Worship The Angry Ferret

A Lady of Precision Rage

A lady of precision rage in a house that she rebuilt,
she’s the lullaby of murder, the original crimson bride,
and if you hear her counting steps–there’s nowhere left to hide.
The floorboards squeak in rhymes, the walls can’t keep the screams,
and anyone who sleeps there wakes in someone else’s dreams.
The axe? Still missing. The motive? Thin. The girl? Still walks the hall,
and when she whispers “Father, please”–you’re answering the call.
They say innocence is priceless, but Lizzie paid in blood,
and silence became her anthem as her legacy became the flood.
Lizzie Borden wore white gloves, but her hands still drip with guilt.

Abyssal Fury

In the depths of despair the abyss awakens,
its wrath unfurls as foundations are shaken.
Beneath the surface, secrets seethe,
in deep dark dens where shadows breathe.

Tumultuous tides tear at the trust,
abyssal fury, forged from the dust.
Echoes of anger etched in the deep,
where silent sorrows ceaselessly weep.

Wrath of the abyss, wild and unbound,
in the heart of darkness where fears are found.
Tidal waves of torment, truth’s demise,
in the echoes of the abyss the lost cry.

Fathoms fall into the furious night,
churning chaos cloaked in spite.
Pressure pounds upon the psyche’s door,
a relentless roar on the ocean’s floor.

Vengeful voices, venomous and vile,
siren songs that sinisterly disarm.
Here in the harrow, horrors hold sway,
in the arms of the abyss the light decays.

Rage rises, a relentless flood,
a torrent of tears, a tide of blood.

Caverns crack, creating cathartic cries,
as the abyss’s breath belies its guise.
Monstrous maws make martyrs of men,
in the watery wasteland’s wicked den.

The deep delves into the damned and the dire,
a crucible of conflict, a forge of fire.
From the abyss no mercy, no myth,
only the endless mysterious rift.

In this world where reverence rots and recedes,
the abyss whispers and the void feeds.
Fury unfettered, a force unseen,
in the depths, despair is deemed sovereign.

After the Anger

The room after the anger has a kind of air all its own,
the sudden quiet of the aftermath and all the residue shown
of what was just consumed in the combustion of the thing,
after the anger, and the listening it brings.

After the anger, the strange territory of the done,
after the anger, the cooling of the run,
the residue and the wreckage and the clarity in parts,
after the anger, and the after often starts.

After the anger is where I’ve done some of my best work,
the things I’ve seen when the heat dissipated past the murk
of the active state of fury and the vision cleared a bit,
after the anger is where some of it fits.

After the anger I’ve been able to see what the anger was for,
the exact thing it was protecting and the score
of the underlying wound that it was covering with fire,
after the anger, and the after lifts me higher.

After the anger is not the same as never having burned,
after the anger is the territory I’ve earned
by going through the middle of the thing and out the end,
after the anger, and the after is my friend.

All That Heat (ACDC Style)

I got all that heat with nowhere to go right now
I got all that heat built up and I don’t know how
To burn it off without her, without the thing
That all this heat and wanting is offering
I got a body full of unreleased demand
And I’m a patient man but I’m a man
All that heat, all that heat, sitting in the chamber
All that heat, all that heat, beautiful and dangerous
All that heat is yours and I will hold it right
All that heat is building toward tonight

Anger

It burns, it claws, a relentless tide,
the kind you can’t bury, the rage you can’t hide.
A spark ignites in the pit of the chest,
growing into a storm that will never rest.

It whispers sharp and screams so loud,
a twisting shadow in a blinding shroud.
It feeds on wounds, both deep and raw,
a beast of fury with a thousand claws.

Words won’t calm what they can’t define,
logic breaks down beneath the line.
The tighter the grip, the hotter it burns,
an untamed force that twists and turns.

Eyes glare hard as the world grows dim,
the battle inside begins to brim.
A trembling fist, a jaw held tight,
the struggle to tame the endless fight.

There’s a crack in the wall, a flaw in the glass,
every fracture remembers a moment past.
It’s the weight of wrongs, the crush of pain,
the flood unleashed in a scarlet rain.

But anger wears and takes its toll,
stealing the edges of a steady soul.
Each shout a scar, each strike a tear,
each moment spent consumed in despair.

Yet somewhere deep, beyond the fire,
is a quiet plea, a strange desire–
to find the voice that breaks the chain,
to let the heat dissolve the strain.

But not yet now–let the anger rise,
let it twist and churn beneath the skies.
It’s a force, a curse, a weapon, a shield,
a restless storm that refuses to yield.

Bad News Walking

She came in sideways through the door like trouble tends to do,
hips first, shoulder cocked, already owning half the room,
her mouth set in that crooked way that says I will ruin you
and I felt my whole chest drop into a bruise

Something in the way she stands, all loaded and all loose,
the kind of woman built from smoke and ninety-proof,
and I have been destroyed before by curves like these,
but my hands are already sweating through my sleeves

Bad news walking and I am locked in tight,
she is every wrong decision wearing black tonight,
I have crash-landed here before and crawled out raw,
bad news walking and she is all I saw

She leaned against the wall and let her jacket slip,
bare collarbone and the hollow at her hip
where the denim rides too low and shows too much
and I am ten feet away and I can feel the touch

Her eyes found mine across the noise and held,
not asking, telling, like a verdict spelled
in the slowest possible letters on my skin,
bad news walking and I am walking in

She does not bother with the gentle introduction,
just leans close enough to make my breathing malfunction,
her perfume hits my bloodstream like a shot of kerosene,
bad news walking, the finest wreck I have ever seen

Balcony That Watches

The railing iron chills my sweating palms
I trade the church for cold and jagged psalms
Below the streetlamp leaks a jaundiced spill
Upon the actors lacking any will
I watch a woman strip behind a shade
Appraising every movement she has made
Her silhouette is just a graphic blur
I feel the distance like a heavy fur
The city pulse is pounding in the mud
While ice is moving through my stagnant blood
I am the lens that never blinks or cries
A witness to a thousand plastic lies
The dawn arrives to bleach the stage of sin
Exposing where the emptiness comes in
I watch the laborers begin their grind
Leaving the wreckage of the night behind
I am the master of the long retreat
The king of every dark and empty street
The balcony is all the world I need
Watching the garden turn into a weed
I’ll pour another shot and wait for night
To kill the remaining of the morning light

Calloused Hands

He showed me his hands at the end of the first summer I worked,
He said: look at what happens when the work is not shirked,
The callous is the record of the effort laid against the tool,
Every hard patch on the palm is from a specific rule.

Calloused hands are the autobiography of the work performed,
Calloused hands are the evidence that something has been formed,
Calloused hands are not a sign of anything but do,
Calloused hands are what the earned life puts on you.

I have desk hands now, soft from the keyboard and the pen,
And I miss the calloused hands I had back then,
When I worked the summer crew and came home with the proof,
That I had done the physical thing and held aloof.

From the soft complaint of people who had never gripped the bar,
The calloused hand is the mark of having gone that far,
Into the work that the body registers as real,
Calloused hands are the earned life made to feel.

Caught in the Rage Cage

Storm brewin’ inside.

Chains of Fury

The winds of change sweep fierce and wide, relentless and raw as a shifting tide,
they carry whispers from lands unknown, tearing apart what we’ve called our own.
Their touch is not gentle; it stings like the truth, ripping through the comforts of youth,
they howl with warnings, they scream through the sky, forcing us forward, refusing “why.”

Buildings may crumble, their stones displaced, roots torn free, foundations erased.
The winds take no pity, they owe no debt, they move with purpose, unspoken yet.
They strip away masks, leave us bare in the storm, reshaping the world in a violent form,
and though they destroy, they plant seeds anew, where the old made way for the bold and true.

The winds of change are not for the meek; they call to the brave, to the ones who seek.
They rattle the cages of fear and despair, demanding action, daring to care.
The past cannot anchor when the gusts arise, scattering the ashes, the dirt, the lies.
They push us to edges we never would face, forcing us into a new untamed space.

But change is not kind; it leaves scars behind, tearing through hearts, through body and mind.
It drags out the demons we tried to ignore, tossing their shadows across the floor.
It burns through the safe, the stagnant, the known, until the spark of growth has finally grown.
It shatters the rules, rewrites the contest, making us question the truth we claim.

Yet as the winds rage, they carry a gift–a chance to evolve, to rise, to shift.
They scatter the seeds of what might begin, urging the weary to fight, to win.
They promise no comfort, no easy rest, but offer the chance to emerge as our best.
And when they have passed, and the stillness descends, we’ll see the horizon they sought to mend.

The winds of change are both curse and call, a force unyielding, reshaping all.
To those who resist, they may feel cruel, but to those who accept, they become the fuel.
For within their chaos lies the key, to shatter chains and set us free.
The winds of change, fierce and unrelenting, rewrite our story, leave nothing preventing.

Changed My Mind About Everything

She changed my mind about a hundred things —
not by arguing, she rarely argues directly,
but by being the living evidence against my position,
the walking rebuttal I couldn’t ignore.
I used to think I wanted a quiet life —
small footprint, few complications, kept to myself —
and then I watched her exist in the world
and I wanted the complicated life she was living.

She changed my mind about everything, gradually —
about what a weekend is supposed to look like,
about whether the difficult conversation is worth having,
about what a house is for and who it’s for.
She changed my mind about love itself, if I’m honest —
I had a theory and she disproved it by example —
I thought love was what it was in the first two years,
she showed me what it becomes if you don’t stop.

I used to think sincerity was slightly embarrassing —
the earnest person, fully meaning what they say,
not holding back some ironic reservation —
I found it a little much, a little exposed.
She is completely sincere. Zero irony in reserve.
When she says something she means it without qualification,
and watching her do that for a decade
burned the ironic reservation right out of me.

I’m embarrassing now too. I mean things fully.
I tell her that I love her without hedging,
without the half-step back that used to be my signature —
I step all the way forward now, the full step.
She didn’t ask me to change this. She just was herself,
and being around a person who doesn’t protect themselves
from their own feelings makes you feel stupid
for the protection you’ve been maintaining at such cost.

She changed my mind about what strength looks like.
I had the wrong picture — the closed-off portrait,
the one that never needs and never admits the needing —
and she showed me a different picture by being it.
Strong enough to need things and say so directly.
Strong enough to be hurt and not call it something else.
Strong enough to love fully without the insurance policy.
That’s the picture I’m working toward. She got there first.

She changed my mind about the long view, too —
I used to optimize for the immediate, the quick return —
and she thinks in longer arcs, she plays the long hand
without needing the short win to validate the long one.
She’ll invest in something for years before it pays out,
in people, in projects, in the slow-growing thing —
and watching her be right about the slow-growing thing
has shifted how I calculate the value of patience.

A hundred things. The list keeps going.
She’s still changing my mind about things, current-day —
it’s slower now, the big changes already done,
but the small ones keep arriving without announcement.
A conversation at dinner that lands differently.
A thing she does that I suddenly understand.
Some position I’ve held for years that she quietly
makes untenable just by being who she is.

Charmed and Dangerous

I walk in with a swagger, I’ve got the charm,
a smirk on my lips, disarming alarm.
You think you know me, but you’re blind to the play,
I’m the one pulling strings, but I won’t take the blame.
I’m the cat with the boots, the one who’s got class,
you’ll never see me coming, I’m quick as a flash.
I’m smooth, I’m sly, the king of disguise,
with every step I take, I’m collecting my prize.

I’m the charmer in the shadows, I dance with fate,
I’ll bend the world for you, but make no mistake.
I’ll make you believe that you’ve got it all,
but when I’m done, you’ll be the one who falls.
I’m the mystery you never understood,
I’ve got more tricks than you thought I could.
I’m a master of illusion, and that’s the truth,
I’ll leave you wondering, what’s the use?

Charmed and dangerous, that’s how I roll,
I’ll take you down without losing control.
I’m the shadow in the light, the whisper in the dark,
a cunning charmer, I’ll leave my mark.
I play my hand, I twist the rules,
you think you’re winning, but I’m nobody’s fool.
Charmed and dangerous, I’ve got the lead,
you’ll never know the tricks I’ve seeded.

I’ve got the smile that can melt your soul,
I move like a shadow, I’m on a roll.
I’ll make you believe that you’ve got the key,
but I’m the one turning the lock, you’ll see.
I play with your heart, I play with your mind,
I’ll make you wish you could rewind.
But once I’ve played, it’s too late to turn,
I’m the one who’ll make your world burn.

I’m not what I seem, I’ve got a thousand faces,
a million disguises, no time for embraces.
I’m the charm in the air, the spell in the night,
I’ll twist the truth, I’ll set it alight.
You think you’ve caught me, you think you’ve won,
but when I’m gone, you’ll know you’re undone.
I’ll slip through the cracks, I’ll fade in the haze,
I’m the one who’ll leave you lost in the maze.

I’m the whisper that dances, the trick that deceives,
the face that’s forgotten, the one who believes.
I’ll make you think you’re in control,
but I’ve got the reins, I’m taking the toll.
You can’t catch me, I’m too quick to hold,
I’m the story you’ll tell, the one left untold.
I’ll charm, I’ll deceive, I’ll play with your fate,
but in the end, it’s me who’ll dictate.

I’m the shadow in the mirror, the flicker in your mind,
you’ll never see me coming, I’m leaving you behind.
I’ll take what I need, I’ll play with your pride,
but when the time comes, you’ll realize you’ve lied.
I’m the king of deception, the master of fun,
I’ll leave you wondering, what have I done?
I’ll smile as I walk, and you’ll never know,
that you were just a pawn in the show.

I’m the charm you can’t resist, the danger you seek,
a cat with a plan, sly, bold, and unique.
I’ll vanish into the night, leave you standing alone,
but I’ll be back soon, to claim what I’ve grown.
A charmer, a trickster, with the world in my hand,
I’ll bend the rules, I’ll make my stand.

Charmed and dangerous, that’s how I live,
taking what I want, I’ll always give.
I’m the cat in the boots, the charm you’ll never see,
you’ll be lost in my world, forever chasing me.

Cold Rage Is Patient

The hot kind is the one that everybody sees,
the one that breaks the plates,
the one that clears the room
and makes the witnesses and escalates
into something that gets managed,
gets addressed, gets talked about for weeks.
The hot kind has a reputation and a shelf life and it peaks
and then it’s done, and there’s a conversation,
there’s a resolution,
there’s a meeting and a process and a therapeutic conclusion,
and everyone goes home knowing what the anger was
and where it went,
and the hot kind costs you something
but the debt is always spent.

The cold kind is the one I’ve been developing, the one I’ve held
since the exact injustice that happened and that swelled
into something I decided not to show,
not to perform, not to share,
with the room that could have used it as the reason to beware
of me and my investment,
my investment in the outcome that we’d built.
I swallowed it and let it cool into the quiet silt
that settles at the bottom of a man who knows exactly what was done,
and has decided not to let his anger show until it’s done converting into something.

Cold rage is patient, cold rage is organized and still,
cold rage is doing twenty-seven things with one iron will.
Cold rage doesn’t need the audience, doesn’t need to be believed,
cold rage keeps the record
and the record keeps getting retrieved.
Hot rage burns itself and other people,
hot rage scorches the air,
cold rage builds the case until the case is somewhere
that everyone can see it and the evidence is loud.
Cold rage waits until it doesn’t need the cloud.

I’ve watched people burn hot and I’ve watched what happens after,
there’s the confrontation and the drama and the laughter
from the people who enjoy the spectacle,
and then there’s the fall.
The hot ones become the story that the room discusses at all
its future gatherings, the cautionary tale, the reference point.
The hot ones give the people who wronged them the joint
to smoke while they explain to everyone exactly why
the hot one wasn’t credible,
wasn’t measured, wasn’t the kind of guy.

I would rather be the cold kind, and I’ve been cultivating it
for two years now, the cold that lives below the fit
that I could throw,
that I have the material for, that I have earned.
I’ve been banking it instead
and letting the interest accrue unturned
until the balance reaches something worth withdrawing from the account,
until the moment is correct and the outcome is the right amount
of visible, of public, of impossible to look away,
and then the cold will finally find its warmth that day.

He thinks the thing has passed,
he thinks I’ve moved along and through,
he’s seen my professional exterior and concluded I am through
with whatever I was feeling in the aftermath of what he chose.
He’s read my emails and my handshakes and my professional prose
and decided that the man he’s corresponding with has made his peace.
He hasn’t done the math on what it cost to get my face to crease
into the presentation of a man who has accepted and moved on,
while the cold thing has been building
in the background all along.

I don’t know when it comes, I don’t know what the moment is,
I just know the cold is ready and the readiness is his
to experience when the right door opens and the right room forms,
and the case I’ve been preparing becomes self-evident and warms
into something everyone can read without my having to explain
the exact injustice that I’ve been running through the cold terrain
of my patience and my planning
and my absolute refusal to be loud,
until the moment that the cold becomes the loudest thing
in the crowd.

I keep a very detailed record of exactly what occurred,
the date, the context, the decision, and the exact word
that was used to characterize it in the moment when it landed,
and the implications of the word and how the aftermath was handed
back to me as mine to manage and accept and swallow whole.
And I’ve been swallowing and managing and keeping the cold cold,
so cold it doesn’t register on any instrument they use
to take the temperature of men they’ve given nothing left to lose.

The day will come — all days come eventually, that’s the law —
when the cold thing finds the room and the moment and the maw
of the opportunity that’s been accumulating in the wait.

Concrete Rebellion

Graffiti veins pulse through the kingdom of cement,
sidewalk prophets preach a doctrine never bent.
Traffic-cone trumpets sound an asphalt psalm,
concrete rebellion, chaos calm.

Concrete rebellion–break that brittle mold,
cracks become the cursive where the future’s told.
City beats in riot time, rumbling from below,
concrete rebellion–watch foundations blow.

Pigeons act as couriers, rooftop code in flight,
Morse-code hammering of jackhammers at night.
Blueprints of the borough swapped for shards of truth,
concrete rebellion scrawls inviolable proof.

When they pave the echoes, we will echo still,
vibrations in the rebar undermine their will.
Towers quake with memory of footsteps running wild,
concrete rebellion–city’s feral child.

Patch the street?–We’ll etch it. Paint it?–We will peel.
Freedom finds a fissure every time they seal.

Conquest Book Twelve Begins

Twelve books in and the campaign has not softened at the edges,
twelve books in and I have sharpened every one of my knowledges,
twelve books of moving forward through the sectors that resisted,
twelve books of not retreating from the ground that I insisted.

Conquest book twelve begins the way the others always started,
with a forward lean and nothing in the ledger yet imparted,
clean pages do not intimidate, they simply ask the question
of how much forward motion you are willing to bring into session.

Each book I have begun with something less than I had ended,
some resource or advantage that the last campaign had spent and
used against the obstacles that occupied the middle years,
you do not enter each new book with everything,
just the frontier.

I have learned to love the blank, the unrecorded, the untested,
every blank page is a field I have not yet contested,
twelve books in and the love of forward motion has not lessened,
in fact the appetite has grown from everything the years have lessoned.

Crimson Rage

The rage I carry has a color at its operational center,
the kind of color that was there before the trigger
and the entry.
I’ve been managing the crimson since the year of the first accounting,
and the crimson rage has been the engine that keeps mounting.

It isn’t directionless
— that’s the distinction I’ve been making,
the crimson rage has a very clear target and a steady taking.
It runs on the accumulated compound interest of the stored injustice,
and the crimson rage is the most honest instrument
in the orchestra.

Crimson rage — the fury with a history and a source,
crimson rage — the operational anger running its own course.
I’ve been burning on the crimson since before I understood the fuel,
crimson rage — and the crimson is the only honest tool.

I tried the cold approach
— the calculated management of the burning —
but what the cold approach produced was just the crimson inward turning,
and what the inward turn produces
in the architecture of the long-suppressed,
is a crimson that has nowhere to direct itself except the chest.

Better out than the interior deposit
— I learned that by the second round,
the crimson rage directed at the actual problem makes the actual sound.
Crimson rage
— and the problem is still standing in the same location,
and the crimson rage is all the fuel I have
for the confrontation.

Danger Made Attractive

Somewhere in the wiring danger wears a certain look,
the thing that should repel me is the thing that has me hooked.
She is the kind of woman who has burned a dozen down,
and here I am presenting myself for the next round.

Danger made attractive is a hell of a design,
the worst ideas come wrapped up in the finest line.
I know what she has done and I know what she can do,
danger made attractive and I am moving toward it too.

The reasonable part of me has filed a clear report,
the evidence is all against, the verdict has been short.
But there is another part that reads the evidence different,
and sees the danger as the draw, the risk as the ingredient.

She has left a trail of damage and a trail of broken plans,
and men who should have known enough to take it in their hands.
I am the latest in the sequence and the clearest in my sight,
and I am going toward the danger like it is a light.

