At twilight the couples arrive By midnight they all divide What seemed planned and pristine Is a chaos older than you or me There is no stable system No one can be trusted No one is innocent But there is no final judgment Nature is indifferent To malice and kindness Do you fear chaos? Do you fear your brothers Because you fear yourself? And what you know you’d do If they all left the room Once they drink up their courage The church girls are easy But when they’re alone They still count their rosaries I don’t believe in sin But what is this affliction This condition we’re born in If not a punishment? The first cell division The first sex at dawn Was the talking serpent That brought us all to harm But there is no salvation No light at the end Do you fear chaos? Do you hate your sisters Because you hate yourself? For what cannot be fixed For the cruelties we all must commit At dawn the bird songs commence And echo through a hungry wilderness What seemed beautiful and pure Is a madness with no cure I don’t believe in freedom But in the tyranny of genes I don’t believe in heaven But I see hell in my dreams I don’t believe in joy But gradients of pain I don’t believe in love But the utility of hate I don’t believe in good But I believe in evil I don’t believe in God But I see Satan in the mirror

A thousand eyes behind the neon haze Size up their quarry with a predator’s gaze The moonlight drips like a wound in the sky And the scent of blood stirs their primal insides Wolves in grey slacks Study the movements, study the movements Watching the girls with prurient interest Drink the potion, drink the potion Make the kill with no emotion There’s a hunger that gnaws and can never be sated By the jagged maw of the violence district I point the finger but I’m no different Flickering teeth pierce the skin of the night Carnivorous stars froth in frenzied delight The moonlight curls like a grin in the sky In the city’s throat swells a stifled cry Wolves with blank masks Vile intentions, vile intentions Lurk beneath ornate deceptions Close the distance, close the distance Lure the prey with feigned affections The rotting yolk of the soft-boiled moon Infects the air on the pale horizon I open my mouth but there is silence Study the movements, study the movements Watching the girls with prurient interest Drown the conscience, drown the conscience Sink their fangs with depraved indifference The silver tendrils of a pregnant moon Smother the streets in a poison cocoon There’s a hunger that gnaws and can never be sated By the jagged maw of the violence district I point the finger but I’m no different At the heart of the cosmic abode Is a yawning black hole A spider devouring her young This is the only god that we know

Sin won’t bind us to the soil In which we’re sentenced to forever toil We shall conquer life and death alike Our mighty works will cleave the sky The first brick laid over ancient graves Cast from the id, a bloody clay The architect relays his grace So we cleanse the land of wickedness The beasts that slither on the ground The heathens to their forests bound Till nature, trembling, submits To the empire that progress built Day by day the stones collect Though our bodies now are worn and bent The scaffoldings, our histories Were burned and now we know We can’t climb down Kingdom come, thy will be done In heaven as it is on earth Dominion for your chosen sons And poverty for those who curse The knowledge they were made to bear What if there’s no paradise Beyond the clouds our spires rend? Just more mass-produced identities To which the clear-cut lands lie testament More soldiers brandishing their guns More concrete cast with oil and blood Credit scores and bank accounts It’s too late to look down now But the tower shakes beneath its weight An atomic dawn alights the sea Then the last sunlight evaporates In the empire of make believe We watch and wait with bated breath To ring in the apocalypse That will free us from this great prison And return us to the dirt to be reborn Kingdom come, our will be done Heaven by our own design The self-anointed chosen ones Whose want is never satisfied Kingdom come, thy will be done In heaven as it is on earth Release us from the throne of rust Freedom from the Bronze Age curse The knowledge we were forced to bear

Cats and dogs don’t have souls So when they die Their essence flickers out like a broken bulb But lovers who’ve built a little life Must shed their rings at the great divide Great divide No husbands and wives in the afterlife No one stands beside you at the great divide Because we’re all betrothed as the bride of Christ There is no love in the afterlife No one stands beside you at the great divide When the children are gathered Into the bosom of God We will have new bodies Without lust or vengeful thoughts And we’ll be lined up naked, nothing to hide Our secrets are disposed of at the great divide Great divide No drugs or sex in the afterlife No one sleeps beside you at the great divide Because our bodies won’t tire and there is no night There’s no sense of touch in the afterlife No one sleeps beside you at the great divide The cat won’t warm the foot of your bed Your friends won’t talk on the telephone The dog won’t walk with you in his stead Your lover won’t wait for you to come home No one stands beside you at the great divide On heaven’s gate, there is a sign that reads “No pets allowed, no month to month lease” We will not have names or mouths that lie Everyone is made deaf and mute at the great divide Great divide No joy or sorrow in the afterlife Our memories are erased at the great divide We forget about the ones who were left behind There is no compassion in the afterlife No one stands beside you at the great divide

Beyond the city’s sphere of radiance Beyond the traffic noise and violence The sea exhales a gentle roar Its opiate mist churns ever forth It’s where the ring I almost gave Then cast in anger to the waves Washes up on the shore And lets us start over Where evil ambitions Sink like heavy stones And the dogs of war Cannot chew our weary bones It’s where we all came from When we were cells in the brine And where we all return To be swallowed by the tide Where my mother’s songs still fill the house In the town where we grew up And our skins grown thick from lives of pain Are soft and we can trust again Possibilities bloom and enfold Like the fractal plumes from your cigarettes Where faith abides in the curling wisps These younger selves must still exist Old I-love-yous Awaiting a response Hang in the air Lit by an always setting sun Every animal that ever lived Still treads along the shores The lions and the lambs Lie huddled in the coves We must still exist There must still be hope There must still be time To get it right

