raise your hand if you believe music's magic
incantations in cheer and tragic
fluent language for our condition
feverbrush hexes: our own volition

raise your hand if you've lived possessed
malcontent and vinyl-dressed 
tearing off that studded vest
droned down these fetted frequencies
lyrically stripped to skins
sandblasted by indecencies:
as if the songwriter was calling your name

raise your hand if you believe tattoos are runes
tapestries of your own control
histories or how-to-be's or
counted gavel miseries
on purpose or by grace
skin's a leather on which we trace
the greater good, the bad, the ugly
a grimoire as a grocery list 
of how to resuscitate and drug me

raise your hand if you've had a hero
burnt 666 by caesar nero 
crucifixed and fired and tempered
hardened carbon steel embittered
by the actions of the few 
fate dealt as we knelt in pews
ambivalent to thoughts and prayers
but paralyzed by our routine letters 
to faith; 
we all have to play the devil sometime.

raise your hand 
raise your hand
raise your hand if you were caught dreaming by headlights
burning mad a the front of your class, ideas catching
like head lice 
of a burning world , absconded with the stones you hurled
not thinking how sinless you'd ought to be
to come down catching that bravery
so it stoked your fevered stills
pitching sales of greener hills 
leaving home to find home
stuffing yourself into smaller suits 
to keep doing what they tell you 
notching belts and choking roots
to keep doing what they tell you 
trapping hands and hooking bodies
to keep doing what they tell you 
bruising and squeezing and trying and wheezing

collapsing,

passing out

waking up
dreamlessly slept and short of breath 
you keep wondering how you got so tired.

raise your hand if they didn't teach you this
how to calculate the speed at which
a carpet can be pulled from under you. 
how greedy we must be to continue to reach out
for the ideas that previously burned us
in a lukewarm world.