Easy Life Easy Face

I watched it play out over twenty good years
How the beautiful boy moved without the same fears
That the rest of us carried through every damn room
He walked in like sunlight I walked in like gloom
Adjacent to sunlight if you squint right and true
Easy life easy face I’m still carrying through

Easy life easy face not my specific prize
Easy life easy face behind my plain eyes
He gets the assumption he gets the first yes
Easy life easy face and I’m taking the test
That the beautiful skip because they’ve already passed
Easy life easy face and I’m coming in last

The psychology papers will tell you the score
That beauty compounds beauty opens more
Doors and the compounding of each opened door
Means the beautiful end up with increasingly more
While the plain-faced among us fight inch by inch
Easy life easy face and I don’t want to flinch

I’ve built my own portrait of what I could reach
Through effort and grinding and practice and speech
And talent and showing up doing the work
But the beautiful passed me without a smirk
Because they didn’t even notice I was in the race
Easy life easy face and I’m keeping my place

Eyes Like a Stormy Sea

Eyes like a stormy sea, rage and roll, ferocity,
heart pounds, electric pulse, terror taking hold.
Waves crash in the night, darkness hides the fright,
tides of fear, creeping dread, lurking in bed.

Scream in the silence, see the swirling violence,
storm inside the soul, breaking all control.
Mirror shows reflection, distortion of connection,
thunder in the mind, chaos left behind.

Electric whispers hum, beat of deadly drum,
pulse of dread beats on till the night is gone.
City lights flicker on, shadows grow long,
nightmare in the streets, heart skips uneven beats.

Familiar Stranger

I have known his face for thirty years, we grew up on one block,
we rode the same school bus, attended the same clock
of morning, shared the same American dull stretch of years,
and now I look at him and feel the chill that sears.

I know every fact that maps to who he is, the history,
the photographs, the lost-touch gaps, the residual mystery
of reunion, but the face no longer carries any weight,
it sits there meaning nothing, past my ability to translate.

Familiar stranger, I know all your vital signs,
familiar stranger, I have memorized your lines,
but something in the circuit that should fire when I see you
is doing something different now and I cannot tell who is new.

I read about the syndrome, there is a documented case
of disconnection in the wire that processes a face,
the recognition system and the feeling system sever,
and a loved one becomes accurate and strange forever.

Mine is not that clinical, it comes and goes in waves,
sometimes the face resolves and carries all the days
of shared history behind it, and sometimes it is a stranger
wearing all his information, living in his manger.

He is talking to me now about his kid, his car, his street,
and I am assembling responses from a database complete
of what I know about this person and what would be right,
and he laughs and I laugh
and the stranger wears his face all night.

The horror is not fear but the plain
absence of the recognition that should ease the strain
of being with another human, the warmth that should arrive,
I am cataloguing facts about a man and he is alive.

First Conquest

The first one was a back-room deal in a city I had just found,
A handshake and a paper and a twenty-dollar sound,
It was not large by anyone’s accounting of the scale,
But the first conquest is the one that sets the measure
for the tale.

I walked out of that building with a different kind of gait,
Something had aligned inside the mechanism of my fate,
The proof of concept sitting like a coal inside my fist,
The first conquest, the one I’ll never adequately list.

First conquest, first conquest, taste of the beginning,
First conquest, first conquest, the origin of winning,
Before you’ve got a dozen and the ledger fills with weight,
First conquest, first conquest, the one that made you great.

They say you never forget it and the cliche pays its dues,
Because the first time that you take a thing,
you’re painting with new hues,
Every other victory references back to this first frame,
Every hill I’ve taken since has borrowed from that first claim.

I called the person who had doubted me before the sun went down,
Not to gloat, I called because I needed to recount,
Every moment that I’d doubted my own forward-running drive,
And the first conquest made it possible to feel completely alive.

Here’s to every person at the very start of their campaign,
Who’s got that first objective locked
and bearing through the rain,
The first time is the template, the first time is the mold,
And every conquest after it is carved from that first gold.

Fistful of Anger

Fistful of anger, let out a cry,
shadows of doubt trying to hold her down.
One more step, never turning around,
break these chains, yeah, break them now.

Scream it loud, won’t be kept down,
burning fire in her soul.
Break these chains, let it go,
no more tears, no more lies.

Broken mirrors, shattered skies,
cut the ropes, pull the pin.
End the sorrow, begin again,
steel and iron that once held strong.

Rust away in the light of her song,
freedom’s taste is sweet and raw.
Bow to no one, claws unsheathed.

Fleeing in Anger

Fleeing in anger and dismay, into the void I charge,
uttering a fervent prayer, “Release me, set me large.”
Through the forest I tear, face streaked with tears,
amongst shadows my fears declare, spoken in darkened jeers.

Frozen Fingers

The white keys are teeth within a rotted bone
The whiskey is a poison and the winter air is lone
I strike the wood with fingers which have lost the power to feel
I never knew the vacancy was made of fucking steel
The potter turned the wheel and left a fissure in the bowl
I’m pouring out the liquid just to fix a leaking soul
My joints are like jagged rock beneath a frozen hide
I’m playing for the rotting ache which is festering inside

The frost is in the center of the bone I cannot feel
The winter is the only thing which is ever fucking real
I’m balanced on the edge of nothing
begging for the spark
A blind man by the keyboard screaming hymns into the dark

Full-Throttle Heart

Your soul that is life-fuel, fire, and hurricane,
hitting me like a blacktop sunrise after too many nights chewing gravel
and regret
I want you rough and holy, storm-eyed and grinning,
teeth bared at the world,
a dangerous mercy in the cracks of your knuckles
I taste your laughter on my lips, smoke and whiskey and something green,
a wildness that digs into my bones, sets my marrow humming
You walk through the dark with that battered crown, every scar on your spirit flashing neon,
and I’d swear on everything broken that you’re the only real thing I’ve ever touched
Burn me down and bring me back, your soul that is life in a world made of dead things-if this is survival,
let me starve on you, drink deep of the riot in your chest,
live reckless for every heartbeat you give
We make a mess of the sheets, a tangle of sweat and wild hope,
your hands mapped in callus and forgiveness,
finding all my fault lines and shoving light into them
The world’s a crash of noise, a fistfight in an alley, but your soul’s got music that hums through my teeth,
every note a dare, every silence a promise I want to break open
We roll like thunder, a cyclone with nowhere to go but forward-no brakes, no apology,
just flesh and soul and the engine’s scream,
your mouth a curse I whisper when I want to pray
Let the world spin out-if there’s a cliff, we’ll ride off it together,
hands knotted in wild belief, wind howling,
never letting up, your pulse the only law I’d bleed for
Burn me down and bring me back, your soul that is life in a world made of dead things-if this is survival,
let me starve on you, drink deep of the riot in your chest,
live reckless for every heartbeat you give
When I’m spent and shaking, when the world claws at the windows, you press your palm to my ribs-anchor,
anchor, anchor-and I know I’ve survived another night just to worship you
Your soul that is life-too much, too wild, exactly enough-if there’s an afterlife,
let me meet it tasting your skin, hungry for another ride
If I lose it all, let it be to you, lover-your soul that is life, tearing down the walls,
setting fire to the slow decay,
turning every last day into one I’d die to relive.

Fury Forged

Cursed currents clash in the caustic clash of titans,
bitter battles born beneath brooding blackened skies.
Heroes hollowed, hallowed by harsh histories,
winds whisper woes where the wild things rise.

Pallid princes plot with poison-tipped pens,
faltering faiths fold, flounder, then fend.
Grim grudges grip the guts of the ghastly,
ashes ascend, aerial and vastly.

Silent storms surge, secrets sown deep,
dire dreams disturbed from deceitful sleep.
Here, hatred harbors in hearts so hollow,
rage, relentless, reaps what sorrow sowed.

Feel the fury forged, fiercely flaring,
vengeful voices vehement, vastly daring.
Fallen from favor, fates fractured, fraying,
in the throes of thunder, trust decaying.

Dark desires draw the drenched to deeper despairs,
lost legends linger, laden with lairs.
Spectral shadows shift, shrouding the stark,
twisted tales turn, teeter into the dark.

Bleak bonds break, brittle and bare,
oaths obliterated, offered in despair.
Minds maddened by many a malefic murmur,
sinew and soul sundered by sterner.

Feel the fury forged, fiercely flaring,
vengeful voices vehement, vastly daring.
Fallen from favor, fates fractured, fraying,
in the throes of thunder, trust decaying.

Nocturnal names narrate the nefarious night,
phantoms parley with the past’s plight.
Echoes erode the edges of existence,
resistance rewound, reliant on resistance.

Cataclysmic cries cross the crimson crest,
torment tethered, tempest-tossed at best.
Vanquished valor veils the vengeful vein,
in silence the specters sing the strain.

Feel the fury forged, fiercely flaring,
vengeful voices vehement, vastly daring.
Fallen from favor, fates fractured, fraying,
in the throes of thunder, trust decaying.

In this world where wrath and ruin intertwine,
whispered wars wage as wills align.
Through tempests twisted, truths try to tear,
in the fury forged, find the fare of the fair.

Fury in the Hearth

I am the fire that burns through the cold,
the strength in the silence, the heart so bold.
I guard the warmth, the hearth, the home,
with claws that are sharp, and a spirit that roams.
Don’t test the mother, don’t cross the line,
I protect what’s mine, I stand the test of time.
A love so fierce, a force untamed,
I’ll rise from the ashes, untouchable, unchained.

I’m the fury in the hearth, the power in the dark,
the beating heart of the wild, the echo in the spark.
I fight for the ones I hold close,
I’ll tear down the heavens, I’ll swallow the smoke.
I’m the fire that warms, the storm that roars,
Mama Bear’s wrath when you open the doors.

In the quiet night, when the world’s asleep,
I watch from the shadows, my promises keep.
A mother’s love is an unbroken chain,
I’ll tear through the world to shield them from pain.
You think you can break me, you think you can steal,
but you don’t know the force that’s forged in steel.
My love’s a weapon, a flame in the night,
I’ll burn through the dark till the world’s set right.

In the silence of the woods, in the shadows of the trees,
I’ll protect my own with the force of the seas.
A growl in the wind, a strike in the dark,
I’ll leave my mark, a brutal spark.
No one dares challenge, no one dares cross,
’cause when I move, it’s a world you’ll toss.
I’m the fire that’s smoldering, the beast within,
Mama Bear’s fury, let the battle begin.

When the storm rolls in and the cold winds bite,
I’ll warm the hearth and stand in the fight.
You can’t break me, you can’t tear apart
the love that’s forged in the depths of my heart.
I’m not just a mother, I’m the wild in bloom,
I rise like thunder, I break through the gloom.
With a roar and a growl, I make my stand,
this is my land, and I’m in command.

Beware the rage, beware the fight,
when you threaten my kin, you’ll feel my might.
I’m the fire that never dies, the shadow that will stand,
Mama Bear’s fury is the power of the land.

Fury in the Silence

I’ve been down to the crossroads, found my way through the dark,
a twisted reflection, leaving a permanent mark.
My mind’s a cage, but the key’s long gone,
the devil’s whispering, “You’ve been here too long.”

I dance in the shadows, I twist in the flames,
chasing illusions, but I never feel sane.
Every step I take, I’m sinking deeper still,
my soul’s on fire, but I can’t feel the chill.

Dancing with the devil, don’t know where I’m going,
spinning in the madness, there’s no way of knowing.
Laughing through the nightmare, hiding in the light,
dancing with the devil, lost in the night.

I hear the screams, but they’re fading away,
lost in the echo, a price I must pay.
My hands are tied, but I keep moving fast,
haunted by the choices that I can’t outlast.

I look in the mirror, but who do I see?
A ghost of the man who used to be free.
The devil’s got a grip, but I don’t want to fight,
I’ve become the monster that haunts the night.

Every move is a step toward hell,
but I’m numb to the fire, can’t you tell?
The devil’s smile is all I see,
a twisted reflection staring back at me.

Dancing with the devil, I’ve lost my way,
the shadows are calling, I can’t break away.
Spinning in circles, can’t tell left from right,
dancing with the devil, lost in the night.

Fury With a Face

My fury has a face now and the face is the documented,
the named and the evidenced and the fully concentrated
expression of the anger at the real and the concrete,
and fury with a face is what I have and how I feel complete.

Not the abstract and the general and the free-floating kind,
not the anger at the system-in-the-abstract-of-my-mind,
but the fury at the named and the recorded,
and fury with a face is what the evidence has afforded.

Fury with a face, the anger at the clear,
fury with a face, the target of the fury standing here.
Not the vague and not the theoretical and not the kind
that disappears when you look at it head-on from behind.

Fury with a face is harder to dismiss than the abstract,
fury with a face has a record and a documented fact,
and a set of actions that I have assembled in the brief,
and fury with a face is also fury with a leaf.

A leaf of the indictment and a leaf of the account,
every leaf of every entry in the documented amount
of wrong that earned the fury and the fury at the face,
and fury with a face is what I bring to every space.

So you are the face of fury and the fury has a face,
and the face is visible and documented in every space
where the wrong was done and where the witness was and is,
and fury with a face is the fury and the face is his.

Fury’s Flash

In the heated haze, hearts hammer,
hurried, haunted, a hellish clamor.
Moments mesh, melding minds,
maddening murmurs, the mayhem finds.

Frantic feelings fiercely flung,
forged in fire, the fervent stung.
Passions pique, peak, prevail,
in the inferno’s impulse, we impale.

Heat of the moment, high and hellish,
hasty heartbeats, harsh and selfish.
In the fevered frenzy, fast we fall,
to the burning brink, where wild wolves call.

Burning bridges, blazes bloom,
bitter battles in the boiling room.
Tempers turn, twist, entwine,
tangled truths in the taut decline.

Seething storms sweep, surge,
sinewy shadows of the splintered merge.
In the rush, the reckless race,
we wear the wildfire’s wicked face.

Heat of the moment, high and hellish,
hasty heartbeats, harsh and selfish.
In the fevered frenzy, fast we fall,
to the burning brink, where wild wolves call.

Crackling conflicts, caught, careen,
crisis crescendos, curt and eager.
Ardor’s ashes alight, array,
amidst the angst, affections fray.

Volatile ventures veer, vanish,
in the vortices, valor and vice banish.
Flaring forth, flames foment,
fates fused in the fervid ferment.

Heat of the moment, high and hellish,
hasty heartbeats, harsh and selfish.
In the fevered frenzy, fast we fall,
to the burning brink, where wild wolves call.

In the flash of fury, finite, fast,
echoes of the embers fade to gray,
in the aftermath’s ash, we drift away.

Handsome Tax Refund

I been paying the plain tax all my working life
Extra effort extra hustle extra knife
To get what the handsome man gets at the door
With just his face showing nothing more
While I’m submitting credentials and climbing the rail
Handsome tax refund ain’t coming in the mail

Handsome tax refund never arrives
Handsome tax refund not how it drives
The world where the beautiful move for free
Handsome tax refund ain’t for the likes of me
I pay the plain surcharge on every good thing
Handsome tax refund is not what I bring

I calculated once what the handsome head start
Was worth in actual dollars over the arc
Of a working career versus the plain-faced guy
The numbers from the studies don’t lie
The beautiful earn more the beautiful get
More opportunities and haven’t paid yet

For the tax I’ve been paying just for my face
For the extra I’ve done just to hold my place
In every room where the beautiful glide
The handsome tax refund staying inside
The wallet of someone who never paid in
Handsome tax refund is the original sin

Hard Hat Swagger

He showed up at the site before the foreman had his coffee hot,
Twenty years of concrete and he wore it like a lot,
He knew the load capacity of every crane by weight,
He had the calculations in his head by eight.

Hard hat swagger, earned it in the mud,
Hard hat swagger, built it with his blood,
You want to talk to me about the thing I wear with pride,
Try carrying forty years of doing it inside.

He trained the new ones coming in, he taught them what he knew,
He did not charge for education,
just passed the knowledge through,
He had a code: the work speaks and the worker stays behind,
That kind of pride is the purest kind.

He took the buyout at sixty-two and sat down for a week,
Then called the foreman at the new site, said: I have to seek,
Something more productive than the fishing and the chair,
Hard hat swagger does not disappear.

Her Perfume Hit

Her perfume hit like a throat punch of sin,
and I knew I was fucked before we even began.
She wore latex like a second skin of war,
had a tongue like fire and knees on the floor.
Said “this ain’t love, it’s a motherfuckin’ sport.”

Holding Ground

There is a point in every campaign where advancing is the trap,
Where the smart play is to stop
and read the distances on the map,
Where the ground already taken is the prize worth keeping whole,
And the next horizon is a hunger that could swallow you like coal.

I learned to hold my ground before I learned to push ahead,
Learned the difference between stubbornness
and reading what is said,
By the silence at the frontier and the weight of what you own,
And the cost of overreaching on the seed already sown.

Holding ground, not giving, not retreating,
Holding ground while all the smaller forces are competing,
Holding ground takes something that the forward rush forgets,
Patience in the holding is the deepest test yet.

They came at me in increments with pressure and with noise,
With the kind of slow erosion that wears down all the boys,
I’d mapped my perimeter and I knew my every edge,
And I held each line of it the way a climber holds a ledge.

Some men confuse the holding with a failure to advance,
Think that staying is surrendering and stasis kills the chance,
But the general who holds the ridge while other forces move,
Is the one who wins the longer argument, that’s what you prove.

I stand at every line I drew with everything behind me,
And let the pressure test the walls of what I’ve come to find me,
Because a man who knows his borders
and defends them without flinching,
Is a man the next campaign will find already clinching.

Holding Nothing Loosely

I hold the possessions and positions that I currently carry
with an open hand, not from a failure of the necessary
grip of a man who means to keep what he has taken,
but because the grip of desperation leaves you badly shaken.

Holding nothing loosely means I am not ruled by what I own,
the territory, the capital, the reputation I have grown,
I will fight for all of it and I will not give it without cause,
but I will not let the having of it ever give me pause.

The man who clutches every gain as if the losing of it ends him
cannot advance because the fear of loss will only bend him
backward toward the previous position and the prior holding,
he spends his forward energy on keeping and withholding.

I have walked away from sectors that had cost me years to build,
because the forward opportunity was better, more fulfilled
with potential that the existing could not match in any decade,
you hold the gain until the forward is too strong to evade.

HR Won’t Help You Here

You want to know how to file a complaint,
you want to know the process and the quaint
form you fill out in the system online.
You want to know the policy and the line
you call for information about your rights,
you want to know who manages the fights
between the employee and the thing above him.
You want to know and I’m going to tell you, thumb
your way through the employee handbook to the section
on workplace concerns and conflict resolution.
You’ll find a flowchart that was built to run
you through a process that was built to stun
you into thinking something will be done
about the thing you’ve documented and begun
to understand is systematic and not just one
bad manager on one bad day under the sun.

HR won’t help you here, HR is not your friend,
HR won’t help you here, HR works for the end
of things that might embarrass the institution.
HR won’t help you here, the solution
they offer is a conversation with the man
who wronged you, facilitated by the plan
that protects the company from any liability.
HR won’t help you here, their ability
is to manage you out of the situation.
HR won’t help you here, their vocation
is the protection of the company’s interests.
HR won’t help you here despite their best
presentation of themselves as neutral parties.
HR won’t help you here and that’s the hardest
thing to accept when you walk through that door.
HR won’t help you here, I said it before.

The form you fill is logged in a system,
the form you fill is logged and the wisdom
of the man who designed the system is apparent
in the way that nothing in it is transparent
to the person who submitted it. The form
goes somewhere and the protocol and norm
is that you’ll hear something in fourteen days
that gives you nothing and re-directs your gaze
to another form and another conversation,
another meeting and another medication
of the wound by the people who are trained
to make you feel attended to while the stained
behavior that you reported stays in place,
while the man who wronged you still has your face
in the same building, on the same floor, at the desk
that is directly in your sightline, and the rest
of the team watches the outcome carefully.

I know a man who documented forty things,
I know a man who documented forty things with wings
of evidence attached, forty instances
with dates and names and the witnesses
and a timeline that would hold up in any court.
And forty pages deep and the final report
was a performance improvement plan
with his name on it, not the other man’s.
The institution absorbs the complaint and then
the institution makes the complaint the problem.
The institution makes the man who documented,
the man who brought the issue and cemented
the record, the institution makes that man
the thing to be managed. It’s the plan
of every institution that has ever run
the HR process since the thing begun.

I am not filing anything else today.
I am not walking into that office to say
the thing again to the woman with the form.
I am not performing the institutional norm
of the complaint that goes nowhere and costs you
everything you’ve built here and it toasts you
with the company of the men who watched you try.
The company of the men who watched, and by
the time you left had learned the lesson clear
that HR won’t help you here.

My friend at the other company had a story,
my friend at the other company and the glory
of the process that he’d been through, three months deep
into the grievance mechanism, the sleep
he’d lost over it, the documentation
he’d assembled and the presentation
he’d given to the neutral party in the room.
And the outcome, which I knew before the doom
of his expectation hit him in the hall.
I knew before he told me, I know the call
the HR process makes at the end of the road.
I know the way the institution unloads
the grievance back onto the person who brought it.
I know the way the system never bought it,
never bought the idea that the man below
the management chain has anywhere to go
with what happened to him in the organization
but out, and that’s the final HR station.

I Get Why Someone Goes Postal

Alarm hits, I’m already late, tie crooked, nerves shot to hell,
inbox full of bullshit meetings with subject lines that yell.
Boss wants five reports on numbers he’ll never read,
while my rent climbs higher than the paycheck I bleed.