You call me a friend Though we once shared a bed You say to me, “friend” As we lie in your bed Do you think of me, friend When you sleep in this bed? Introduce us as friends Though we’ve laid in his bed Am I your, am I your hidden attractor? Am I yours? Am I yours, hidden attractor? Everybody has a body Every body tells a story Everybody needs somebody Every body needs a body Anybody, any body, hidden attractor Are you there? Are you there, hidden attractor? Your room is a tomb Your room is a womb Your womb is a tomb Your tomb is a womb The sun is red, the moon is lead The stars in my head, the body is dead The sun is dead, the moon is red The bed is lead, our blood is poison Swollen ocean, secret ladder Molten ocean, hidden attractor Body in motion, secret best friends Go through motions, hide attractions Tangled affections, crafted deceptions What has been said can’t be unsaid The head is poison, the bed is red The body is lead, maintain silence Hidden attraction I am the mouth at the bottom of the pit of stars The great mother spider that weaves the web of lies Where the sun and Earth struggle but never break free From the strands of gravity The terrible truth in the spaces between The thrashing beast at the base of your skull The eternal wind of indifference Blowing lazily through the killing fields of time I am her I am he I am you

Rabbits run in front of cars And paint the roads with their insides Each struggle dissolved into the din Of a trillion unknown suicides Sparrows fly into the panes And convulse in loops with broken wings You clutch them to your racing chest But then abandon them behind the fence You know you can’t Oh you can’t save them We’re punished for the crimes we can’t comprehend Dead dog in the river bed Betrayed by gods that walked with him For now the vultures pick his ribcage clean But the dirt makes brethren of all beasts Girls ride inside the cars With painted masks that hide their scars The canvas layered with hazy trysts But once their clothes are off the wounds are fresh No you can’t No you can’t save them We’re punished for mistakes We were designed to make No you can’t No you can’t save them We’re punished for the flesh That we were forced to wear Once she’d found God through a needle’s eye Melody filled up her veins With all the love the world denied Till her heavy heart burst at the seams So they carved her name into a stone That the rain will eventually erase But she left me in the woods alone Before I had the chance to take her place But you know you could not You could not save her She was punished for the paltry joy She dared to scrape No you could not No you could not save her Did you really think it was your choice to make? One summer afternoon when I was a child I played in the garden of my parents’ backyard It was a vibrant fractal flame, a wondrous wild A wasp shot its venom into my little arms The pain—so sudden, so undeserved Taught me the discipline of the world Though the swelling receded, the lesson remained Fear is the currency of every living thing No loving hand guides the cosmic play Then I saw the abyss in a fever dream It bore the shape of a man with a tortured gait A visage malformed, as melted candle wax I believed he was the devil, come to claim me at last But then he spoke to me in a terrible voice Like a swarm of locust in a lion’s throat: “Son, I am God, and I hear your prayers And that’s how I know what you fear the most You’ve had your fun And you’ve had your freedom Now the time has come For your punishment”

I am the Khmer Rouge I am the Viet Cong I’m the hole in the world After the bomb is dropped I am the twelfth imam And the Great Satan And there will be no peace Until everything is dead I’m the ego and id I am the seed and the egg I’m the stillborn conscience Floating in your head I am love and hate I am the key and the gate I am the light and the shade And the void that remains When they both dissipate I saw the abyss in a fever dream It looked like a man, it looked like me A devout without salvation A vagabond with no compass No light at the end of the road I am ill-gotten gain The burdens of the poor The hope for the future And the wolf at the door The chemical despair Of a lover spurned The irrepressible urge To get closer till our bodies converge I am Thanatos I am the fear of death I am the lust for life In every labored breath I am an ancient chaos Of a second-hand sun And the haunting stillness When its course has run I see a portrait of the future It’s the same as the past, painted in our blood A brood of theives and murderers Conceived on the backs of slaves There’s no light at the end of the road I am the big bang, I’m the eschaton I’m the face of Cain in a cloud of smog A peptide chain in the Hadean sea A uterus in a blot of ink I am the messiah I’m the antichrist There is no escape From the nothingness that awaits I see the abyss in front of me From the frigid stars to the molten loam No light at the end of the road There’s no light at the end No light

It was 5 a.m. on New Year’s Day Parked on the shoulder Of the Pacific Coast Highway The swell of the ocean Like a funeral choir As we started to kiss Your lips a funeral pyre Bitter with ashes Of defeated desires But a sliver of light shone Through the sadness of your eyes And I swear you had a soul In the cold comfort Of my trembling embrace You whispered your worries The ultimate fate Of our lofty ambitions And our carnal designs The fire we’ve built From the fallen scraps of sky It blows away without warning Without fanfare or mourning In a burst of heat and light And then nothing That’s the way The way of all flesh It’s the virginity you can’t reclaim The child you can’t be again The wonders you could not explain The animals inside us all Little stardust fetish dolls Forever at the beck and call Of pain and desire The way The way of all flesh