Comin' into town with just a pocket full of change, not sure

where we're going, but I know we'll know when we

get there, and that's all that matters because home

is where the heart is and that's why we drove the

length of Canada and screamed at birds that landed

on our hood.

you eating souls like mine and smiling in the afternoon

with your big billboard teeth, I just hope you see I'm a

virgin, and I'm ready to learn.

teeth, and you've got me worried New York, you're not

put together at the seems like I hoped, but I'll go down here

and put my valuables in a pocket and try my luck out there

among the paper mache alleyways and your dark storm drains.

say you're dangerous, that everyone who smiles has my wallet

in their hands already, and they want more, they say the sidewalks

aren't safe, and that pornography bleeds down between the bums and

the sign holders, and I wonder, is that true?

sure doesn't seem to be an island, and eating with the Jews late at

night and then walking thousands of blocks with empty bellies and

tired smiles isn't what I wanted, seeing men with women stuffed in

the passenger side of a car hurtling faster and faster to the nearest

motel that rents by the hour isn't what I need on this cold delirious

night.

looking more plastic than it did in the black bag, and smiling, trying its

best to look Irish cause the whole city's Irish today, isn't it?

do, because she has problems too, melting limbs in the midday sun while

living under the glass roof I'm so goddamn scared of, losing fingers to

the rabid dogs that are just rabid for the sake of being rabid, she's scared,

and maybe I shouldn't have left her there, but as the last piece of her, she

deserved a life more exciting than mine.

selling watches and buying sex guides, does she drink coffee late at night

when she should be sleeping, when everything gets done but mattress

companies don't want you to know that, is she laying on a mattress now

begging for change, that's what they say about you in the picture books.

blood, and I don't know why I say that, but it's true, and I was so scared

when I walked for hours, in danger of taxis cutting my legs into pieces,

but I want to be scared, and I want a few bruises, but there's nothing

sharp around here, and the noise isn't productive, it's just mills running

over each other and making chips out of walls and leaving

the workers behind, but they don't look like the boys your noise

leaves behind, they're lost, and they're not drunk on your lights,

they're just dark and tired, and at least your pornographic

sidewalks have concrete with pillows made of marble.

TV movies that show you in the dark with your neon convicts

and their knives and everyone's poor and every street's full of

trash and hypodermic needles.

rooms and preach the gospel of small town America with

fire and brimstone coming from parking lots full of boys with

erections and nowhere to go but downhill, and then they'll know

what's dangerous, they'll know where they are and why.

I'll let them come, and they'll see the bags under my eyes and

wonder why I've slept...they don't, why don't they sleep? They

stay up and wonder the streets looking for rubes like me, and let

them pack me in plastic and take me to the warehouses where they

keep the picture books, and show me how it looks through fogged

plastic, and I'll take the story as dogma to all of my hungry

friends with their hands in their pockets searching for their own

salvation, and I've got Polaroids proving I was dying, and that's

more than any nickel diary can do.

killing me, and still I stare at the medians and I wonder if

the lights in my head are leading me wrong.

gorgeous savages, but they don't turn a blank stare, and

I want to curl up in your papers and sleep and inhale your

chaos, give me cancer with your neon lights that are just

dancing on my spine, and the street performers who

pick my pocket while I smile.

to flow through my veins and make me scream until someone

blinks, and I want that so bad, push me inside your darkened

franchises and ruin me for all other towns, show me a ground

level heaven and take it away before I can weep.

workers and find myself, jaw hanging from a glass table,

screaming something, probably something with purpose,

probably something that meant something in the same language

that I curse everything with when I can't find the control or

the batteries that roll under the couch that I want to move,

and now it doesn't matter because I'm in your lungs along

with all the asbestos and you know I'm with you now, and

every time you cough, your spit is filled with me, and it

burns but at least it means something.

fumes and mingle with the old war codes floating and

meaning nothing, float into offices and ride on the wings

of planes I wish I were on, and sense the urgency in the

arthritic hands of the man flying cross-country to turn

in a resume that will lead to the worse stroke ever

suffered in a supermarket.

jump out the window and land on the sidewalk and go

up anyone's ass unlucky enough to be standing there and come

out pure fire and fizzle out somewhere in the atmosphere.

while I'm collapsing and breathing in whoever was unlucky,

and wondering if they ever fell asleep during a firestorm of

information, God, let me die on your circle in a teardrop with

the candles and breath new air into Him, and tell everyone

that he was as we see Him as we know Him and as we'll

speak of Him.

but I was so exhausted by her energy that I picked at the grass

til my eyes fell out, and the children don't know who He is,

and they should, God, they should.

and make it light on the narrative, make it swift, and make

it dirty, make it hurt, because safety isn't seductive anymore,

it doesn't come in at night and take advantage of the depression

that takes advantage of me at the same time, hold me down

New York, take me outside, beat the fuck out of me, tell me

I'm there, and remember me, remember me as no one, and

tell everyone.

--Jared Sexton