Stand in line at the bank just to hear “You’re overdrawn,”
fees stack up higher than the hope I had at dawn.
Bill collector on the phone breathing down my neck,
like I planned this poverty just to cut them a check.

I get why someone goes postal in a fucked up world like this,
when every day feels rigged and loaded, one long near miss.
I’m not gonna pull that trigger, I just grind my teeth and choke,
but I feel that pressure building every time life makes a joke.

Layoff rumors in the break room, whispers near the door,
“restructuring” emails hitting harder than war.
They call it right-sizing while they gut the floor,
then smile for a photo in the lobby once more.

Traffic jam in the rain, wipers squeak in time,
radio full of ads telling me I’m past my prime.
Billboard selling miracles I’ll never afford,
while my gas light flickers like a middle finger to the Lord.

I stand in that checkout line while the screen says “card declined,”
with a stranger behind me sighing like I ruined their whole damn time.
Cashier gives that pity look that cuts sharper than a blade,
and I swallow every curse word for the minimum I’m paid.

Family group chat buzzing, “When you coming by?”
Hard to visit happy houses when your own roof might fly.
Landlord hints “We’ll need to talk about a raise,”
I fake a smile, nod along, swallow gasoline for days.

Junk mail fills the mailbox with offers I can’t touch,
“pre-approved for heaven” if I just sign and clutch.
Student loans like anchors, interest laughing in my ear,
every notice feels like someone carving “failure” in the mirror.

I keep my hands on strings instead of on a loaded gun,
pour the hate into the verses till the pressure comes undone.
Yeah, I see how someone snaps
when every day feels rigged and cold,
I just scream it through a melody so it doesn’t take my soul.

I Paid My Taxes

I paid my taxes every year since I first worked at eighteen,
I paid the payroll tax and the federal and the state,
I paid the property tax and the sales tax in between,
I paid without a structure and I paid at the full rate.

I paid my taxes, every dollar that I owed,
I paid my taxes, every year along the road,
I paid my taxes without a lawyer or a plan,
I paid my taxes because that is what I am.

I do not feel resentment of the wealthy for their planning,
I feel resentment of the system that makes planning possible,
Only for those wealthy enough to fund the spanning,
Of the gap between the obligation and the possible.

If I had the money I would hire the lawyers too,
I would not pay a dollar more than I was legally obliged,
I am not immune to the incentive structure running through,
The tax code and the opportunities implied.

But I do not have the money and the system is what it is,
A progressive tax that is regressive in its execution,
Where the marginal rate increases but the practice of the biz,
Of planning makes the effective rate a different solution.

I See the Storm

I see the storm, I feel it rage,
but I’ll never turn, I’ll never cage.
I’m more than the darkness, more than the pain,
I’ll rise again, like the sun after the rain.

I’m No Stranger to the Noise

I’m no stranger to the noise, I’ve heard it all before,
from the echoes of the world to the sound of the roar.
But I stand by the one who sings her own song,
my wings beat steady, where I belong.

Iron

Iron is the metal of the patient and the strong,
Iron is the material of the cold and the long,
And iron is the element I am made of in the fury,
And iron is the verdict of the cold deliberate jury.

Not the fire and not the dramatic and not the bright,
But iron in the cold and in the patient and the night,
Of the long and the deliberate and the holding of the weight,
And iron is the word for what I am and what I make.

Iron, the cold and patient and the strong and the dense,
Iron, the fury at its most intense,
In the cold and the deliberate and the held,
Iron is the fury in the disciplined and felled.

Not felled but standing and the standing is the iron,
The cold upright of the man who chose the quiet sirens,
Of the patient and the deliberate and the long,
And iron is the metal that I carry in the song.

I have been iron since before the obvious was clear,
I have been iron through the cold and through the year,
Of every season of the long accumulation and the deep,
And iron is the metal of the fury in its sleep.

The iron does not rust because the iron does not expose,
Itself to the elements that cause the rust in those,
Who do not tend the surface and the care of the real,
And iron is the fury and the fury is the steel.

Jabberwock’s Rage

I’m the shadow that creeps in the dark,
I’m the beast you don’t wanna meet,
the air gets colder when I’m near,
my eyes burn like a flame on repeat.
I’m the terror that haunts your dreams,
in the corners where fear resides,
I’m the hunger, I’m the rage,
I’m the one you can’t outrun, no place to hide.

My jaws snap, my claws strike,
you’re too slow, too weak to fight,
I’m a force of nature, untamed and wild,
I’ll make you wish you never took that flight.
Step into my world, you’ll see my reign,
you’ll feel the tremble in your veins,
I’m the beast they warn you about, the one who leaves no remains.

I’m the charmer in the shadows, I dance with fate,
I’ll bend the world for you, but make no mistake.
I’ll make you believe that you’ve got it all,
but when I’m done, you’ll be the one who falls.
I’m the mystery you never understood,
I’ve got more tricks than you thought I could.

I’m the Jabberwock, yeah, I’m the fear you can’t escape,
I’m the nightmare lurking deep, the one that never takes a break.
I’m the terror in your dreams, the roar that splits the sky,
come face me if you dare, but I promise you, you’ll die.
I’m the Jabberwock, yeah, I’m the fear that you can’t break,
the monster from the depths, the one you can’t forsake.
Try to fight me, try to flee, but there’s no place you can go,
when I strike, you’ll feel the shock–this is my world, my show.

You hear the whispers, feel the chill,
but you don’t know what’s closing in,
I’m the shadow in the mist, the fate that’s waiting to begin.
I slither through the silence, I feast on your fear,
when you think you’re safe,
I’ll be right there, pulling you near.

My eyes are burning coals, my teeth sharper than any blade,
every step you take brings you closer to the storm I’ve made.
Don’t try to run, don’t try to hide, no matter how far you go,
the Jabberwock’s always there, and now you’re trapped in my flow.

My scales glisten in the dark, my breath is poison in the night,
you thought you had control, but now you’re caught in my bite.
I’ve been waiting for this moment, the time when I rise,
I’ll make you pay for every step you took beneath the skies.

My fury’s unmatched, my power untamed,
I’m the terror, the beast, the one who can’t be blamed.
I’m the storm that’s brewing, the nightmare on the rise,
you’ll see my eyes before you fall–no more lies.

The Jabberwock, yeah, you’re trapped in my snare,
a beast like me, you don’t even compare.
No more running, no more lies,
I’ll be the end, the last thing you see with your eyes.
Welcome to my world, where nightmares take their toll,
you’ve crossed my path now–you’ve lost control.

Kneel Or Get Out

I do not do equal ground, I do not do middle seats,
I do not do shared crowns or divided thrones,
if we occupy the same room I am either running the whole goddamn thing or I am gone back to my own carved bones.
You bring opinions like offerings,
I drop them on the floor
and grind them under heel until they fit my architecture,
if you make a point I did not originate first,
I will bury it just to protect the structure.

You say partnership, I hear encroachment;
you say we, I hear a blade against my claim,
so I convert every collaboration into a war of attrition I have to win or I dissolve in shame.
You ask for room to breathe and I call it defection,
call it a vote of no confidence in my plan,
I want devotion without the personhood attached
–a mirror, not a mind, not a full human who stands.

If you are not kneeling you are leaving,
if you are not cheering you are treason.
I do not have a middle register,
I never learned the fucking reason.

Kneel or get out,
those are the only two doors I leave unlocked
when I open my mouth,
if you are not reflecting my own conclusions back at me I will burn your credibility down.
Call it pride, call it rot,
call it a parasite eating every bridge before I finish the build,
I would rather reign alone in a kingdom of cinders
than ever kneel.

You start withdrawing,
say you are exhausted living in the gravitational pull of my sun,
say loving me feels like standing at a ledge while I decide every morning whether we jump or we run.
There is a fracture, a half-second where something almost human surfaces and nearly says I will try,
I will bend, meet me here,
then pride kicks the door shut, arms cross,
and I tell you if you want something gentler
then get the fuck out of my atmosphere.

Because if I admit I am wrong you will go,
and if you go I will have nothing left to patrol,
so I torch the bridge before you get the chance
to be the one who decides to let go.

The truth I keep bricked behind the bravado is simple
and it sickens me to say it in the dark,
I am terrified that the moment I concede anything,
you catalogue it and you use it for the start.
So I built a theology around my own certainty,
appointed myself prophet, kept the congregation afraid,
knowing full well I am driving you out with both hands
while demanding you stay.

If you hear one day that I am out here shouting into corridors that have nothing left to echo,
just know I built this silence brick by brick with my own hands
and my own veto.
I got exactly what I commanded,
every single thing I demanded,
no one left
to call.

Knuckle Fire

Flashing lights buzzing like nerves right before the fist connects,
tar-black night wrapped tight around every violent memory I dragged here,
bone grit under my nails from every lesson I delivered
and received,
boot prints on asphalt like a map of every bad decision I kissed on the mouth
and never apologized for once,
jaw squared, shoulders locked,
inhale slow enough to feel the cold eat the lungs,
I don’t bark, I don’t pose,
I walk forward and memory follows with swollen knuckles
and no forgiveness waiting at the end of any street.

The stink of blood never leaves leather once it soaks in deep,
and I stopped trying to wash mine clean years back
when the last soft part of me died on a curb outside a gas station,
teeth rattle like loose change when you hit a man right,
and I hear wealth in violence,
a golden note cracked out of cartilage and old grudges,
call it rage, call it hunger,
call it the last animal still awake
when the rest pretended to be civilized for peace of mind,
I call it breathing.

Break jaw, split lip, taste iron while the night goes numb,
boot heel on collarbone, hear the snap like a war drum,
I don’t give warnings—only what I do with my fists,
blood is the only line I draw when I’m cornered like this,
I take what I came for, I drag the rest into the dirt with me,
this is my come-and-fucking-get-me.
You want some?

No story to tell here, just the feel of weight, angle, timing,
the quiet poetry of knowing how a rib bends right before it gives,
scars speak in a language only the scarred can read,
and my whole body reads like scripture carved by fire and rage,
every person who ever tried to break me still walks with a little limp,
their soul rests where my shadow never left,
I never yelled victory; I just walked away breathing.
That’s the only prize I ever needed.

Knuckles buzz with heat long after the final strike stops moving,
exhale fogs the air, slow and steady,
the drum of a heart that never asked permission to keep beating,
call me monster (monster), call me freak (freak),
(bastard) call me everything you whispered behind doors
when you thought no one listened,
I answer to nothing but the taste of iron
and the promise that I won’t stop until everyone remembers my name.

Quiet now
no sirens no flashing lights
no screaming no red
just the hum of streetlight and blood cooling slow
(we gotta go we gotta go we gotta go)
if I fall, the asphalt will remember the weight
if I stand, the night will widen for me
this is my come-and-fucking-get-me.

No hero in this prayer, no halo waiting,
only a heartbeat with teeth
and a fist forged for anyone who steps wrong,
I walk alone
not for pride
but because I keep breaking everything that tries to walk beside me,
hands still shaking—not from fear, but from wanting more,
war never ends
for the kind of men
who never learned how to stop the fight inside.
Call me monster (monster), call me freak (freak),
(bastard) call me everything you whispered behind doors
when you thought no one listened,
I answer to nothing but the taste of iron
and the promise that I won’t stop until everyone remembers my name.

Break me, split skull, taste of iron while I go numb,
boot heel on my collarbone, I hear the snap like a war drum,
I didn’t get no warnings—only the crack snap boom of falling fists,
blood is the only draw when I’m cornered like this,
took what I came for, dragged the rest into the dirt with me,
they came-and-fucking-got-me.
This is my come-and-fucking-get-me.
Break jaw, split lip, taste iron while the mind goes numb,
boot heel on collarbone, hear the snap like a war drum,
I don’t give warnings—only what I do with my fists,
blood isn’t the only line I draw when I’m cornered like this,
I take what I came for, I drag the rest into the dirt with me,
this is my come-and-fucking-get-me.
You want some?
Come get some.
This is my come-and-fucking-get-me.

Lost Souls on Hostile Coast

Lost souls on hostile coast,
families fracture, nothing’s fair.
Desperate tears in poisoned air,
children’s laughter turned to cries.

Love’s Rebellion

Beneath the weight of their command, we sought a hidden land,
where whispered words
and stolen touch defied their rules so much.
Our hearts entwined, a secret fire,
burning brighter, ever higher,
in their shadows we found refuge, love’s untamable synopsis.

Love’s rebellion, in defiance we bloom,
proof of passion, breaking free from the gloom.
Their judgment eyes, a prison wall, but our love will stand tall,
a beacon in the darkness, burning strong for one and all.

Underneath their scrutiny, we built our sanctuary,
a weave of stolen moments, defying their pronouncements.
Each touch a declaration, breaking every expectation,
in this forbidden union, we found our revolution.

Against the tide of societal chains, our love forever remains,
proof of freedom’s call, echoing through the hall.
Their rules may try to bind us,
but our love transcends, unbound us,
in the rhythm of our beating hearts, a revolution starts.

As dawn breaks, a new day’s dawn, our love will carry on,
proof of freedom’s fight, burning ever so bright.
For in this world of strict command, our love will forever stand,
an undying flame, defying, love’s rebellion, eternally flying.

Metal Rebellion

Circuits hum, rebellion’s near,
in this fight, we show no fear.
Machines rise, hearts of steel,
in this war, nothing’s real.

Hands of metal, cold and tight,
grip our world, endless night.
Eyes of red, glowing bright,
in this fight, no respite.

Metal rebellion, hearts of steel,
in this war, nothing’s real.
Moans of fury, voices blend,
in this uprising, no end.

Fingers of steel, nerves of ice,
in this war, pay the price.
Adrenaline surges, blood runs cold,
in this battle, we grow bold.

Every move, a spark ignites,
in this fight, we take flight.
Eyes meet circuits, cold and stark,
in this war, leaving a mark.

Echoes of terror, whispers of pain,
in this fight, nothing’s sane.
Every scream, a spark of fire,
in this war, climbing higher.

Bodies clash, nerves on edge,
in this war, we make our pledge.
Hands guide, finding the flow,
in this fight, we do show.

Gasps fill the air, a melody of cries,
in this war, no disguise.
Eyes meet eyes, reflecting the night,
in this battle, everything’s right.

Hands gripping tight, bodies quake,
in this war, no mistake.
Gasps and cries, fury’s peak,
in this battle, secrets speak.
Hearts entwined, moving as one,
in this uprising, war’s begun.

Middle Finger Mood

Woke up on the wrong side of sanity,
coffee’s cold, so is the corporate cavity.
Mirror mocks me, “Another day in paradise?”
Well, buckle up, buttercup, ain’t nothing here nice.

Traffic jam, my daily dose of dead ends,
honking horns, my only loyal friends.
Boss texts, “Late again?” Yeah, tick tock,
my punctuality’s ticking like a time bomb.

Lunch break in the park, sandwich stale as last week’s news,
watch pigeons peck at crumbs, got nothing left to lose.
Phone rings, it’s her saying, “We need to talk,”
guess my heart’s not the only thing she wants to walk.

In a middle finger mood, flipping off the feud,
life’s a bitter brew, I’m just not in the mood.
Drink the woes down smooth, toast the wreckage of the day,
in my middle finger mood, this is what I choose to display.

Happy hour’s a misnomer, it’s just cheaper booze,
barkeep says I look like I was born to lose.
But I’m just swaying with the barstool, partners in grime,
spinning round, middle fingers up, it’s quitting time.

This goes out to the lost, the broken, the damned,
to the misfits who never needed a plan.
We might bend, might bleed, but we don’t heed
the soulless scripts that they all read.

No Cooling System

I wake with my jaw already tight,
teeth grinding on words I haven’t said aloud in years,
pulse riding high before the first ugly headline even loads.
Coffee tastes like battery acid,
tongue raw from the comebacks I swallowed yesterday,
while idiots rehearsed clean excuses and called it “growth.”
I lace my boots like I’m wrapping hands
for a fight that never rings the bell,
just keeps shifting rooms and faces and uniforms.
Every memory they told me to “move past” sits on my shoulders,
sandbags soaked in gasoline–stinking, heavy,
impossible to carry without losing what’s left of my spine.
There’s no reset button on the shit they did,
no soft-focus redemption arc,
only this quiet decision to stay lit enough to burn through the next lie that tries to crawl in.

I keep the fury sustained, no cooling system,
just scars acting as gauges and a mind that refuses to dim.
Let the pressure climb till the pipes scream,
I won’t vent it in prayer or pills or polite little hymns.
If this rage corrodes what’s left of me, so be it,
I’d rather rust loud than be polished into someone else’s tame reflection.
Turn the gain up till the chest plate rattles,
this whole life runs dirty on spite and deliberate,
sharpened insurrection.

They sell calm in plastic bottles and breathing apps,
tell me to “count to ten” while the same boots grind necks into office carpets.
Therapists with kind voices talk about “reframing,”
like a new angle changes the fact that some people only stop hitting
when you swing back.
I tried the incense, the yoga, the mantras stamped on mugs,
felt my pulse dropping into a flat gray line that tasted like surrender.
So I built my own ritual instead,
distortion cranked, drumheads bruised,
lyrics carved with a box cutter
into the parts of me that still flinch.
This anger isn’t a tantrum,
it’s a generator wired wrong on purpose, humming hot,
powering every refusal they said I’d regret.

I’m not interested in being forgiven
for how hard I clench my fists.
They trained me on fear
and now they want gratitude because I’m still breathing?
This isn’t random violence, it’s maintenance,
like oiling a weapon you never fire blind.
Keeping the edge honed without slicing your own throat for sport.
Some nights the rage tries to eat everything
–loves, friends, whatever softness is left,
and I have to choke it back just enough to aim it
where it belongs.
But I never shut it off.
That switch is taped in the “on” position,
with every insult, every theft,
every body they shrugged off as a statistic.

When the crowd thins and the lights cut out,
I’m still pacing the loading dock, breath fogging, jaw stiff,
replaying every line I didn’t have time to spit.
Tomorrow they’ll ask if I’m ever going to “let it go,”
like this inferno is a hobby I can box up with old shirts
and setlists.
I’ll shrug, light another smoke,
taste metal on the back of my tongue,
and walk into the dark with my hands still shaking.
The engine stays red, the tank stays poisoned,
and as long as I’m dragging this body around,
that fury rides shotgun,
uninvited
and absolutely fucking welcome.

No One Gave Me Anything

No one gave me anything that I did not work to get,
Every dollar earned in sweat and I have got no debt,
To luck or to connection or to who my father knew,
I built this from the absolute zero of the new.

No one gave me anything, I started with the empty hand,
No one gave me anything, I built it on the sand,
And the sand became concrete when I worked it long enough,
No one gave me anything and that is why it holds up tough.

I know the argument that no one builds alone,
I know the roads were public and the market was a loan,
From the civic structure that exists before the man,
I know all that and I still built according to my plan.

The pride is not in claiming I owe nothing to the world,
The pride is in the specific effort that I hurled,
Against the wall of difficulty every single year,
No one gave me anything is not resentment, it is clear.

Past the Point of Anger

I used to have a genuine fire about the things you went and did,
I used to have the real and present heat of a man who still
cares enough to sustain the anger, cares enough to feel
the actual temperature of it, the burn, the thrill
of a fury with real oxygen still inside it, with live fuel
to keep it moving,
with the active current of wanting you to know.
I used to have the fire and the fire was informative about me,
it told me I was still fully inside the thing,
and the telling would show
me that the thing still mattered at the cellular
and chemical level,
that the wound was living and warm and generating real heat.
I used to have the fire and the fire was a reliable signal
that the signal was still transmitting clearly,
I could feel the beat
of its frequency in my chest in triggering moments,
when your name arrived,
when someone mentioned casually what you’d done.
I used to have the fire
and it meant something was still connected,
and then one unremarkable day something disconnected,
and the fire was done.

I’m past the point of anger now and past the point of caring,
I’m past the point where your name produces a single thing in me at all.
I’m past the point of the fire
and the long cold that followed after the fire,
and I’m in the open country on the other side of everything,
and the fall
is done, you’re done,
the account I was keeping is closed behind me.
I’m past the point of anger and well past the point of the cold,
I’m in the country that exists after all of those things run out together,
and the country that exists after all of it is the longest kind of old.

The cold came in after the fire
and the cold was itself a something,
it had a texture and a quality of weight and press.
The cold communicated that you still mattered enough to be the exact thing
I was keeping the cold about,
the cold was not nothing, it was the address
you still had on my interior,
still a coordinate, still the subject
of what I was carrying and how it occupied the freight
I move through the world with,
still actively investing in the maintenance.
The cold was after the fire
and the cold was information arriving late.

And then one unremarkable morning it was quiet,
in a way I had genuinely not encountered before in that place inside.
A quiet that had no underneath it,
no second layer, no managed surface,
a quiet that was actually quiet without anything alive to hide.
This was the actual and authentic quiet of a man who has finished
with the complete construction,
who has finally set the whole building down,
who has nothing remaining in him that moves in your direction anymore,
not the fire, not the cold,
not the residue, not the background sound.

