in hell’s in- Ferno, we pray for your return..." Yes sir! That’s the woman, Officer, you have to Arrest her! She’ll try to fly on that broom, she should be Sweepin’ away for ever I’ll tell you what else she said: There’s a lot more of them Assistants and waitresses Inside all our fortresses You can’t be careful enough See this is crucible stuff Our maids and nurses are Plotting to curse us all Boil us in cauldrons Then we’ll really be in Double, double, toil and trouble Skyscrapers reduced to rubble Mighty beards cut down to stubble And if the sword don’t work the club will O my son and other sons, fair maids and loathsome daughter You’ll remember me as witchfinder more than as your father But I’ve not gone nowhere: I’m under your shoes and perched upon your shoulders I’ll keep you here in the kingdom of murder forever, forever murder

SHELTERED within the snow Given time to grow The ticks are in the know Blankets kept them warm Sheltered from the storm Until they could reform Nectar trickled down a spout Feeding them until they’re stout Keeping up a falsehood face Paperclipped and gaining space Building rot is their plan Resurrecting the strong man Hanging by his feet Audisio has won Barrel of a gun But rot is still replete Coddled by the law Whose blood they draw Our flesh they gnaw Sharpening their claw Wintering away Cozy places they can stay

THE SCENE'S pastoral, ere the set of sun The very hour when the agents come Alas, poor territory; do what needs done And our production shall be begun It’s not the killing or death-worship, Not conquest or valor, Civilized values, imperial capitals, Technology, markets, nor labor The project, in fact, is personal, Secret, sweet, and intimate; The very blood closest To your heart--swim in it What’s done is done now, what’s left defined Following orders and marking time The house lights go down, the curtain starts its rise Just hit your marks and remember your lines As the pilot to the villager As the inquisitor to the heretic As the settler to the native As the soldier to the runaway As the prison guard to the captive Executioner to the witch As the master to the child As the hunter to the prey Time’s warning has worn itself out Even to its last recorded sound And the forest lifted from the ground The army sing together A number of our occupation It goes like: history Has passed behind us Heaven can be divided And so it shall've been Now will you join or be taken? Equivocator, oh, if you must Go ask the devil who dwells in the dust There’s a ghost at the banquet, don’t raise a fuss He just wants to thank you, the work’s done for us It’s not the killing but the inflicting Not the grave but the digging And the paving over, the call to adventure The road along which we’re endlessly driven As the archetype to the other one In aggregate a colony forms You’ve been pointed out in the audience They have come for you at last The cast has took their final bow and as you go to wash your hands Know ye now that dread inherit urge which is termed violence Do as you like, do what you can, do it ‘til the hour of your death Where the place? Upon the heath. There to meet with... MACBETH!