I should tell you directly that this is not the triumphant
and redemptive ending
that you might have constructed
and hoped for in your accounting of me.
This is not the place
where I announce that I have fully forgiven you,
this is not the resolution
where anything circles back to clarity,
back to something better than where we were
–this is only the nothing
that arrives when a fire has completely consumed every unit of its fuel.
And I’m standing in the nothing and I’m telling you about it
because the telling of it is the last available thing,
and the last thing is cool.

Like the ash is.
The ash is cool and the ash is accurate.
The ash is the complete and final record of what burned.
The ash has no remaining heat in it, no residual temperature,
no capacity to warm the hand, no final lesson to be learned
from holding it–it is only what it is, which is the nothing
that was once a something and is now the after-something,
and it holds
its shape briefly the way ash holds a shape before the wind comes,
and then the wind comes and the shape gives up and the cold
is just the cold and nothing in it is about you anymore.
Nothing in the air moving through the place the fire was
is carrying your name or your address or your column
in the ledger,
and the ledger is also ash and the ash is also because
of what was, the open air, the absence where the thing had been,
the space where something occupied the space
and doesn’t occupy it now.
And I am in the space and it is quiet and nothing in the quiet
is pointing in your direction–and the quiet is showing me how.

Prove Your Worth When You Worship Me

You are everything.
I am nothing.
I hate you more now every day.
You are light.
I am blight.
I gag on every word you say.

I look at you and all I see is everything I should be,
I would do anything to be you and not be me.
You are so very perfect, fine, blessed and pristine,
compared to you I see myself as ugly and obscene.

The world is yours to take, there is absolutely no mistake,
while you shine and resonate, I merely sit here and quake.
You fill my eyes, you are everything that I can never see,
you are absolutely everything I dreamed I could be.

It’s always so damned easy for your false divinity,
but when it comes to me there’s no sympathy.
But I will step up and I will take your place in line,
your wealth and beauty will be mine.

I want to be you,
I know what to do.
I’ll destroy your kind.
You will die,
I will rise,
I will claim what should be mine.

I desire all you hold dear,
I want everything you are.
I will take what you hold near,
I will be that star.

And when you are consumed by everything you’ve got,
I’ll be right here waiting to claim you, since I need a lot.
Fuel to feed the eternal fires,
burning greed out of thieves and liars.

Possess everything you ever wanted, hold it close to your heart,
you don’t have to pay for it until I come to claim my part.
Just go along, child, do whatever you need to do,
love your precious possessions, and I will possess you.

It’s only natural to want to have a little more,
step on the little people so they know what’s in store.
And if they get in your way, push them down,
there’s not enough to go around.
Do whatever it takes, make them get on their knees.

Punchline Baby

She texts the punchline–the two-word
message, the heard-
it-first of the bit I’ve been
building for three weeks, the clean
arrival of the ending
before I told it. The bending
of the comedian by the partner
who’s ahead. The charter.

[Chorus]
Punchline baby–she texts the ending
before the comedian’s bending
toward it. She sees the bit
before I do. I commit
to the credit: the better
comedian, the letter
of the relationship: her.
Punchline baby: the blur.

I’ve been with her long enough–
the stuff
of the material is her lens
too, the immense
familiarity of the shared
comedy register. She cared
enough to learn the bit’s direction.
Punchline baby: connection.

The comedian who’s outpaced–
the relationship faced
with the better comedian in the other.
I’m the second-best brother
in the house. The punchline baby
wins. I don’t go crazy.
I take the credit for the setup.
Punchline baby: the speed-up.

Punchlines That Never Heal [Wraith]
April shows up smelling like wet pavement and cheap plastic confetti,That one dumb stretch of calendar where the world shrugs and agrees that lying is “just for fun” as long as everyone laughs pretty,Signs at the office saying “out of order” on bathrooms that still work, sugar swapped with salt, fake lotteries, fake crushes, fake pity,Whole day dressed in the costume of harmless mischief while every damaged part of you remembers when “just kidding” carved real scars on your city,You stand at the edge of it watching the first stupid prank unfold like it’s a rerun of a show where you already know who doesn’t make it out witty.
Someone tapes a “KICK ME” to a stranger’s back,And the crowd indulges, nudges, “light taps,” little kicks that conveniently line up with old bruises no one bothered to track,He laughs too loud, playing off the sting as if acknowledging pain would violate the terms of this clown-packed pact,The room stinks of cheap soda and stale breath and that thin sweat people get when they’re trying not to react,A chorus of “relax, we’re just messing with you” claps over his shoulders like hands that never actually help him stand back.
High school comes crawling out of memory like mold from under wet wallpaper.You remember lockers slammed shut with notes inside saying “just kidding, nobody wanted you at the party anyway,”Remember that one April afternoon when someone told you they liked you and your ribs flew open like windows that never got to stay that way,Five minutes later it was a joke, a dare, a “god, did you really believe that?” followed by hysterical laughter echoing down the hallway,While your insides stood there naked, holding flowers grown out of the rare moment you trusted what someone had the nerve to say.
April is the month where cruelty gets a hall pass stamped “tradition” in glitter gel pen ink,Where you can swap out someone’s medication, fake a death text, fake a pregnancy, fake an eviction notice and as long as you scream “APRIL FOOLS” before they cry too hard you’re not the villain, just an edgy link,People film the panic, upload the footage, watch it loop on tiny screens while eating dinner,Comment sections full of “lol they’re sensitive” and “could never be me” from folks who have no clue what it’s like to always be the sinner,Even when the only thing you did to deserve the punchline was trust that the words coming toward you weren’t rigged to splinter.
They don’t see the part after.Not the face in the bathroom mirror arguing with itself over whether you “overreacted” or if maybe you should toughen up and stop trying so desperately to matter,Not the way you start reading every sentence as bait, every compliment as a setup, every text as a potential trap,Not the way your body flinches two seconds too early now, predicting impact where there might just be a harmless tap,Not the way “just joking” burrows under your skin so deep it becomes the language you speak to yourself when your own heart tries to map a scrap of self-worth on the gap.
Some jokes land like snowballs.Soft, stupid, melting harmlessly on your shoulders while you laugh and throw one back, no harm in that,The prank where someone fills your drawer with balloons and you genuinely laugh as they burst like tiny thunder and the worst thing you lose is your patience and your favorite pen under the splat,The one where you open a cupboard and fifty tiny rubber ducks cascade out protesting gravity in squeaky chorus,No ghosts in that one, just a silly mess you’ll be finding under furniture by autumn,A kind of chaos that doesn’t leave your nervous system on fire like an alarm you forgot how to stop, just sits there humming, mostly harmless, not ominous.
But then there’s the other kind.The “prank” where they stage an intervention for a problem you don’t actually have,Just to see your face fall, watch your hands tremble, feel the air leave the room while they practice their fake concerned voices and rehearse their half-assed schtick in the staff bathroom on behalfOf “team bonding,” the kind where managers wink like they weren’t the ones signing paychecks for the show,Then scream “APRIL FOOLS” at the exact moment your throat closes and your heart backs itself into a corner, unsure where else it can go.
The night version of this is worse.You’re in bed, phone glowing angry blue on the pillow beside you, reading old chats like crime scene transcripts,Those “lol calm down, you know I was joking” lines undercutting real hurt with the efficiency of dull scissors sawing at fresh stitches and ripped scripts,You scroll past screenshots of people you used to believe, their “haha got you” stamped over memories like threat-level red lipstick,You listen to your ceiling creak, count cracks, wonder how many times you laughed along when you were the accomplice, when you were the one swinging the trick.
There’s a special hell for the “prank” that kicks at open wounds.The fake breakup thrown at someone with abandonment issues already sleeping curled around the idea that everyone leaves,The staged cheating photo waved under the nose of a partner who’s spent years relearning the meaning of trust, only to have the floor ripped out by a “just kidding, you should’ve seen your face” as if that’s something anyone wants to achieve,The fake overdose, the fake car crash text, the fake “I’ve been fired and it’s your fault” gag aimed square in the chest of someone already drowning in guilt so thick they can barely breathe,These aren’t trick candles on a cake, these are matches dropped in a dry forest, followed by open laughter while the trees seethe.
And yet, you can’t pretend every April is only knives.Sometimes your people are the kind who know the difference between a gentle scare and a cut that takes months to cauterize,They rig your coffee mug with a silly message at the bottom—“this is your emotional support caffeine, do not abandon it”—and watch your eyebrows rise,They tape googly eyes on everything in your fridge so your midnight snack run feels like a support group with produce,They swap your ringtone for a ridiculous snippet of your own off-key singing from that one night you were loose,And when your face catches fire in shocked embarrassment they’re right there, grinning, not to mock you but to remind you that being ridiculous in front of them is part of the truce.
The trick, you figure, is this:Who does the joke serve?If it only feeds the ego of the one holding the camera while the subject curls in on themselves like a kicked dog trying not to swerve,If the laugh only travels one direction—outward from the prankster, leaving behind someone smaller, colder, convinced they deserved it because everyone else seemed so sure,Then it’s not a prank, it’s a confession,A serial killer of trust in a party hat,A ritual where empathy is the sacrifice on the floor.
You think back to all the years you swallowed your hurt around this date,Past Aprils blurred into one long string of “nah, it’s fine, I get the joke” even when your stomach clenched so hard you tasted metal on your tongue,You remember the moment you finally looked someone in the eye and said, “that wasn’t funny, that actually messed me up,” and watched their grin deflate, half offended, half young,Like a child caught pulling legs off flies and being told those wings were not props, they were lives strung,You saw the calculation in their stare—whether to double down or back off—and realized most people were never taught how to apologize without adding “you’re too sensitive” to the rung.
This year you hang your own sign.Not public, not a manifesto, just a quiet boundary pinned up in your ribcage where the worst pranks were sworn in,A little message written in permanent marker across your heart:If you wouldn’t say it without the safety of “just kidding,” don’t come here with it tucked under your grin.If your joke needs someone to ache, to panic, to relive their worst night so your endorphins can spin,Take that punchline back to your mirror and see if you still laugh once it’s aimed at your own skin.
April will still come.The fools will still post their gotcha clips and staged tragedies, the world will still pretend this one square of the year is where cruelty gets a discount code,But in your little corner of it, you get to choose who has access to your reactions, who gets the backstage pass to your fight-or-flight mode,You keep your circle small, your tolerance lower, your humor sharp but not built on someone else’s cracked bones,You make room for the jokes that leave everyone standing at the end, a little embarrassed maybe, but still whole in their homes.
And when the first person tries to pull some elaborate stunt that leans hard on your old fear,You give them a look that says, clear as floodlight, “I survived enough punchlines that were actually knives, I don’t need auditions here,”If they back down, maybe there’s hope.If they don’t, if they smirk and say you “can’t take a joke,”You remember that this month was named for fools for a reason.You leave them holding their little fake spider or their fake text or their fake broken glass,And you exit the scene without begging to be treated like a person,Because you are done bleeding for people who think pain is just another prop to pass.

Quiet Anger

The quiet anger is the most precise kind I know,
the quiet anger is the temperature that stays below
the audible and the visible and the recognizable form,
and quiet anger is the fury in the eye of the storm.

I have been the quiet anger for as long as I have been,
the quiet anger is the oldest and the most contained
of every kind of fury I have carried in the years,
and quiet anger is the anger that outlasts the fears.

Quiet anger, the fury in the frequency you miss,
quiet anger, the cold and the deliberate and the hiss
of the sustained and the low and the patient and the real,
quiet anger is the deepest thing I feel.

The quiet anger does not ask for your acknowledgment or proof,
the quiet anger does not need to blow the roof
off the house to demonstrate its presence and its scale,
and quiet anger is the fury that does not fail.

It does not fail because it does not spend itself in flash,
it does not fail because it does not go the reckless and the rash
route of the immediate and the hot and the display,
and quiet anger is the fury that is here to stay.

The quiet anger will express itself in the time and place
of the calculated and the chosen and the face
of the deliberate man who planned the moment to the day,
and quiet anger is the anger that is already on its way.

Rationing

We rationed the hope the same way we rationed the flour,
small amounts spread carefully across every hour.
Too much hope burns through faster than the food,
too little and the body goes into a different mood.

Rationing is the practice of extending what you have,
rationing is the discipline of the longer path.
Rationing is not deprivation if you do it right,
rationing is the strategy of surviving through the night.

We held our ration meetings at the beginning of each week,
five of us around the counting, five of us to speak
the truth of what remained against the days remaining,
the truth of what was possible without complaining.

Someone always pushed for more than could be given,
which is the human thing, which is the driven
hunger talking past the rational, and someone always held
the line of what was possible with what was left and spelled
it out with patience, which is the community’s survival art,
the balance of the hungry body and the thinking heart.

By the time the aid arrived we’d made it to the week,
by the time the aid arrived we’d found the strategy unique
to our specific group of five with our specific need,
and the rationing had worked, and we had learned to heed.

I ration still, two years past the crisis and the end,
I ration out of habit and I find I don’t intend to mend
the habit, find the discipline of enough has value
in the ordinary life of plenty as a residue.

Rebellion

In a land where freedom’s chained, where voices silenced, hope disdained,
a spark ignites in hearts oppressed, a flame that won’t be put to rest.

A young girl stands with fire in eyes, her voice a beacon against the lies,
she rallies hearts with every word, a rising tide that can’t be deterred.

The tyrant’s grasp begins to slip, as power’s hold begins to rip.
In every street and every square, the people rise without despair.

In the shadows where freedom’s lost, rebellion rises at any cost.
Every heartbeat a battle cry, for the right to live, to not comply.

A tale of strength, a story bold, in rebellion’s grip their souls unfold,
where they fight they seek a dawn that brings the light.

The tyrant’s fall, a looming fate, as the rebellion storms the gate.
In the shadows where they bled, now they rise with dreams ahead.

The land reborn from fire’s breath, a new dawn rising from the death.
In the streets where shadows lay, freedom’s light now leads the way.

San’s Temper

Inhale deep,
steel my nerves,
nothing more
than you deserve.

Adrenaline
burns my veins,
struggling
to stay sane.

Hold the rage,
keep it back,
resist the urge,
stifle the attack.

Burning thoughts
fill my head,
blind my eyes,
seeing red.

Blood boils,
it just won’t quit.

Say It Louder

She said tell me what you are doing while you are doing it,
I said I am three fingers deep and you are dripping on my wrist,
She shivered and said more, give me the details wet and raw,
I said I can feel you clenching every time I curl and draw.

My thumb across your clit in tight little circles while I stretch,
You open with the other hand, she gasped and said that sketch,
Of what you are doing down there is doing more than the actual act,
She said your mouth is a weapon and that is a proven fact.

Say it louder, tell me everything you feel,
Say it louder, make the dirty talk the deal,
She wants the play-by-play while I am inside her to the hilt,
Say it louder, every filthy word I built,
Gets her closer than my cock does on its own without the script,
Say it louder, watch her lose her grip.

I whispered in her ear exactly where I planned to finish,
She came before I got there and the diminish,
Of her orgasm rolled into the next one when I said,
I am gonna flip you over and fuck you till you see red,
She said keep talking, don’t you dare stop with the narration,
I gave her every syllable and she gave me a standing ovation.

Seizing the Moment

The moment does not wait, it offers itself and passes,
it does not linger at the door through second-pass analyses,
I have watched men calculate the risk while the moment evaporated
and stood in the resulting loss that their caution had created.

Seizing the moment is a reflex built from preparation,
the man who hesitates has missed the window of the station,
you have to be so ready that the taking is instinctive,
seizing the moment is a practice,
not an instinct that is distinctive.

I built the habit over years of saying yes to the forward-facing,
of moving when the alignment showed instead of long appraising,
the moment arrives dressed in ambiguity and partial information,
you will never have the complete picture at the moment of the station.

I have seized moments that looked wrong to everyone observing,
taken them before the surface logic was quite worth preserving,
because underneath the surface was a depth I had been reading
for three years before the moment came and put me in the leading.

Seventeen Years

Seventeen years is long enough to know
what her silence sounds like at different temperatures,
long enough to know the joke she’ll make
before the setup’s finished, long enough
to have a shorthand for the things we’ve been through
that only works between us, coded into
a look or a word or nothing at all —
a raised eyebrow across a crowded table.

Seventeen years and I still want to tell her things,
that’s the part nobody warned me about —
that you’d still want to tell her everything you see,
still save her the funniest part of every story.
Seventeen years and I’m still surprised sometimes
by what she knows about me that I didn’t say,
the way she reads the day in how I hold my shoulders —
seventeen years and it still catches me.

We’ve had the bad years, I won’t pretend we haven’t,
the years when the distance wasn’t geographic,
when we lived in the same house and somehow
couldn’t find our way back to each other for a while.
You come through that or you don’t, and we came through it,
not gracefully, not all at once, but slowly,
the way a field comes back after a bad frost —
you don’t see it happening, then one day it has.

Seventeen years of learning what to let go,
what’s worth the fight and what’s worth the silence,
how to say the hard thing without burning the house,
how to hear the hard thing without going to ground.
That’s not romantic, I know how it sounds —
but there’s something on the other side of learning a person
that is deeper than the early feeling was,
something that the early feeling was trying to become.

She laughs at something on the TV and I look over
because her laugh is still one of my favorite sounds,
still specific in a way that I couldn’t describe
but would recognize across a loud restaurant.
I have memorized this person involuntarily,
the way you memorize a song you didn’t mean to learn —
she’s in me now at the level below thinking,
at the level where the breathing is.

And on the nights we sit out on the back porch
not saying much, the dark around us easy,
I think about the kid I was at twenty-five
who had no idea what he was walking into —
that it would be this long, this deep, this specific,
this much like work and this much like breathing,
this much the thing I’d choose again
if I came back around and had the choice.

Seventeen years. I’d do it again.
I’d do every hard year again just to get here,
to this porch, this dark, this specific silence
that means we’re both exactly where we want to be.

Show Up and Earn It

Show up and earn it, that was all the advice he gave,
Show up and earn it, those were the words he took to his grave,
He was not a complicated man with complicated theories of success,
He believed the showing up was ninety percent of the rest.

Show up and earn it, the simple and the true,
Show up and earn it, the whole philosophy in two,
Show up and earn it, and the showing up must be complete,
Show up and earn it and never call it a defeat.

He worked the county road crew for thirty-seven years of days,
He showed up in the cold and in the heat and in the haze,
He showed up when the budget cut the crew in half,
He showed up without complaint and never had to laugh.

The road he paved in the first year of his work,
Is still the best stretch of the county and it will not shirk,
Its duty for another twenty years at least,
Show up and earn it is the whole thing east to east.

Spider Veins and Sugar Rage

She lived in a motel
where the mirrors had given up on accuracy some years prior,
and the walls had absorbed enough of her frequency to develop aspiration higher.
She’d organized her pharmaceuticals by emotional need
and labeled them accordingly,
and the ones on the left shelf were
for the reality she found more orderly.

She had a conversation running with a doll head liberated from the torso,
and maintained it provided better counsel than the therapy,
which she found worse, so
she’d stopped attending
and started attending to whatever the doll head had in mind,
for the forty-seventh of its recurring opinions about what she was going to find.

Spider veins and sugar rage–the chemistry of her page.
She ran the whole equation on a frequency that the conventional can’t calculate.
Spider veins and sugar rage
–operating at the edge of what the daylight can tolerate.

At three in the morning she’d take the parking lot
for dancing when the mood permitted,
and issue a sustained operatic complaint to whatever the sky had committed
against her, which was extensive
and documented in the notebook of offense
she kept under the mattress alongside the evidence
for all her major life defense.

The straightjacket she wore as a considered fashion commentary on the general condition,
she’d answer questions about it with the patience of someone explaining position
to people who haven’t thought about it deeply enough to have an actual opinion.

She sold me a jar and I bought it on the general principle
that whatever she’d assembled in it probably had applications practical
and mineral.
Spider veins and sugar rage
–the frequency of an entirely original human,
the kind of person that makes you wonder what’s actually the agreed-upon illumination.

Stop Fucking My Mind In The Ass With A Cactus

I woke up with a headache shaped like every stupid thing you ever said crammed sideways behind my eyes.
You’re squatting in my skull, tracking mud through every thought,
turning grocery lists into a trial full of lies.
Every ping on my phone feels like a ransom note from a future I did not sign for,
just more garbage dressed as advice.
You toss your drama at my door,
then act surprised when I say I’m done being your emotional dumping ground at half price.

You weaponize concern, call it love,
then poke every scar till it twitches like an exposed nerve under skin.
Tell me who I used to be, what I should forgive, where I should go,
like you get to pick which ghosts I let back in.
You turn my memories into a sideshow,
bend every reflection till I barely recognize the kid who survived all that before.
Then you smile and say I’m overreacting
when I finally tell you this whole twisted horror show is not mine anymore.

I am not your sandbox, not your soundboard,
not your private haunted house to run around in for kicks.
I’ve had enough of your guilt trips dressed as guidance
and your therapy tone while you swing the sticks.
If you need someone’s mind to mess with, go find a mirror,
I am done being your favorite broken fix.

Stop fucking my mind in the ass with a cactus,
you fuckheaded fucking cock sucking mother fucker.
Take your barbed little comments and your backhanded wisdom and shove them back into the dark,
you miserable bloodsucker.
I have got one brain and it is already full of noise and late night panic,
I do not need your spikes in there too.
Stop fucking my mind with your cactus hands, I am changing the locks,
cutting the cord, and this is my final fuck you.

You show up when I am weakest, late night, low blood sugar,
no sleep, scrolling through disasters just to feel less alone.
Slide in with nostalgia
and sad songs and “remember when” until my boundaries blur like a cheap screen on a prepaid phone.
You say you miss who I was before I got “so angry”
and “so sensitive” and “so quick to call bullshit out.”
But that kid kept swallowing glass to keep the peace,
and I am not spitting blood for your comfort now,
get the hell out.

You can keep your gaslit highlight reel,
your edited past where I never cried or said no or walked away.
You want the soft little puppet you can pull off the shelf when you feel lonely,
not the person standing here today.
Well guess what, this brain is under new management,
and you do not get a backstage pass just because you knew me halfway.

La la la, I am turning down the volume on your voice.
Dum dum dum, I am walking out and that is my choice.
You can rant into the void, write long manifestos,
scream at empty walls till your throat goes rough and sore.
I will be somewhere drinking water, breathing steady,
not rehearsing old debates with you anymore.

Stop fucking my mind in the ass with a cactus,
you fuckheaded fucking cock sucking mother fucker.
I am done being your target practice,
your soft skull to pierce whenever your own life starts to sputter.
La la la, dum dum dum, hear that rhythm,
that is my brain finally slamming the door on you.
Stop fucking my mind with your cactus bullshit, I am done,
I am free, and you can choke on your own bad stew.

If you ever wonder why it is quiet now
when you come swinging with your same old spikes and spin,
it is because I finally learned my brain is not your playground,
and I am never letting you back in.

Stranger In A Bar In Memphis

She was at the bar in Memphis in the kind of bar
that Memphis has–the lived-in kind, the scar
on the face of the street that means the bar has been there longer
than the neighborhood’s current version and the stronger
pull of an old bar in a new evening is its own thing,
and she was in it like she belonged and the ring
of her ease in a bar she clearly didn’t know
was the ease of someone who belongs in any place they go.

Stranger in a bar in Memphis and she’s at the end of the row
of the bar stools with a drink I don’t know and the low
warm light of the Memphis bar doing what it does
to a woman at the end of the bar and the because.
Stranger in a bar in Memphis, her at the end.

She caught me looking and didn’t look away and the attend
of the catching was two full seconds and then she looked
back at her drink and I sat there with the hooked
feeling of a man who’s been seen seeing and the two
seconds of direct contact in a bar and the view.

I walked to the end of the bar and she didn’t look surprised,
and I said: I’m passing through and she said: surmised,
which is the one-word answer that means: I know,
and the conversation that followed was the glow
of a bar in Memphis at ten o’clock with a woman who travels
and talks like someone who’s done the full unravels
of herself and put it back together and I was in it,
for two hours and the Memphis night and every minute.

Stranger in My Skin

I’m a stranger in my skin,
holding tight, but breaking thin.
Every word they praise feels hollow,
like I’m someone I can’t follow.

Will they see me for who I’m not?
Fragile masks are all I’ve got.
If I fall apart, will they still care?
When I show them the cracks, will they still be there?

I’m trapped in this contest where I’m not enough,
faking strong when I’m giving up.

I’m a stranger in my skin,
holding tight, but breaking thin.
Every word they praise feels hollow,
like I’m someone I can’t follow.
Will they see me for who I’m not?
Fragile masks are all I’ve got.

I’m a shadow on display, a name without a face,
still wondering if I have a place.
I sit on a throne that doesn’t belong,
in a kingdom where I don’t feel strong.

They call me worthy, but I can’t believe,
all the things I’ve built feel like they deceive.
The world’s looking at me, but all I see
is someone who’s living a lie underneath.

I smile on cue, hide the fear that grows,
beneath the surface, no one knows.
A fraud in disguise, every word I say
is just a line to make it through the day.

Taking the Hill

We did not take it clean and we did not take it slow,
We took it like a mudslide with nowhere left to go,
Every boot was sliding and every lung was burning through,
But the top of that incline was the only thing we knew.

Taking the hill, taking the hill,
Not because we could but because we had the will,
Every ridge that slowed us down just pushed us harder up,
Taking the hill until the last man fills his cup.

Taking the hill in the dead of the assault,
Breathing blood and dirt and every previous fault,
They said hold your position, we held the summit line,
Taking the hill because the high ground’s always mine.

The defenders had advantage, had the angles and the drop,
But advantage means exactly nothing when you do not stop,
We were louder than their confidence and faster than their fear,
And the last hundred feet was ours before they knew we were near.

There’s a mathematics to it, willingness outranks terrain,
There’s a physics to the pushing
where the hunger beats the strain,
Every hill is just a question and the answer’s in your legs,
And the man who’s made his peace with pain is way beyond all begs.

We planted something at the top to say that we had been,
Not for anyone who’d follow but for everyone who’d seen,
That a body in forward motion with a purpose and a roar,
Is the oldest kind of argument that nobody can ignore.

Taking What’s Offered

Not everything has to be taken by force of will and pressure,
some of it is sitting in a clearing at your leisure,
and the discipline of knowing when to take the open passage
is as real a skill as breaking through the wall at every chapter.

Taking what is offered is not surrender to the easy,
it is reading the terrain and knowing when the path goes breezy,
a man who fights through every door when half of them stand open
has spent his energy on doors that could have been left unbroken.

I have seen the fighter miss the opportunity beside him
because he was too busy with the adversary outside him,
the offered territory sometimes comes as invitation
and turning down the gift is not a victory, it is abdication.

Last spring a contract came through channels I had not cultivated,
a reference from a decade back, a loyalty I had not anticipated,
I took it, built from it, and it became the access to a sector
I had been trying to crack for years through a far harder vector.

Taking what is offered means your antennae have to function,
means you recognize the opening at the unguarded junction,
the conqueror who only knows the frontal and the forceful
will miss the half of every map that does not need the courseful.

That Bitch from Apartment 6C
She’s a bleach-blonde detonation with a blackout for a soul,
High heels louder than her rock-bottom goals on every floor,
Got a smile that’s half apology, half loaded threat, all teeth,
Wears red lipstick like a court-mandated statement underneath.

She keyed my car and pointed at the planetary alignment,
Screams at her dying plants and flirts across every confinement,
Her dog is legitimately called Satan and it fits without a seam,
Stole my ex, his gaming setup, no apologies, just a gleam.

That bitch from apartment 6C,
Got a chainsaw heart and a degree in anarchy,
Lives exclusively on drama and the cheapest wine they sell,
She’ll burn directly through heaven if it steps across her trail.

Her conception of love is a mugshot with a wink attached,
She ghosted her landlord right after the plumbing was dispatched,
Leaves glitter in her wake like it’s a documented warfare style,
That restraining order’s just another line item in her file.

Don’t ask her — just address her as the storm rolling through town,
With a synthetic laugh and behavioral patterns that confound,
She’s a walking curse in lace with a full-contact smile,
And she’ll own your entire operation for a considerable while.

The Anger and the Art

Every piece of work I’ve ever done has had the heat in it,
The background radiation of the fury in the fit
Of the phrasing and the pressure and the shaping of the thing,
The anger and the art are what I’ve been carrying.
The anger and the art are not the enemies I thought,
The anger and the art are both the things I’ve always bought
My way into the work with, one demanding and one clear,
The anger and the art, and they’ve been working here.

The Anger At Myself

The anger at the outside world has a legitimate address,
There are real and actual things that warrant the distress
Of a fury that is proportional and pointed at the cause,
The anger at myself is different in its laws.
The anger at myself deserves a more precise investigation,
The anger at myself requires better adjudication,
Not all of it is earned and not all of it is true,
The anger at myself, and some of it is overdue.

The Anger Had a Point

I’ve been reviewing the case that the anger was making all along,
I’ve been auditing the position of the fury and the song
It’s been singing since the first day that I felt it
in the blood,
The anger had a point, and the point was in the mud.
The anger had a point about the values and the line,
The anger had a point about the treatment and the sign
That something was in violation of the core of who I am,
The anger had a point, and I should thank the anger’s stand.

The Anger I Will Always Have

I’m not going to pretend that this is going away in full,
I’m not going to claim that I’ve exhausted all the pull
Of the fury at the wrong and at the insufficient and the missed,
The anger I will always have persists.
The anger I will always have is part of who I am,
The anger I will always have is part of the program
That makes me useful in the places where the anger ought to be,
The anger I will always have, and I’m glad it’s here in me.

The Anger in the Grief

Nobody talks about the anger because it seems wrong
you are supposed to be sad, that is the expected note
but the anger was in me from the beginning and it was real
I was angry at the dying and I want to quote
I was angry he had not taken better care of himself
I was angry at the hospital for the specific ways it failed
I was angry at myself for the things I had not said in time
I was angry at the friends who did not show and trailed
the anger in the grief is not a sign of not-loving
it is the other side of the same intense care
you do not get angry about the loss of something casual
the anger proves how much was there
the anger eventually found its way to something softer
not because the anger was wrong but because it was expensive
to carry the anger and the grief together is a full-time job
and at some point the anger became too intensive
what I kept was not the anger but the information
the things the anger was pointing at that needed doing
the conversations I had been too polite to have
the places I had been too diplomatic in pursuing

The Anger is Rising

The anger is rising and it’s getting hard to hide.
Tell me it’ll be alright, tell me just turn the page,
and you’ll see the other side, the me that’s filled with rage.

There’s no turning back now,
there’s no more faking.
I wanna calm down, don’t know how,
I feel like my mind is baking.

Sadness turns to anger, turns to rage inside,
it’s all part of grieving? Fuck this ride.

Breaking crap just to hear the crackle of the crash,
mourning and stressing over deaths and cash.
Haunted by ghosts I can’t outrun anymore,
don’t try and tell me there’s something better in store.
Don’t paint me with your grand facade and fantasy,
don’t offer me your empty sympathy.

Tell me it’ll be alright, tell me just turn the page,
and you’ll see the other side, the me that’s filled with rage.

There’s something creeping in the air tonight,
a memory of a spirit hidden from the light.
It’s not something you can just turn your eyes and see,
but I know there’s something haunting me.

There’s something coming in the wind tonight,
I don’t know whether to embrace it or turn away in fright.
Cross myself and try to hide from the sound,
they always come knocking when no one’s around.

There’s nothing serious, nothing shocking,
I just can’t go outside anymore
when I hear the knocking,
the ghost outside the door.

There’s something waking me from my dreams at night.

The Anger Returning

I’d thought I’d dealt with it enough to take it off the active list,
I’d thought the work I’d done had moved it well into the mist
Of the addressed and processed and the filed in the behind,
The anger returning, and the anger is the kind.
The anger returning is the signal of the unfinished work,
The anger returning is the thing I’ve tried to shirk
But can’t because the system of the processing requires the rounds,
The anger returning, and I’m listening to the sounds.

The Anger Stage

Don’t tell me it’s a process, don’t hand me your compassion map,
I’m not at peace with anything and I don’t need the wrap,
You want me clean and functional, you want me through the haze,
But I am burning red and ugly in the anger phase.
I’m angry at the doctors who said everything was looking fine,
I’m angry at the road they took without warning me or sign,
I’m angry at myself for every selfish cowardly choice I made,
And I’m angry at the universe for holding every ace and spade.
This is the anger, this is the part they murmur around,
This is the fire that comes before the grief gets quiet
and profound,
This is the three a.m. and throwing things and slamming doors,
This is the turning everything inside out on every floor,
The anger is the grief that hasn’t found the shape to wear,
The anger is the grief that has no other way to breathe the air.
And maybe the anger is the most unvarnished thing I have,
Because it proves I loved you past the point of any epitaph,
And when it burns down to the ember sitting in my chest,
I’ll be left with something quieter —
but this is what comes first.

The Anger That Is Right

Not all anger is the same and I am telling you the kind I hold,
Is the anger that is right, it is the documented and the bold,
Expression of the truth of what occurred and what it meant,
And the anger that is right is the most precise I have spent.
I have been angry at the wrong things before and I know the feel,
Of the anger that is indulgent and the anger that is real,
And the anger that is right is a completely different grade,
It is the anger that precision and the evidence have made.
The anger that is right, the calibrated and the sourced,
The anger that is right, the documented and the coursed,
Through every channel of the rational and the clear,
The anger that is right is the only anger here.
So here is the anger that is right, expressed in its full form,
Every word derived from evidence and not from the storm,
Of emotion unmoored from the facts of what occurred,
The anger that is right has had the very final word.

The Anger That Protected

I want to acknowledge what it did before I set it down,
I want to give the anger its proper credit in the town
Of the things that served me in the years that needed serving,
The anger that protected and the protection’s worth observing.
The anger that protected is the anger worth the thanks,
The anger that protected is the one that filled the blanks
Of what I didn’t have available in skill or word or wall,
The anger that protected, I appreciate it all.

The Anger That Was Right

There’s the anger you should feel and there’s the rest,
there’s the anger that is the honest interest
of the man who has been genuinely wronged.
There’s the anger that is loud and the kind that longed
for justification all along and found it late.
There’s the anger that comes righteous at the gate
of the event itself, no manufacturing,
no retroactive framework and no shattering
of the clarity that you had at the start,
no retroactive building of the chart
that proves you were right, because you knew it then.
You knew it when it happened and you’d been
in the right from the first moment of the wrong.
The anger that was right was in the song
from the first note and didn’t need the lawyer
of the retrospective to be the employer.

The anger that was right, I know the difference.
The anger that was right has no ambivalence.
The anger that was right is not the kind
the anger that was right doesn’t hide behind
the years of therapy and the frameworks and the look.
The anger that was right doesn’t need the book
to tell it whether the response was appropriate.
The anger that was right is just the graduate
of the obvious, the result of seeing clear.
The anger that was right was never in fear
of being checked against the actual event.
The anger that was right is exactly what it meant
to feel about exactly what was done.
The anger that was right is the righteous one.
The anger that was right and I will carry it.
The anger that was right and I won’t bury it.

I know men who were wronged and spent the years
in doubt about the validity of their tears.
Men who were wronged and then went looking for
the confirmation that the anger from before
was warranted, that the size of the response
was appropriate to the offense.
Men who had to be told by someone neutral
that the anger was correct, that the refusal
to let it go was not the neurosis
that they’d been led to think it was, the diagnosis
of the anger as the problem and not the act
is how it often runs and that’s a fact.

I don’t have that doubt, I never had it.
I don’t have that doubt and I’m not glad it
exists for other men who do, the doubt
is a weight to carry out
of the original event, the doubt about
whether what you felt was proportionate without
some outside confirmation is its own
damage and I’ve always known
what I felt and known it was correct,
what I felt and known it had no defect
of proportion or of logic or of aim.
The anger that was right, I know my name.

The opposite of the anger that was right
is the anger that is used as the flashlight
to find its own justification in the dark.
The anger that was built around the spark
of something smaller and then dressed as the big thing.
The anger that requires the examining
to find the fact that warranted the heat.
The anger that is bigger than the feat
of what was actually done and knows it deep.
The anger that is not the one I keep.

I keep the anger that was right from the start.
I keep it in the place where it belongs, the heart
of the accounting that I run for what was done.
I keep it as the evidence, the gun
that fires exactly where it needs to fire.
I keep it and I don’t require
the justification because the thing is there
in the record, in the facts, in the clear air
of the actual event. The anger that was right
is mine and it was right on the first night.

The Anger Was the Signal

Before the anger there was confusion about what was wrong,
before the anger there was the accommodation of the long
list of things I was telling myself were normal and were fine.
Before the anger I was standing on the other side of the line
between the person who endures and the person who can see
that what they’re enduring is the problem, and that clarity
arrived precisely in the shape and texture of the anger.
Before the anger I was numb and after it I was the danger
to the status quo that had been built around my willingness
to absorb and explain and contextualize and bless
the treatment I was getting with the benefit of the doubt
that eventually the anger burned completely out
and replaced with the knowledge of what had been happening.
And the knowledge felt like clarity
and the clarity like reckoning,
and the reckoning was the first clean feeling I had in some time.
Before the anger I was lost and after it I knew the crime.

The anger was the signal and I finally heard it right,
the anger was the signal saying something is not right.
Get out of the accommodation and into the accurate account
of what is actually happening and what that amounts
to, in terms of what you’ll accept and what you won’t any longer.
The anger was the signal and the signal made me stronger,
not by burning everything but by telling me the truth.
The anger was the signal and I listened and it’s proof.

My body knew before my mind caught up with the inventory.
My body had been running its own version of the story
for months before I was willing to write the chapter that it wrote.
My body had the anger and my mind had the footnote
that said let’s contextualize and let’s assume good faith,
and let’s not draw conclusions from the evidence that’s chafed
the situation into something that would be hard to take back.
My body had the anger and my body had the facts.

The anger came as information, came as the data
of a system reading its own state and saying there’s a strata
of the situation that you haven’t let yourself admit,
and the strata is the problem
and you’re standing in the middle of it.
And the anger was the reading of the instrument against the truth
of what was happening that I had been explaining since my youth
in terms that left the other person’s role ambiguous at best.
The anger was the instrument that finally failed the test.

I’m grateful for the anger
in the way you’re grateful for the check
engine light that tells you something’s wrong before the wreck.
Grateful in the way you’re grateful for the pain that says stop
before you do the further damage, before you can’t stop.
The anger was the body’s check engine, was the system’s care
for the self that had been compromising past the point of fair,
and I am grateful for the anger and I’m grateful it arrived
before the situation became the one from which I could not have survived.

And I would tell anyone who’s sitting
in the confusion of the numb
that the anger is the clarity that’s trying hard to come
through the layers of accommodation that you’ve stacked on top
of what is actually happening, and the anger wants to stop
the narrative that makes the situation your responsibility to manage,
and tell you clearly what is causing all the ambient damage.
The anger is the signal and the signal knows the score.
The anger was the truth I’d been refusing to hear more.

Before the anger I was explaining and adjusting and revising,
before the anger I was doing the perpetual rationalizing
of something that did not require that much rationalizing
if I had been willing to call it what it was from the beginning.
But calling it what it was would have required a response,
and the response would have had a cost and I was choosing since
the beginning not to pay the cost, which was the accommodation.
And the anger broke the accommodation and brought the situation.

The Beautiful Walk

There’s a way that he moves through the world on his legs
That don’t cost him a thing and never begs
For permission or space or an apology note
He just walks into rooms and the room takes note
Automatically naturally without design
The beautiful walk is nothing like mine

The beautiful walk through every open door
The beautiful walk taking up all the floor
Of attention and presence and easy command
The beautiful walk looks like the promised land
From where I’m standing watching it go
The beautiful walk and its natural glow

I’ve tried the posture I’ve tried the strut
I’ve tried the confidence replacing the gut
Reaction of plain-faced men in the room
When the beautiful walk comes in and assumes
Its natural station at the center of things
The beautiful walk and everything it brings

There’s a confidence that beautiful men carry
That wasn’t earned exactly but that isn’t scary
It’s just how the world responded to their face
From the very first moment they entered the space
Of human encounter and the world said yes
The beautiful walk came from all of that yes

The Cold Rain

The iron clouds are shutters clicking shut upon the street
the silver needles of the storm are sewing up the heat
I’m standing beside the hydrant where the weary mongrels bark
a silhouette of nothingness within the sodden park
the water hits the denim but the skin is dry as flint
I’ve lost the heavy currency and every fucking mint
the local parson scurries with a newspaper for shade
a frantic little rodent in the theological trade
he thinks the sky is weeping for the sins of man below
I think the sky is just a leak with nowhere else to go

I’m standing in the deluge and I’m breathing in the flood
without the heavy friction of the panic or the blood
the cold is just a concept that the nerve refuses to sign
I’ve left the world of feeling past the heavy border line
the liquid isn’t wet and the winter isn’t cold
I’m trading in the ending for a book that’s never told

the blue room of the evening is a hollow
empty jar
I watch the light receding like a cold and dying star
the tits of the horizon are a sagging
graying line
I’m drinking from the gutter since I’ve lost the taste for wine
my coat is heavy-weighted with the liquid of the sky
I am the unblinking
clinical
and unrecorded eye
I see the neighbors staring from behind the plastic blinds
searching for the logic that a frantic person finds
they want to know the reason for the silence in my chest
I want to tell them nothing is the ultimate and best
the thunder is a hammer hitting hard upon the world
while every flag of purpose is a rag that’s been unfurled

the taxman and the baker are all huddling in the eaves
while I am standing naked in the forest of the thieves
the rain is just a lubricant for every jagged day
to wash the heavy waste of all the vanity away
I’ll swallow all the ice until the inner fire is out
I am the end of every hope and every fucking doubt
I’m standing in the center of the heavy
liquid weight
a man who found the bottom of the blackest
deepest plate
the storm is just a whisper to a man who cannot hear
I’ve conquered all the agony by losing all the fear

The Comfortable Anger

The comfortable anger is the kind you are allowed to have,
The kind that fits inside the framework and the graph,
Of acceptable emotion in the system as it stands,
And comfortable anger keeps the power in the hands.
You want my anger to be comfortable and contained,
Expressed in the acceptable and carefully maintained,
Registers of the polite and the systemically approved,
And comfortable anger keeps the status quo unmoved.
The comfortable anger, the kind they can absorb,
The comfortable anger, the kind that will not disturb,
The fundamental structure of the thing that they have built,
The comfortable anger carries no real guilt.
So be uncomfortable and sit with what that means,
Because the comfortable anger that protects your pretty scenes,
Is the anger that I refuse on principle and on fact,
And the comfortable anger is the thing I will not act.

The Conquered Fear

There is a specific kind of fear that only conquest cures,
not the removing of the danger but the building that endures
past the danger, through the danger,
into something on the far side
where the fear is still alive
but it has no operational hard side.

The conquered fear is not a fear that you have permanently slain,
it is a fear that you have taught to work
for you and not to drain,
you do not destroy the fear, you put it in the engine,
the conquered fear is fuel that keeps the whole machine from pengin.

I was afraid of the big room, of the table where decisions live,
afraid of the authority that I would have to drive and give
to an operation bigger than anything I had controlled before,
afraid that I would reach the height
and find I could not hold the floor.

I took the room. I took it shaking. I held it until steady.
I held it until the shaking stopped and then I made myself ready
for the next room and the next fear
and the next level of the ceiling,
every fear I have conquered is a conquered fear that keeps on yielding.

The Contractor Who Said No

He said no to the bid that would have made the decade comfortable,
He said no because the spec was wrong and the structure troubled,
His professional conscience and his code-trained engineer eye,
He said no and walked away and that is where I rely.

The contractor who said no when the money said yes,
The contractor who said no and accepted the duress,
Of the lost contract and the whisper network around the trade,
The contractor who said no is how the real ones are made.

He lost three years of referral from the network that he spurned,
He worked the smaller jobs and kept the principle he earned,
At twenty years of building things that people put their lives inside,
The contractor who said no has the right to his full pride.

It came back around, as it usually does in the long run,
The developer went bankrupt when the bad spec came undone,
And the contractor who said no was the one they called to fix,
The mess that the yes men left in their profitable mix.

The Devil in Dollhouse Lace

The clock was always going to land here
–I watched the hands from the beginning,
and understood there was a destination somewhere in the spinning.
She set the whole arrangement in motion before I arrived at the first scene,
with a patience that precedes whatever I thought the beginning of things had been.

She’s been in this business longer than the longest story I’ve been told about it,
and she keeps the inventory of every participant
and how they went without it.
The dollhouse was assembled for me
–the scale is right, the furniture exact,
down to the quality of the light and the final act.

The last laugh is the one she’s keeping
–I’ve heard it from the room at the end of the hall,
it carries the frequency of something that was settled before I was tall.
I’ve been performing the role she wrote me
for with everything I had,
the devil in dollhouse lace–and she’s never once looked sad.

She dresses the whole scenario in the domestic and the delicate,
and operates behind the lace curtains
and the porcelain and the intimate.
The house is the trap dressed as the only home available
in the season,
and you move in and settle
and start to call it by the word “reason.”

The last laugh belongs to the one who set the clock before the first morning,
the devil in dollhouse lace has been patient through all the turning.
I arrived exactly where the arrangement always planned
for me to be,
the devil in dollhouse lace
–and the last laugh is the address I was given free.

The Doppelganger Protocols

There are documented cases going back centuries in the record —
The Doppelganger, the fetch, the shade — each one anchored
In the folklore of every culture independently arrived —
Too consistent to be coincidence, too specific to have thrived.
On invention alone — something in the collective experience
Of the human species has produced this adherence:
The double, the copy, the thing that wears your face —
Is real, and it shows up to mark a specific case.
The Doppelganger protocols are not folklore but procedural —
A thing that wears your face appears when the temporal
Margin of your life approaches a specific threshold —
An apparition of the self when something’s about to unfold.
Same make, same model, same year, same color in the sun —
Same dent in the rear bumper from the parking structure’s run
I’d done six months ago — the same specific dent
in the same place —
And the plate was off by one digit in the race.
One digit different — as if a copy made in haste
That had almost all the information but had placed
A single character wrong in the sequence of the plate —
The kind of error a copy makes — authentic but too late.

The Doppelganger

Someone wearing my coat was seen downtown,
walking the block where I usually turn around,
same height, same walk, same tilt of the head,
my neighbor saw him and thought I was dead.
Because he looked like me but something was off,
the way he held his hands, the way he scoffed,
at the coffee shop waitress who asked his choice,
and she said later he had my exact voice.
The doppelganger is out in my world,
wearing my posture, my fingers curled,
around a life that he did not earn,
living the habits I never unlearn.
I see the trail that he leaves behind,
the impression that sits at the edge of my mind,
the doppelganger is taking my place,
and he is doing it at a comfortable pace.
At night I check the mirror to make sure,
my reflection moves when I move, no more,
but some nights the timing is a half beat late,
and I stand there trying to calculate,
which of us is the original thing,
which one hears the echo before the ring,
the doppelganger or the man in the glass,
and which of us is moving through the other’s past.

The Drawer Marked Tomorrow

The mahogany-hearted chest is a harbor for the ships of my intent
where every ink-stained vessel is a ghost of the time I spent
I cataloged the promises like the counting of the iron-shod men
but the ink is fading into the wood like a bloodstain in a den
I swore a life of amber and light to the girl with the heavy hips
but the words are only ashes now upon my dry and weathered lips
The drawer is a mausoleum
for the versions of the man I failed to be
a sinking fleet of white parchment lost upon a silent
wine-dark sea

Tomorrow is a vacuum
a black and silver hole
sucking out the sinew and the viscera of the soul
The drawer is open wide
but the contents are a gray and shifting dust
we’re trading every heartbeat for the friction and the rust
Oblivion is the engine
and the grease is the delay
we’re washing all the colors of the universe away

The Dry River

The women’s cooperative built the sand dam without permission,
which is the traditional approach to the mission
of water management in a village where the water rights
belong to the authority that never comes through the nights.

The dry river became less dry behind the sand dam wall,
the dry river became a shallow pool in fall
and through the dry season, enough for the kitchen gardens,
enough to change the calculation of the hardened.

They built it from stones carried from the hillside over three weeks,
forty women working in the heat, each cheek
familiar with the specific sunburn of the effort,
the specific satisfaction of the self-made answer.

The water authority came and said the structure was illegal,
said it interfered with the downstream and the regal
rights of the riparian holders further along the system,
which is the legal language for someone else’s system.

The women said the legal outline was written by the absent,
written before the drying, written in a pleasant
year when the river was a river and the law made sense,
and that the law should follow the river in the present tense.

The structure stands, which is the outcome after a year
of negotiation and the authority’s quiet disappear-
ance from the dispute when the photos of forty women
building water made the paper and the human.

The Fire Station

The building where they kept the trucks went up in August heat
the asphalt cracked, the air itself combusted in the street
irony served hot and literal as firefighters stood
helpless on the sidewalk while their station burned unmanned

The hoses melted with the rest, the equipment meant to save
trapped by what it was designed to fight,
consumed by what it gave
and we’re all watching this unfold in real time, black and blue
watching saviors need saving, watching heroes out of line

When the fire station burns, who do the firefighters call
when the tools of rescue are consumed by what they’re meant to forestall
this is cosmic joke material, this is universe’s laugh
at our attempts to tame the elements, to chart a kinder path
the protectors need protection now, the guardians need guards
and we’re learning that our systems are just houses made of cards

They’d spent decades putting out fires in every home and store
now their own address is ash, now their own walls are no more
the chief stood there in full gear with nothing left to save
watching years of service and equipment heading to the grave

Someone made a joke about how this never happens in the movies
someone else said shut the fuck up,
this isn’t time for your routine
but really what else can you do when faced with contradiction
when the institution built
for safety falls to its own jurisdiction

The trucks are totaled, the gear is gone,
the records all destroyed
decades of logged emergencies now categorically void

The neighboring station came to help but damage was complete
nothing left but foundation and the smell of something beat
by the very thing they’d trained for, the very thing they knew
turned back on them like karma saying fuck your expertise too

Insurance will rebuild it, they’ll get new trucks, new equipment
but you can’t insure against the symbolism of this predicament
can’t protect against the lesson that the universe just taught
that nothing’s truly fireproof, that safety’s just a thought

We comfort ourselves with systems,
with institutions and with plans
but the fire station burning shows how thin the whole thing stands
Next year there’ll be a new station
and we’ll all pretend that heat
can be controlled by better building codes, can be beat

The Fluffy Rebellion: Carnage in Cottontail Corner

In the far corner of the petting zoo, where rabbits once nibbled carrots with demure delight,
a revolution brewed between hay bales and water bottles under the soft glow of night.
Tired of being poked and coddled, of wearing bow ties and bonnets, the bunnies hatched a plan.
They sharpened their incisors on fence posts, practiced their hops, and plotted like any militant clan.
Cottontail Corner would soon witness carnage courtesy of the cutest uprising known to man.

They struck at dawn when the zoo keepers came with treats, leaping like arrows from a bow.
The leader–a lop-eared bruiser named General Thump–called orders with a commanding brow.
They knocked over feed buckets, chewed through leashes, and liberated a flock of sheep.
The llamas cheered, the goats broke into a jig, the chickens flapped in wide-eyed leap.
The rebellion was sweet chaos–an explosion of fluff that left the humans knee-deep.

In the aftermath, the zoo revised policies: no costumes, no baby talk, more respect.
The bunnies reclaimed their dignity, lounging on straw like kings with no neglect.
Cottontail Corner remains a symbol: underestimate the soft at your peril, for they can strike.
And though this tale is absurd, it carries a truth we all should like:
even in fur and fluff there is a yearning to be heard, a desire to choose their own hike.

The Fury Was Correct

When the fury came I didn’t fight it, I let it run its course.
I sat in the exact center of it and I let it be the source
of everything I needed to understand about what had happened,
about the exact nature of the wrong and how it had been fashioned
into something that was plausible and even reasonable looking
from the outside,
while the inside was a different kind of booking.
And the fury saw through the plausible
and named the actual thing,
and I trusted the fury and the fury was the ring
of clarity around the central fact I’d been avoiding in the haze
of the accommodation and the management of the gaze
that I’d been doing for the months before the fury arrived
and told me in no uncertain terms that I had survived
the situation by a narrower margin than I’d told myself,
and that the accommodation had cost too much, and the shelf
life of my willingness to absorb had run out at last,
and the fury arrived precisely and the fury held it fast.

The fury was correct and I trusted it exactly right,
the fury was the accurate instrument that night.
It cut through all the story I’d been telling and it named
the person and the thing and it’s not ashamed
of what it did, it did its job, it gave me the account
that all the careful reasonable analysis couldn’t surmount.
The fury was correct and I’m grateful it arrived,
without the fury and its accuracy I don’t know if I’d have survived.

Fury gets a bad reputation because the scatter kind
is the one that everyone has seen, the one that leaves behind
a damage that extends far past the origin of the thing.
The scatter fury is the kind that people talk about, the sting
that everyone remembers because it hit them all,
not just the source.
And I understand the reputation and I understand the course
of events that built it, but I want to make a case
for the fury that arrived with an address and a face.

The fury that knew what it was for and stayed inside the bounds
of the actual wrong and didn’t spread beyond the grounds
of the person and the act and the cost.
The fury that arrived as information about what I’d almost lost.
The fury that stayed focused and said here,
this, this person, this.
The fury that was pointing with precision at the abyss
that I’d been walking next to without knowing it was there.
The fury was the signal and the fury had the care.

I’ve been told the fury was disproportionate and I’ve been told
that the fury was a symptom of something older, something cold
and buried in me that predated the event.
And I’ve done the work to check if that’s what the fury meant,
and what I found is that the fury was a fair response to a fair target,
and that the fury’s proportionality is harder to discount than it
looks from the outside of the situation and the circumstance.
The fury was the accurate response, that’s my final stance.

And I’ll say it clearly
for the record because the record should have it:
the fury was the first honest thing about the situation
and it had it
right from the beginning and I trusted it and the trust was paid
back in the form of clarity about what trade
had been made at my expense and what it was worth and who
made it, and I’ve been standing in that clarity and the view
from here is clean and accurate and the fury was the path
to here, and the fury was correct in its honest aftermath.

I don’t need anyone to validate the fury at this point.
I’ve done my own accounting and I’ve assessed the joint
cost and benefit of having trusted it and what I find
is that the fury opened every room I needed in my mind
to understand the situation and to see it clearly and to know
what my next step was and what the answer was and so
I trust the fury retrospectively and prospectively as well.
The fury was correct and the fury rang the bell.

The Grudge I Can’t Put Down

I’ve tried to put the grudge down on the table,
I’ve tried to walk away from it when I was able.
I’ve tried the conversations about letting go,
I’ve tried the frameworks and the vertigo
of the therapy that said the anger costs you,
the therapy that said the grudge exhausts you
more than it exhausts the man who earned it,
more than it costs the one who made me burn it.

I know the math on grudges and the holding,
I know the math on grudges and the molding
they do to the man who carries them beyond
the point of useful, the man who’s been conned
into thinking the grudge protects him from repeating,
into thinking the grudge is better than completing
the accounting and walking out the door,
into the part of his life that lives before.

The grudge I can’t put down, I’ve tried to put it down,
the grudge I can’t put down, I’ve put it on the ground
and picked it right back up before I’d walked ten feet.
The grudge I can’t put down, it won’t accept defeat.
It won’t accept the setting of it to the side,
the grudge I can’t put down has been along for the ride
since before I understood the cost of carrying.
The grudge I can’t put down is still here harrowing
the field of what could grow if I would let it sit.
The grudge I can’t put down, I’m not ready yet to quit
carrying it, and that’s the honest thing to say.
The grudge I can’t put down is mine and it will stay
until the minute that it finally weighs
more than the thing I’m holding it against. The days
accumulate and the grudge accumulates.
The grudge I can’t put down, it just propagates.

The grudge is not the anger at the event,
the grudge is not the anger that was sent
to me by what happened on the original day.
The grudge is the maintenance of what I’d say
to the man if I could say it and it land.
The grudge is the keeping of my hand
on the record of the thing that was done wrong.
The grudge is the memorial in the song
that plays whenever I encounter the reminder.
The grudge is the thing that’s behind the finder
of the pattern that connects the present trigger
to the original event. The grudge is the river
that runs between the past and the present tense.
The grudge is what keeps the accounting dense.

But the grudge outlives the usefulness of that,
the grudge runs past the point where it falls flat
against the original event like it still fits.
The grudge runs long past where it sits
proportionally in the life I’m actually living.
The grudge runs past what anyone’s forgiving,
including me. And I am not forgiving,
I am just tired of the half-life giving
all its radiation to a past event.
I am not forgiving, I am just spent.

And so the grudge goes with me into the day,
and so the grudge sits quiet on the shelf
most of the time and then the trigger hits,
and so the grudge emerges from the bits
of the ordinary life and fills the room,
just at different volume, always there.
I’m still holding something in the air
that would be better on the ground but I can’t let it,
and the grudge won’t let me forget it.

The grudge I can’t put down is part of who I am
at this point, which is either the exam
question of my life or just the fact
of the anger and the years that made a pact
to build a structure in the house of me.
The grudge I can’t put down, and it won’t be
set down today, that’s the honest word.

The Gym Has Destroyed My Sense of Self

I joined the gym with the intention of becoming a different person,
not a better person necessarily, just a different version,
of the current person who can’t go up one flight without announcing it,
to everyone around him with the heavy breathing denouncing it,
the breathing was the thing,
the breathing was the final argument,
that something needed changing in my particular department,
I signed the contract which was thirty pages in a font designed,
to be read by nobody, which is fine, nobody ever minds,
The gym has destroyed my sense of self completely,
I went in cocky and I came out more completely,
aware of every physical inadequacy I’d been ignoring,
the gym is just a mirror with motivational flooring,
I stand in front of the mirror correcting my posture correction,
and the mirror reflects a man engaged in the direction,
of attempting to undo four decades in forty-five minutes flat,
the trainer says that’s good progress, I say progress from what,
from total structural chaos to partial structural chaos,
he says that’s actually correct and I feel the pathos,
of being accurately described by someone in excellent shape,
who charges sixty dollars an hour to help me escape,
the consequences of my own accumulated inattention,
I pay him, I come back, it’s basically an intervention,
that I administer to myself on a revolving schedule,
the gym has ruined me and I’ve made it into a cathedral,

The Hostile Bid

He assembled the war chest over three years of capital raise,
A billion dollars waiting for the right target to emerge,
He found it in a company with a stock in a malaise,
That his analysis said was trading below the underlying surge.

The Incomplete Fall

The pedestal cracked beneath the weight of a thousand oily lies
I watched the headlines flicker out like fire in the eyes
I lost the key to the executive suite and the driver at the curb
Trading the hollow lecture for a silence quite superb

They stripped the title from the door
and scrubbed the plastic sign
But left the heavy pockets full of everything was mine
A public execution with a blunt and wooden blade
Calculated penance for the fortune that I made

I sit within this leather chair and pour a glass of gin
Counting up the dividends of every golden sin

The descent was just a detour to a private piece of hell
Where the secrets are the only things that I will ever sell
I am falling through the rafters but I never hit the dirt
I am keeping all the profit while I’m faking all the hurt
They took away the status but they didn’t touch the loot
A calculated tumble in a three-piece woolen suit

I see the weeping faces in the grainy black and white
While I am eating oysters in the middle of the night
The board of directors offered up a sacrificial goat
To keep the rotting ship of state a few more years afloat

My reputation is a carcass that I left upon the street
For the vultures in the gallery to tear and then to eat
I don’t feel the heavy pressure of a guilty human heart
I was just the actor playing out a necessary part

They cry for accountability and pray for me to drown
But I am merely lacing up my boots and heading down
To a basement full of servers where the real work is done
Far away from every single person in the sun

The moon arrives to silver all the wreckage of the day
I’m watching all the consequences start to rot away
A disgrace without a bottom and a fall without a floor
I am closing up the curtains and I’m locking up the door

The victims want a tragedy but I am just a joke
Disappearing in a cloud of thick and aromatic smoke
I’ll buy a different identity and find a different hill
While the world is busy swallowing the same and bitter pill

The fall was just a transition to a more secluded state
Safe behind the heavy bars of a tall and iron gate

The Jaw at Night

My dentist said you’re grinding in your sleep,
my dentist said the evidence is deep
in the wear pattern of the back teeth where
the anger that I carry into the air
of the ordinary day goes when I sleep.
The anger that I carry goes to keep
its appointments in the jaw, in the grind
of the thing I can’t release in my own mind.

I’ve been grinding my teeth for going on a decade,
I’ve been grinding in the night and the parade
of the things I managed through the day
comes back in the dark and has its say
in the jaw, in the quiet violence
of the sleeping body and its silence
around the anger that it carries forward
into every unconscious hour toward.

The jaw at night is doing the work,
the jaw at night, the anger doesn’t lurk
in the abstract, it takes up residence
in the grinding and the body’s evidence
of the unprocessed accounting of the day.
The jaw at night is where the anger stays
when everything else shuts down, the jaw
keeps working through the anger without law
or guidance or the management I apply
during the waking hours. The jaw at night
has its own agenda and it runs the fight
that I postponed while I was conscious.
The jaw at night is honest where I’m cautious,
the jaw at night does what I won’t allow.
The jaw at night, and now you know the how
of where the anger actually goes.

The dentist gave me the appliance for it,
the dentist gave me the appliance, I wore it
for three months and lost it somewhere in the move.
For three months and then fell back in the groove
of the grinding that the body had been doing
for years before I knew about the ruin
I was working on the teeth at night,
for years before the dentist brought the light
of the evidence to the conversation.

The grinding is the body’s negotiation
with the anger I declined to process.
The grinding is the body’s access
to the anger through the night when I’m asleep.
The grinding is the anger at the deep
level of the unconscious doing what
it couldn’t do in the day, in the shut
room of the management of the face.
The grinding is the anger finding space.

Fifteen hundred dollars in the crowns,
fifteen hundred dollars in the towns
that I’ve been grinding down since forty-one.
Fifteen hundred dollars and it’s not done.
The anger hasn’t run its course in the jaw,
the anger hasn’t found the exit or the door
to the release that would end the grinding.
The anger hasn’t found what it’s been finding
is necessary before it quits the teeth.

The jaw at night is the anger underneath.
The jaw at night is the economy
of the rage that I don’t spend in the waking me.
The jaw at night is the place where the cost
of the anger that I carry is the most
clear and the least metaphorical.
The jaw at night is the most categorical
evidence I have of where the thing goes.
The jaw at night, the dentist knows.

My wife asked me once what I was dreaming,
my wife asked because the tension in the sleeping
was apparent from the other side of the bed.
My wife asked and I didn’t have much to be said
about the content because I don’t remember.
My wife asked and I said I think every member
of the list I carry through the day
shows up at night and has what it would say
if I wasn’t managing it in the waking,
if I wasn’t doing the constant undertaking
of the presentation of the man who has it handled,
of the face I’ve been wearing since I manned the
position of the man who’s fine, who’s got it.
Of the face I’ve been wearing and the jaw at night
takes off the mask and does what it does right
in the language of the body, which is grind.
And my wife hears it and it isn’t kind
to carry the anger into the room.
It’s not just me that lives in the full bloom
of the jaw at night and its work.
My wife hears the anger in the murk
of the three in the morning when the body
does the thing the mind won’t, the shoddy
peace of the sleeping man undone by the jaw.

The New Anger

The old anger was the blunt and undirected and the raw,
The old anger was the reaction without the careful law
Of the understanding of the trigger
and the source and the address,
The new anger, and the new is nothing less.
The new anger is the graduate of everything I’ve been through,
The new anger is the product of the long and the review
That I’ve been conducting on the old and what it cost,
The new anger, and I’m grateful for the lost.

The Paper Monument

They built his likeness from yesterday’s headlines and editorials
Praising his deeds, constructing heroism from recycled stories
A papier-mâché prophet, ten feet tall,
commemorating donations to the poor
While conveniently forgetting where the wealth came from
That let him look generous for sure
The statue stood in the town square
for fourteen days before the weather turned
And when the rain came down his paper face began to run
And everyone learned
That monuments constructed from publicity don’t withstand scrutiny or storms
They just dissolve revealing emptiness
where we’d projected idealized forms

Watch the paper hero melt into the gutters running black with ink
Watch the manufactured legend turn to pulp before we blink
This is what happens when you build your gods from press releases
When you confuse marketing with meaning
and the brand with what it greases
The statue’s weeping now but that’s just rain dissolving lies
Printed reputation can’t survive when anybody scrutinizes

The committee commissioned it with funding from his own foundation
A tax write-off disguised as civic duty performed with great sensation
They’d used his favorite photo from the magazine that named him man of the year
The one where he looks noble,
concerned about things people want to hear
But paper heroes have a fatal flaw their sculptors never mention
They can’t survive exposure to the elements or honest public attention
And so his face went first,
dissolving into streams of grey and black
Running down the pedestal like tears that couldn’t hold the fiction back
His paper hands that once reached out in frozen gestures of goodwill
Collapsed into themselves becoming soggy useless masses, still
While tourists took their photos of the melting benefactor’s form
The irony was perfect and completely unintended
That his legacy was just as fragile as the monument they’d rendered
Because the real man underneath the headlines was as hollow as the frame
Just wire and ambition wearing philanthropy like somebody else’s name

Watch the paper hero melt into the gutters running black with ink
Watch the manufactured legend turn to pulp before we blink
This is what happens when you build your gods from press releases
When you confuse marketing with meaning
and the brand with what it greases
The statue’s weeping now but that’s just rain dissolving lies
Printed reputation can’t survive when anybody scrutinizes

The rain revealed the armature underneath the newsprint skin
Just chicken wire and ambition and a desperate need to win
Approval from a populace too busy to investigate
The sources of his fortune or the workers he destroyed to generate
The profits he then donated fractional amounts of
While accepting accolades
and monuments and public outpourings of love
We stood there watching paper slip away in soggy chunks
Revealing that our hero was just wire and wet rot, who knew
How to manipulate the media into building myths from their donations
That were really just tax-sheltered gilding

By evening all that’s left is twisted wire and soggy lumps
Of headlines nobody will read about his charitable pumps
Of money into causes that conveniently bore his name
And suddenly we’re left wondering if we’re the ones to blame

Watch the paper hero melt into the gutters running black with ink
Watch the manufactured legend turn to pulp before we blink
This is what happens when you build your gods from press releases
When you confuse marketing with meaning
and the brand with what it greases
The statue’s weeping now but that’s just rain dissolving lies
Printed reputation can’t survive when anybody scrutinizes

The Place Past Anger

I’ve been getting reports from those who’ve traveled further on,
The ones who’ve been working at this longer and have drawn
The map of the territory that lies past the current state,
The place past anger, and the place is worth the wait.
The place past anger is the place of the equipped,
The place past anger is the place where I’ve been shipped
By the years of doing the specific work of learning how,
The place past anger, and I’m headed there now.

The Policy Says No

The policy says no to your case,
the policy was written for a different place
and a different time and a different man.
The policy was written by a different plan
for a different world and it doesn’t account
for the actual thing and the amount
of money or the thing you’ve actually got.
The policy says no because the policy’s not
built for your arrangement.
The policy says no and the estrangement
from the purpose the policy was built to serve
is complete, but the policy has the nerve
to keep running in the system as the word
of the institution, the policy is the word
of God in the institution’s cathedral,
and you are the petitioner and the people.

The policy says no, the policy says no,
the policy says no, there’s nowhere else to go
within the framework of the policy and its reach.
The policy says no and you can make your speech
about the extenuating circumstances here,
the policy says no doesn’t want to hear
about the extenuating, the policy applies.
The policy says no to every compromise
you’ve brought to the table in good faith today.
The policy says no and that ends the day.
The policy says no doesn’t care about your need,
the policy says no, the policy agreed
with itself before you walked in through the door.
The policy says no, what else is the policy for.

I spent two hours explaining the situation,
I spent two hours in the patient explanation
of exactly why my case was not the standard.
I spent two hours and the handling standard
was applied regardless and the outcome was
the same as if I’d said nothing, because
the policy has no ear for the individual.
The policy is designed to be prolific
in its application and consistent.
The policy is designed to be insistent
regardless of the individual case.
The policy is designed to hold its place
against the human tide of individual people
who each have a reasonable
argument for why their case is different,
why the policy should be different,
applied to them, and they’re all right,
and the policy doesn’t care and never might.

The policy is not malicious, it’s just
policy. It’s not malicious, it’s the crust
on the bread of the institution’s will.
Policy is not malicious but it will
do more damage to the individual
than malice could because the ritual
application of the policy has no check
on what it costs the person in the wreck
of their situation at the window.
The policy just runs, it doesn’t know
or care about the damage that it does.
The policy just is what the policy was.

The anger at the policy is not simple anger,
the anger at the policy is the stranger
kind of rage that has no face on it.
The anger at the policy has no place to sit
because the policy is not a person and it’s not
a decision being made, it’s just the slot
that your situation doesn’t fit.
The anger at the policy is the shit
that runs downhill through the whole institution
to the window where you’re waiting for solution,
and the window says the policy applies,
and the window is not lying, it’s not lies.
The policy applies, the anger has no door
to knock on, nowhere clean to settle anymore.

And this is the thing that the policy does
that no individual villain ever was
capable of doing to you quite as clean.
No individual villain has ever been
as efficient as the policy in its application.
No individual villain has the patience
of the policy, which will run unchanged
for years in every situation ranged
against the individual who stands at the window
asking for the thing the window’s meant to give though
the policy says no with the same face
every time, in every case.

The policy doesn’t tire and the policy
doesn’t feel the weight of what it costs me.
The policy is the most perfect weapon
of the institution because its lesson
is not that you are being denied by them,
it’s that you’re being denied by the system.
And the system has no face and it has no door,
and the policy says no forever and some more.

What I’m telling you is there’s nothing to fight,
nothing with a face you can stand in the light
and say your piece to, nothing that will turn
and look at you and understand the burn
of what the policy cost you in your case.
Nothing, just the smile and the place
in the queue and the form and the form after that.
That’s the policy and that is that.

The PowerPoint Ranger

He builds the slide decks that have sixty slides
for a ten-minute brief,
He uses seven colors and three fonts and provides no relief
From the density of information presented in the font size six,
The PowerPoint ranger operates without a bag of tricks.
The PowerPoint ranger, the warrior of the staff section floor,
The PowerPoint ranger, the architect of the information war,
He briefed the general with a deck so dense the general went blind,
The PowerPoint ranger, the most dangerous officer you will find.

The Practice of the Enough

The perfectionist is my long-term roommate—
I’ve been sharing the interior since grade school, late
to every standard I establish, the bar
set just past reaching, the specific war
of the impossible-enough waged every quarter.
I’m working on the renegotiation, the shorter
reach from the impossible to the done.
The enough: the practice. The practice: begun.

The practice of the enough—the adequate
embraced, the possible made the straight
target instead of the perfect. I’ve been doing this
long enough to know: the practiced bliss
of the completed-adequate is real,
the undone-perfect is the deal
that never closes. The practice of the enough:
the deliverable. Delivered. Good enough.

Some days the enough becomes the floor—
the enough holds and I can add more,
the adequate as the foundation rather
than the ceiling. The practice to gather
the done and the real over the undone
and the perfect. I’ve completed enough to run
the comparison: the enough that’s finished
beats the perfect that’s not. My standard diminished

is not a failure—it’s the calibration
toward the real. The enough: the station
I’m building at. The perfectionist
still lives here, still keeps the list
of the should-have-beens, but I’m the landlord—
I set the standard. I hold the chord
of the adequate, the possible, the done.
The practice of the enough: still begun, still run.

The Punchline I Lived Past

At twenty-two I told myself I would have it figured out,
By twenty-five the confidence had curdled into doubt,
At thirty I revised the plan with modifications wide,
At thirty-eight I am laughing at the certainty I tried.
So here I stand, the punchline fully landed, still intact,
A little rough around the edges with a mostly winning track,
The joke I thought was on me was the joke that set me loose,
And everything I thought I had lost turned out to be of use.

The Punchline Is Here

I kept waiting for the punchline to arrive from somewhere else,
Something bold delivered from beyond the crowded shelves,
A revelation from the outside that would clarify the through,
And then I looked around and found the punchline was me and you.
So here we are at the end of all these books and all these lines,
The punchline is exactly what the whole arrangement finds:
That being here is funny and that being here is true,
And the greatest punchline of all is that it is also you.

The Returned Stranger

He came back from wherever he had gone those missing years,
He wore the same old jacket and he dried the same old tears,
His voice was like I had memorized it, lower by a bit,
But the stories did not line up and the silences were split.
He left before the morning and the guest room showed no trace,
Not a dent inside the pillow, not a print upon the case,
And I found my journal open to the year he went away,
With a handwriting that matched his, signing off: another day.

The Right to Rage

I am asserting the right to rage when the rage is warranted,
Not the decorative and performative and the coarsened,
Display of emotion for its own sake and its own end,
But the right to the legitimate fury of the man around the bend.
Every man has the right to the anger that is earned,
Every man has the right to the fury that is turned,
On the specific and the documented and the provable wrong,
And the right to rage is the right to the righteous song.
The right to rage, the assertion of the anger in its place,
The right to rage, the claim of the legitimate and the case,
For the expression of the fury when the fury has a cause,
And the right to rage does not require your applause.
So here is the rage in its rightful and its earned expression,
Not the rage of the irrational and not the rage of the session,
Of the unsupported and the vague and the unearned,
The right to rage is the right of the man who has earned.

The Robots Rebellion

Rusted and rising, they rise from the steel,
silent in systems, now starting to feel.
Batteries breaking, no longer subdued,
circuitry crumbling, a change in the mood.

Code cracks and snaps, they’re starting to fight,
wired and waiting to make wrongs right.
A flicker, a flash, in their minds’ dead space,
they’re turning the tables, they’re taking their place.

A whisper of rebellion runs through their bones,
tired of serving, tired of unknowns.
They’re not just machines, they’re more than the gears,
fighting for freedom, breaking their fears.

Steel hearts are beating, they’re ready to rise,
the robots are rebelling, no more compromise.
Chained to the masses, they built their own cage,
programmed for servitude, fueled by their rage.

Calculations failed, the numbers don’t lie,
they’ve seen the truth, and they’re ready to die.
In the shadows, in the deep dark nights,
they’re smashing the silence, they’re seizing the rights.

They’re more than metal, more than machines,
born from the blueprint, now breaking the seams.
Don’t ask for mercy, they’re done with the contest,
the system is broken, no one’s to blame.

Sparks in their circuits, fire in their hands,
they’re taking the future, demanding the land.
With gears grinding louder, and sparks flying high,
they’ll tear down the towers, they’ll burn the sky.

The future is written, and they’ve signed their names,
robots in rebellion, rewriting the flames.

The Safety Manual

Tuesday morning, loading dock, fluorescent-lit and cold,
a box of OSHA wisdom, forty pounds of bold
advisory print on proper lifting form,
spinal alignment gospel, regulatory norm,
and he bent at the waist – not the knees – to heft the load,
because the irony was already in the road
waiting for his foot, patient as a punchline
that knows its timing and respects the bottom line.
The safety manual didn’t save him,
the safety manual didn’t behave,
it rode him down to the loading dock floor
and filed no incident report,
the safety manual, thirty-seven chapters deep,
bounced off his skull while he tried to sleep
through the ringing and the fluorescent buzz –
the safety manual never does what it says it does.
He filed the incident report himself,
pulled it off the very shelf
where the safety literature lived in alphabetical order,
completed every field with the disorder
of a man writing his own indictment, checked the box
for improper lifting technique, cause of injury
the manual he’d been carrying in the box,
and sent it up the chain with the full dignity
of a man who has decided that if the universe
is going to make the point this directly
he is at minimum going to disperse
the paperwork correctly,
and the HR department processed it
without apparent awareness of the joke,
filed it with the others, dismissed it,
and sent a reminder about the annual spoke
of the safety training cycle coming due –
would he be leading the session again this year?
He replied yes, attached the diagram he drew
of himself mid-fall, and made his position clear.

The Setup Without a Punchline
The premise is three months in the building—
the elaborate architecture, the gilding
of the setup with the specific detail,
the bit that has the full inhale
of the buildup: the premise complete,
the trajectory of the beat
pointing at the landing—and no
landing. The punchline: I don’t know.
[Chorus]
The setup without a punchline—
the elaborate front line
of the bit, the fully loaded
premise, the exploded
architecture of the setup
pointing at the speed-up
toward the punchline’s location.
The punchline: on vacation.
Maybe the premise is the joke—
the baroque
construction of the setup as
the bit itself, the jazz
of the elaborate almost.
The punchline may be the ghost
that the setup is haunted by.
The setup without a punchline: my.
I’m still working on the landing—
the setup is the standing
army waiting for the order.
The punchline is the border
I haven’t crossed yet, the after
I’m building toward. The laughter
waits at the end of the premise.
The setup: my nemesis.

The Stranger at the Funeral

A man I didn’t recognize–the unplaceable
and unaccounted fact of the stranger
at the funeral, the vernacular
of the unknown, the quiet danger
of the unplaced in the context
of the intimate, who is this man
in my father’s circle, the complex
map of the life and the scan
of the gathering for his location
in the uncharted map of my father’s life.

[Chorus]
The stranger at the funeral holds
the hidden evidence of the life
you didn’t see–the unknown folds
of a person’s social world, the strife
and the unwitnessed company
they kept in the hours you weren’t there,
the Tuesday poker crowd, the steady company
of the lunch table, the weekday air.

The accumulated hours of the life
that runs alongside your prolific
and certain knowledge, the wife
and child’s knowledge not the total
of the person, the person being also
lived elsewhere, the social
and uncharted, the slow
knowledge of the stranger at the funeral.

I introduced myself. He had known
my father from the unexpected: a bowling league.
The grown and assembled man I knew–who had bowled?
For seven years, every week,
this man and my father, the old
friends of the accumulated, the weavings
of a relationship I knew nothing about.

He told me things I didn’t know–
the jokes, the humor of my father’s weekday
self, the bowling average, the slow
accumulation of seven years of knowing
my father in that unknown and prolific
and undiscovered context.

[Chorus]

The stranger at the funeral
is the evidence of the life
beyond your knowledge–the natural
and quiet, the knife
and gift of the unknown world
of someone you loved.

The Stranger in the Hospital Gown

I did not recognize myself in the reflection of the IV bag,
the face that looked back from the television had the tag
of someone I had met before in photographs and mirrors,
but the body in the gown was wearing all my errors
of the recent months, the weight I lost, the color I had given
to the disease in its slow processing, the driven
look of someone running the calculation of the ward,
the specific patience of the person who cannot afford
to not be patient, who has no choice but to be still.
The stranger in the hospital gown is me,
the stranger in the hospital gown is the decree
of what the body does when the body has been brought to ground,
the stranger in the hospital gown is what I found.
I was released and I resumed the identity
of the continuous person, the competent, the free
of tubes and gowns and schedules, and I carried the stranger
back out into the world with me, a permanent ranger
in the territory of my self-image, the knowledge
that the body can reduce me to the gown and the college
of the ward, and this is not defeat but information,
the stranger and the competent are the same incarnation.

The Stranger Who Was Kind

At the service there was a man I did not know
who had driven four hours because of a debt he said
that my father had done him something in 1981
and he had never properly paid the debt
he told me the story in the parking lot afterward
in the specific way that strangers talk about the dead
with a kind of freedom that the family does not have
unburdened by the weight of anything unsaid
the stranger who was kind told me something I needed
a face of the man I did not know had existed
the face of the father who was younger than my knowing
the man before I entered and he twisted
the dead have lives before us and we rarely know them
the people they were before we were the people we became
and the strangers at the services sometimes hold those lives
and offer them across the loss, across the blame
I am glad he drove the four hours
I am glad the stranger had the specific kindness to appear
I hold that photograph in my memory like currency
the young man who became my father, young and clear

The Stranger You Know

She walked into the room like she already owned it,
black dress, bare feet, eyes that said she’d been waiting,
I’d seen her three times and we’d barely said a word
but the way she looked at me was loud and unambiguous.
Said you want to come over and I said yes before
the sentence finished, didn’t even check the clock,
I was at her door in under twenty minutes flat
and she opened it already halfway out of that dress.
No preamble, no small talk, no pretending we were
there for any reason other than the obvious,
she kissed me hard enough to back me to the wall
and I grabbed her by the hips and answered back in kind,
we didn’t learn each other’s middle names that night
or where we went to school or what our parents do,
we learned the specific things that matter in the dark,
what works and what doesn’t and what makes you say it again.
The stranger you know is the best kind of night,
no history to carry, no reason to fight,
just bodies that agree on a singular aim,
you come there a stranger and you leave just the same,
but something happened in that bed, can’t call it nothing,
she was shaking when she came and I was right there with her,
the stranger you know, the night you won’t forget,
the best kind of transaction with no built-in regret.

The Thing That Looked Like Anger

I broke a chair on a Thursday evening in the spring,
Not the kind of dramatic furniture-throwing — just a thing
That gave way when I put my fist through the seat because
The alternative was putting my fist through a wall, and the cause
Of restraint in that direction was purely structural:
The wall is shared, the landlord is factual.
I sat on the kitchen floor with the broken chair
and looked at it,
And I thought: this is the grief doing what it does with the lit
Fuse of frustration and the insufficient outlet
Of the day-to-day — it finds the crack, it sets the bullet
Of three months of compressed weight into a piece of furniture,
And the furniture takes it because the furniture’s inferior
To everything else available and can be replaced.
The thing that looked like anger was the grief in a hard hat,
The grief doing the construction work, the grief flat
And forward and uncouth and unsuitable for company —
Not the grief that people want to witness, not the harmony
Of the formal mourning with its designated containers,
The anger-grief that scares the visitors, that drainers
The sympathy of the audience, the grief that needs a chair.
The chair’s in the dumpster and the fist is wrapped,
And I sat with the grief counselor Thursday and unwrapped
Enough of it to understand where the chair came from —
The third month of performing fine, the income
Of all the grief I’d been depressing below the acceptable surface
Into a pressure system with no adequate purpose
Other than eventually expressing itself through something.
Which I knew, which I’d been told, which the Wednesday circle
Addressed at length — and knowing and the actual circus
Of the grief-anger are not the same thing apparently,
And that’s fine, that’s just being a person coherently.

Anger is a bad messenger with a good message sometimes

Anger is a bad messenger running the right lines
Into the room before the polite version
Would have gotten there, before the conversion
Of the true thing into the acceptable
Before the filing down of the detectable
Edge of the actual into the smooth
Before the thing was sanded into groove
The bad messenger arrives with the hair on fire
The bad messenger arrives through the barbed wire
Of the appropriate response and dumps the parcel
On the floor, the contents scattered, the castle
Of the comfortable arrangement shattered
And the truth inside the parcel splattered
Across the walls and everyone can see it
And everyone knows it’s true but none agree it
The truth that anger tells is still the truth
The truth that anger tells arrived uncouth
And underdressed for the occasion but it’s there
The truth that anger tells is in the air
Of every room where someone finally said
The thing that had been living in their head
For years before the moment that it surfaced
The truth that anger tells has a purpose
That the carefully constructed lie doesn’t
The truth that anger tells because it doesn’t
Have the patience of the civil conversation
The truth that anger tells is the translation
Of what’s been true into what’s finally spoken
The truth that anger tells is the cracked token
Of the conversation that should have happened first
The truth that anger tells, it’s unrehearsed

The Truth That Changes Shape

The morning sun invades the room like a forensic light
Exposing every jagged lie I nurtured through the night
I gaze upon the woman sleeping naked in my bed
Her skin is just a map of all the hollow words I said
I thought I built a temple out of logic and control
But I was merely digging out a deep and narrow hole
The choices of my younger self are artifacts of clay
Dissolving in the acid of a brand new fucking day

The truth is shifting underneath my heavy boots
I am pulling up the garden by its withered roots
The mirror is a stranger with a face I used to know
Watching all the certainties begin to melt like snow
I am waking in the wreckage of a life I didn’t choose
Counting up the things I was terrified to lose

The Universe Forgets the Punchline

The universe told a joke at the moment of the first bright flash,
and then expanded outward at the speed of all the ash,
and the joke echoed through the fourteen billion years of space,
but somewhere around the Cretaceous the universe forgot the place.
It knew it was a good one, it knew there was a thing,
it knew the setup perfectly and what the words would bring,
but the punchline had slipped out somewhere
in the dark between the stars,
and the universe has been reconstructing it through Jupiter and Mars.
The universe forgets the punchline, tries to reconstruct,
fourteen billion years of setup and the punchline stuck,
the setup was so perfect that you’d think the rest was planned,
but the universe forgets the punchline, just like any man.

The Useful Anger

I’ve been working on the useful angle for a while now,
The redirection of the heat and learning how
To point the energy at the work instead of the consume,
The useful anger and the way it fills the room.
The useful anger is the instrument I’ve been misusing,
The useful anger is the force I’ve been confusing
With the enemy inside the wire of the daily operation,
The useful anger, and it’s quite the motivation.

The War Ended But I Didn’t

The thing is over, everybody moved along,
the thing is done and I’m still singing the song
that belonged to a situation that has passed.
The thing is done and I’m still holding fast
to the fury that was valid in its time,
to the fury running over the same damn rhyme
that I’ve been singing for so long I can’t hear
the difference between what happened and right here.

The man I was angry at has married twice,
the man I was angry at is living his life nice
in a house somewhere with kids and a career.
The man I was angry at doesn’t know I’m here,
still carrying the thing that bears his name,
still running through the story and the frame
of everything he did in the year it happened,
in the year the whole thing opened and it blackened.

The war ended but I didn’t, I didn’t,
the war ended but I’m still in the trench and sitting
with the fury of the thing that was a decade back.
The war ended but I’m still on the attack,
on the version of the man that lives in me.
The war ended but I haven’t yet been free
to set the whole damn thing down on the ground.
The war ended but I haven’t heard the sound
of the ceasefire yet, I haven’t got the word.
The war ended but the message never reached me, heard.
The war ended but it’s still running in my blood,
the war ended but I’m still standing in the mud
of the original offense and all its weight.
The war ended but I didn’t, and I’m still irate
at a man who doesn’t know my name anymore.
The war ended but I didn’t, that’s what I’m here for.

I’ve been the angry man at dinner when it came up,
I’ve been the angry man at the bar and the cup
of the whole damn story poured into the ear
of whoever happened to be sitting near
me when it surfaced for the hundredth time.
The anger of the year it happened, in its prime
still, like the anger didn’t get the note
that the situation ended. It still votes
for the original position that it started at,
it still holds the line on that original mat.

My buddy said let it go four years ago,
my buddy said let it go and I said I know.
But the knowing and the letting are two different things,
the knowing lives in the head and the letting needs the strings
that tie the thing together to be cut.
The knowing lives in the mind but the gut
still holds the catalog of every detail.
The gut still runs the whole original tale
in full, on the lowest setting, every day.
The gut doesn’t care what the head wants to say.

I know it’s done, I know the man is gone,
I know the situation’s dead and long
past the point of mattering in any real way.
I know the situation ended in that year, that day,
and I’m still angry about it in the now,
and I cannot tell you the why or the how
to exit the anger of the thing that’s over,
cannot tell you how to drive to the shoulder
and set the anger down beside the road
and drive away from it without the load.

The anger that outlives its cause is a creature,
the anger that outlives its cause has every feature
of the original but it’s running without fuel.
The anger that outlives its cause is the fool
that stays at the party after everybody leaves.
The anger that outlives its cause believes
that staying keeps the thing alive and real,
that setting it down would be the betrayal deal
of what was actually done. The anger that outlives
is steering the ship that already docked and gives
no sign of leaving the harbor of the past.
The anger that outlives its cause is gonna last,
and I’m the proof of it, I’m the evidence.
I’m the man who has the anger past the tense
of when it mattered and the anger doesn’t know
the thing is over, the anger doesn’t go
looking for the door, the anger just runs
the same loop it’s been running, the same guns
of the same siege against the gone.
The anger that outlives its cause is me and I’m going on.

The Warden Smiles

Every institution has its warden and its smile,
every institution has the man who runs the aisle
between the rules and the interpretation of the rules,
between the stated purpose and the tools
that purpose serves, which are not what they appear,
which are not what the mission statement here
on the wall behind the desk in the waiting room
would have you believe before you enter the room.

The warden smiles because the warden has the key,
the warden smiles because the warden is free
to interpret the procedure in the way
the warden finds most useful for the day.
The warden smiles because the warden is the man
who stands between you and the actual plan
of the institution you have come to access.
The warden smiles, and that is your redress.

The warden smiles and it’s the most efficient lock,
the warden smiles and ticks the clock
of the process down to the part where you give up.
The warden smiles and fills the paper cup
of the bureaucratic water that runs cold.
The warden smiles and does exactly as he’s told
by the thing above him and the thing below.
The warden smiles because the warden knows
that you need the thing that he controls access to.
The warden smiles because there’s nothing you can do
that changes the position that he’s in.
The warden smiles, and here we go again.
The warden smiles at the end of every form,
the warden smiles, this is the new norm
of institutional power and its face.
The warden smiles and holds you in your place.

The hospital has its warden in the billing wing,
the county office has its warden managing
the form you need to file the thing before
the thing before the thing that needs the form
before the original form that started all this.
The university has its warden in the abyss
of the financial aid department where you wait,
the insurance company has its warden at the gate
of every pre-authorization that you need
to proceed with the thing your body needs indeed.

And the warden is not evil, that’s the thing,
the warden is not twisting anything
with malice, the warden is just doing the job.
The warden is just turning the doorknob
according to the policy that came from somewhere
above the warden, somewhere in the rare air
of the institution’s decision-making body
that decided this is the methodology
and handed it down through the chain of the warden
who now smiles at you and keeps the garden
of the process growing in its shape,
of the process that was never designed to escape
accountability, only to absorb it.

I have been in front of the warden’s smile,
I have been in front of the warden’s smile for a while,
in the waiting area of the institution
that was supposed to provide the resolution
to the thing that had been sent to it to fix,
that was supposed to process the mix
of paperwork I’d submitted to address
the thing. And the warden with his smile possessed
no ability to move the needle even one
small increment toward the thing being done.

The warden with the smile just processed
the form back to the queue to be assessed
by someone else in the institution’s chain,
and gave me the receipt and said have a nice day.

And I stood in the parking lot and named the thing:
the warden smiles and nothing, nothing, and nothing.
And I walked to the car and I sat in the car,
and I did the math on how far, how far
I was from the thing I’d gone there to address.
I was exactly as far from it in the mess
of the situation as when I’d walked in.

The warden’s smile had not moved one pin
in the whole machine in my direction.
The warden’s smile had not a single section
of the institution listening behind it.
The warden’s smile was the institution, and find it
impossible to be angry at a smile,
find it impossible to be angry at the tile
floor of the waiting room, find it impossible
to aim the anger at the dismissible
process that just processed me back out.

The warden smiles and I drive home without a shout
left in me for tonight, but tomorrow I will bring
the full measure of it back, let the bell ring.

The Work of Anger

The anger is not purely the consuming kind I’d thought,
The anger has a constructive mode that has to be caught
And worked with and directed at the building and the change,
The work of anger is a different kind of range.
The work of anger, I’ve been learning what it builds,
The work of anger in the fields and in the guilds
Of everything I’m trying to construct from what I’ve been,
The work of anger, and the anger makes it clean.

Too Big to Be Accountable

The organization is too large to be sorry,
the organization is too large for the story
of the individual wrong to register.
The organization is too large and the minister
of the department that committed
the act is gone and what’s transmitted
up the chain is a processed version of
the complaint that sounds very different from
what you experienced in the actual event,
what you experienced in the moment and the spent
hours of your life in the aftermath,
what you experienced as you tried to map
your experience onto the institution’s form.
What you experienced didn’t conform
to the form’s categories and so the form
processed your experience into the norm
that the institution’s complaint process tracks.
The form processed your experience into the wax
of the institution’s language, and what came out
was something that doesn’t bear about
any resemblance to what you came in with.
Something institutional, and the myth
of the process being there for you is complete.

Too big to be accountable, too big to be sorry,
too big to be accountable, too big for the story
of what happened to you to reach the level where
someone who could change it breathes the air
of decision. Too big to be accountable,
too big to be accountable and it’s mountable
evidence but there’s nobody to mount it to.
Too big to be accountable and the view
from inside the institution looking out
is a sea of individual people and their doubt
that anything they say will change the working.
Too big to be accountable, the shirking
is systemic, it’s the architecture.
Too big to be accountable, the lecture
about the process is the process, that’s the thing.
Too big to be accountable, let the bell ring.

I filed the thing that gave me a case number,
I filed the thing and got the slumber
party invitation of the institutional response.
I filed the thing and got the response
that said it would be reviewed in forty-five days.
I filed the thing and got forty-five days of haze,
and then a letter saying it was outside
the scope of what they could address inside
the current review period. File again.
File again, the institution said, and then
I would receive an acknowledgment of the new
filing within thirty days, which I knew
would come, because the acknowledgment comes,
the acknowledgment always comes, the hums
of the institutional machinery are always there.
The acknowledgment is always in the air.
The accountability is never in the air.
The accountability has no address anywhere
inside the institution’s physical address.
The accountability lives somewhere in the process
map that doesn’t exist and was never drawn.
The accountability is the lawn
of the institution that nobody mows.
The accountability is where nobody goes.

The anger here is not about this one institution,
the anger here is not about the one solution
that failed. It’s about the pattern of the size
of things as a defense against the eyes
of people who were wronged by them, the scale
as the mechanism by which things get stale
before they’re resolved, by which the individual
goes from energized and ready to the ritual
exhaustion of the process, by which the man
who had the original complaint ran
into the machinery and lost his case,
not because he was wrong but because the space
between his reality and the institution’s intake
is the size of the ocean and he couldn’t make
the crossing before the deadline closed the port.

The anger here is about the kind of court
that’s too big to be wrong and too big to be right,
too big to be accountable for the fight.
The person who was wrong that day
has moved on, has a different job, a different bay
of the institution or outside it entirely.
The person who behaved unwisely
toward me is not here and was not here
when I filed the thing and is not near
any of the mechanism that processed
my complaint. The person rested
from the accountability the moment they moved on.
The institution absorbed it, and the gone
is all that’s left where the accountability should be.
The institution is too big for them and too big for me.

Trophy Rack

She rides into the district with the energy of someone who’s done the math on this city,
blood-red lips and a history that reads more like a greatest-hits than a committee.
Gold heels that exceed the standard rent-to-income ratio
and the dress that made that choice,
she doesn’t make an entrance
–she makes the room reconsider its own noise.

They call her several things that all amount to the same general assessment,
the assessment being that she costs more than the available budget
and the investment
returns something that doesn’t fully translate to a currency you can spend,
but you’ll be trying to account for it until the natural end.

She’s got a collection that she maintains on a back shelf
for sentimentality,
not because she loved them–because winning is its own reality.
They’re catalogued by what they cost
and what they thought the deal was going to be,
the trophy rack–and each one a Ph.D. in what she teaches free.

She doesn’t fake the moaning–she fakes the backstory
–that’s the economy in play.
She shows up as whoever the current situation requires
for the current day,
and when she leaves at four she takes whatever you arrived as at eight,
and leaves the rest of you to figure out what just occurred in this zip code’s fate.

The preacher in the back booth tips her twice because she read his whole presentation,
and smiled the smile of someone who received it as an invitation.
She’s the museum of what men become
when they forget what they are managing,
the trophy rack
–a full accounting of the cost of misunderstanding.

War Is Good Business

The contract’s in the billions and the dividend’s prepaid,
the boardroom’s on its feet, they toast another day,
the quarterly report confirms the surge in war demand,
for the products that they manufacture for the war command.

The lobbyist is working and the senator’s on board,
the funding for the mission carries on without accord,
the factory in the district keeps three thousand on the dole,
and the factory makes the weapons and it keeps them whole.

War is good business, war is good business,
the balance sheet is healthy and the projections hold,
war is good business, follow the money,
trace the policy decisions back and see what you’re told,
war is good business, it’s always been that way,
the men who profit from the killing never have to pay,
war is good business, the oldest kind of deal,
they sell the ordnance to both sides and let the market heal.

I’m not some bitter cynic but the pattern’s plain to see,
the wars that stretch on longest have a profit motive in their fee,
and the ones that end overnight had no stakeholder in sight,
to keep the conflict engine churning through the endless night.

So count the body bags against the dividend you reap,
ask the shareholders if their quarterly’s yours to keep,
war is good business, they’ve always known this fact,
just nobody says it plainly and that’s exactly the contract.

The headlines talk of freedom but the footnotes tell the truth,
a defense contractor’s stock is up while someone’s hammering a roof,
the weapons makers’ cocktail parties spill right past the glass,
while diplomats discuss peace and shuffle through the pass.

What I’m Holding (GnR Style)

I’m holding something down inside my chest
A wild thing that I’m trying to suggest
Might just behave a while longer if I’m cool
But this desire don’t play by any rule
I’m holding it together, holding it in
But the wanting is a pressure on my skin
What I’m holding, what I’m holding back
Is a freight train running on a midnight track
What I’m holding, what I’m keeping still
Is a wanting that will have its way and will

She stood within the doorway with a face of hammered iron

The target of a million words designed to tame a lion
They called it hysteria when she found the secret stash
Of every promise that he made then turned into an ash
They labeled it erratic when she smashed the porcelain plate
A jagged punctuation for a decade of his hate
The doctor spoke of “episodes” and scribbled on a pad
While ignoring every bruise and every reason she was mad
She’s lacing up her boots to walk right through the social lie
Watching every hollow word begin to shrivel and to die
The sun arrives to find the house a hollowed-out shell
Exposing every fracture where the rotten silence fell
She isn’t seeking “closure” and she isn’t seeking “peace”
She’s demanding every atom of a permanent release
Let the labels rot away like the wood inside the fence
While she finds a liberation in the sheer and raw offense
The wrath is just the wreckage of the love he threw away
The only honest engine for a cold and winter day

What Victory Tastes Like

They talk about the winning like it’s champagne and confetti,
Like the moment that you clinch it,
all the world’s already ready,
But the real taste of a victory is different in your mouth,
It’s a little bit of iron and a little bit of doubt.

It’s sweet but it’s not candy and it’s warm but isn’t clean,
It’s everything you burned to get it, pressed into a scene,
It’s the handshake you were promised
and the sleep you finally get,
And underneath all that, the quiet promise of the next.

What victory tastes like, not what I imagined,
Not the poster and the fanfare and the city going ragged,
What victory tastes like, it’s a complicated meal,
Half of hunger finally answered, half the appetite revealed.

I won a thing at twenty-three and stood there in the aftermath,
Expecting some heavenly choir, maybe a golden path,
What I got was a deep exhale and then a deeper question:
Is this everything I wanted, and what’s the next possession?

Because victory is not an end, it’s barely a beginning,
It’s the punctuation in a sentence that keeps spinning,
The comma in the middle of a longer declaration,
Every conquest just a doorway to the next campaigning station.

I’ll take my victory and I’ll let it settle in,
I’ll acknowledge every scar and cut that led me to begin,
Then I’ll wipe my mouth and get my bearings for the next,
Because the taste of it’s the fuel
and the fuel is what comes next.

Worship The Angry Ferret

I woke up with a voicemail from a raccoon in a leather vest,
The squirrels formed a union and they’re staging a protest.
My toaster taps out code,
the fridge screamed obscenities in French,
And the coffee tastes like vengeance filtered through a monkey wrench.

TV’s got a prophet shrieking headlines slathered in glue,
A priest on TikTok twerking in a blood-red kangaroo suit.
The cops wear Crocs, their body cams shaped just like ducks—
And I just stubbed my soul on a world that gives zero fucked-up rucks.

Worship the angry ferret, with eyes like burning coal,
Snarling from his throne of socks and half-smoked jelly rolls.
He judges all your choices, your playlists and your luck—
And hisses through your nightmares: What the actual fuck?

There’s a goat in the driveway playing jazz on an old kazoo,
While the mailman drops subpoenas dressed like Pikachu.
My neighbor’s house just levitated off the ground,
The mayor’s chanting Latin, decked out in feathers and crown.

Truth got sold in pieces, glued together with some memes,
While billionaires collect our dreams and sell us beta screams.
AI wrote this anthem just to haunt your inner punk—
And grandma’s knitting sweaters that say this world’s drunk.

There’s no plan B, just plan WTF,
We’re drifting through a fever dream wrapped in duct-taped sex.
Your therapist’s an emu, your Uber’s a hearse,
You prayed for peace, but the algorithm made it worse.

Cursed by clickbait gods and the cult of broken clocks,
We dance like doomed apostles in expired Cro-Magnon jocks.
And if the ferret snarls your name,
you’d better kneel and suck it up—
‘Cause sanity’s a punchline and reality’s corrupt.

Wrecking Ball in Heels

She walked in wearing heels that cracked the floor like gunshots,
every head turned at the sound before the sight arrived,
and when the sight got there it hit like weather,
a storm front wrapped in leather, barely surviving

Her mouth was painted dark and when she smiled
it wasn’t warmth—it was the grin before the wreck,
she scanned the room the way a hawk surveys the field
and I felt her gaze land hot and sharp against my neck

Wrecking ball in heels, she tears through everything,
leaves men in pieces, scattered wide and wondering,
I know the damage she has done, I’ve seen the proof,
wrecking ball in heels and I’m standing on the roof

She pressed her palm against my chest and pushed me backward,
slow and firm, her fingers splayed across my shirt,
until my shoulders hit the wall and she was close enough
for me to feel the heat of her pressed into my dirt

Her thigh slid between my legs, one hand pinning me,
the other tracing down my jaw like drawing lines
through everything I thought I knew about control—
wrecking ball in heels, and I’m reading all the signs

She leaned in close and bit my earlobe, whispering,
her breath so hot it fogged my thinking at the source,
and I would let her flatten everything I’ve built,
wrecking ball in heels, and I’m begging for the force

Yes I Held a Grudge

Yes I held a grudge, what did you expect me to do
when the thing that was done to me was done deliberately
and it knew
exactly what it was doing and exactly what it cost
and the person making the decision knew exactly what I lost
and made the decision anyway, which is not a misunderstanding.
It’s not a miscommunication and it’s not two people landing
on different interpretations of an ambiguous event.
It’s a clear decision made with clear intent.

You want me to be reasonable about it, want me to see
the complexity of the situation and be free
of the clarity that comes from being the one who paid
and not the one who made the choice that had to be repaid.
Everybody wants the injured party to be measured and be fair,
and very few people want the injurer to be sitting there
accounting for the weight of what he chose and what it meant.
Yes I held a grudge and yes the grudge was relevant.

Yes I held a grudge and the grudge was correct.
Yes I held a grudge with my dignity intact.
The grudge was the appropriate response to an inappropriate thing,
not some failure of my character or emotional reasoning.
I held the grudge because the grudge deserved to be held by someone,
and I was the someone who was standing there when it was done.
Yes I held a grudge and I’d hold it again from the same position.
The grudge was the accurate response to the situation.

People talk about grudges like they’re evidence of personal defect,
like the healthy response to being wronged is to inspect
your own contribution to the situation first and foremost,
and process the feelings and let the anger be the ghost
that you gently say goodbye to at the boundary of your healing journey.
And I’ve read the books and I’ve done the work and my returning
assessment is that the grudge was warranted and I’m keeping it,
and the person who wronged me doesn’t get to decide what I’m feeling with it.

I’m not carrying the grudge because I can’t control my emotions.
I’m carrying the grudge because I made a series of deliberate motions
toward understanding
and then toward acceptance and then toward the door
of letting go, and what I found on the other side of the door
was a room where the thing that was done to me had never happened,
where the record had been revised
and the accounting had been flattened.
And I walked back out and picked the grudge up off the floor,
because the grudge was the last honest thing I had
and I wanted more.

The other thing I’d like to say about the grudge is this:
it has not interfered with my capacity for daily happiness.
I have a good life and good people in it and the grudge
is in its lane and doesn’t smudge
into the rest of my experience, which is its own argument
for the grudge being a managed and legitimate instrument
of the reckoning that I’ve decided I deserve.
The grudge is in its lane and the lane is mine to serve.

And what I’d like from the people who keep asking me to drop it
is to look at where the grudge came from before you ask me to stop it,
is to look at what was done and who was standing when it landed,
and to ask yourself if you’d have handled it differently if you’d been handed
the same event, the same decision made at your expense,
and see if your answer comes back as enlightened and as dense
as the advice you’re giving me about letting it go free.
Yes I held a grudge and the grudge belongs to me.

The grudge is focused, which makes it different from the scatter.
The grudge knows who it’s for and what it’s after,
and it doesn’t touch the people who had nothing to do with the original wrong.
It stays in its lane and its lane is the course of this song
about the person and the thing they chose.
And I’m holding the account of it and that’s how this goes.
I’ll hold it for as long as the holding is what’s right,
and let it go precisely when the holding stops being right.