[part 1] Where were you in ’22? The end of the honeymoon The mask is off and the creature is coming through Out of the void that cuts between the eye and the screen What does she see, young futurist, 1913 Crystal ball, looking down on me— Who damns them all among the fallen— She who fell in with the yelling shiny metal boys? Yes they knew there’s an art to noise That now’s where the time ahead destroys the ashen past But they left their caskets wide Half of them turned fascists while the other half died Why’s it that a ticket out Is always a Faustian deal with the devil? The field’s not level; say whatever— Give me the lever, just give me the lever Just give me a lever and a place to stand I can move the world, I can move the world Give me a lever and a place to stand And I'll move the world, and I'll move the world But where am I? And why’s this mirror here? Why does it shine with the disappeared? World War One and all to come The spiral swallows up a hundred years Is it wrong that I long for correction? Some invective retrospective court To flex a hand around the necks of Bush, Thatcher, Musk Bastards all who stacked the decks So who is next? Not Benedetta Cappa, or the table-rapping Foxes yet Tried to escape from their boxes Without a say in their age or their sex Besides, who can test whether the perception I got is correct? Whether I’m inventing a special effect? Am I a lone tall tree in the woods unwrecked unchecked from dusk to sunset? Where were you in ’22? The death of solitude The end of your tolerance for the call of a prophet Who fed you dreams or the fear of a bloody coup But how did you get here? What did they do to you? And when is now? I mean really, what in hell is now? A junkie who, caught between the memory of flight and terror of the night Begs: what can my money do? That’s what I get for having two eyes to read with, see with Maybe size up the summer roughness From above this burning forest, California’s poorest, smoke on all horizons Who let all the flies into this version of my life? Am I dying? Where were you in ’22? Go get your alibi, son Make it a good lie Where were you in ’22? Where were you in ’22? Got one more window to look through Where were you? ________ [part 2] The Angel of History turns an eye to the graveyard Growing and churning without a border or safeguard But blown back by the force of the past, The tyrannical gnashing of teeth and the panicking death screech, The Angel of history is paralyzed by a shock to the spine called progress Trinity bomb test, 1945 Everybody ever alive, when you rise, I’ll fall and apologize I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I dreamed of Kemdi Amadiume, where I could see the future And I’m sorry was I all I could tell her Creation is sorry; you deserved better I’m so sorry, sorry The words echo wide to the first ever suicide in the Kalahari And everything tumbling after Hell of a way to conclude the first chapter So where were you in 22? Who am I talking to? The slaughterhouse animals in the cages all going blue Illegal to film but they’re killed for you to chew And the angel is crying at the Bronx Zoo Are you talking to the meteor in space You’re hoping will break through, come and erase Cut the Gordian knot, plot dissolves, columns fall All our problems going small? Or are you talking to your parents whom you even still make excuses for 'cause you’re in the will? Executor, testatrix, execution in the matrix Am I talking to entitled generational wealth? The feedback loop spins a Fabergé shell Gilded with rubies and amber gels Waiting to be smashed, cast a spell Hell, I guess what I mean is take yourself back to fourteen The first and only evening you could see with clarity right and wrong And share with me: do you owe that kid a song? Or were you killed by the age-fifteen version And the guilt that made age sixteen worse And seventeen, eighteen like dominoes And when they come, can you tell where the kid goes? Are you swallowing the previous minute down? Does this verse chew the last and spit it out? Animal to animal, cannibal to cannibal Man ate the neanderthal What claim do you have at all? Don’t blame the black hole’s gravity well Don’t blame the crocodile eating itself But where you in '22 when the curtain finally finally finally fell?

SOUL: Nameless, nameless Blue and blameless Soul is tusk and switchblade Curved and crazy She betrays me Soul is cock and clickbait And I don't mind if you don't mind And I'm not mine if you're not yours But my soul is bleeding all the time And there's no cure Birthless, birthless Loud and earthless Soul's not mine to claim one And you can stay here But let's not say we're Hanging from the same one And I don't mind if you don't mind And I'm not mine if you're not yours Yeah my soul is twisting all the time And there's no cure No there's no cure And I'm not sure But I think I know I think I know I hope so I got soul I'm still trying to unwind All this twine around a core It's the kind of knot no god can tie 'cept mine and yours But I don't mind if you don't mind The eight or nine forevermores That your soul has sworn from time to time Gone door to door No I'll be fine and you'll be fine I'm not mine and you're not yours A soul that hides within a rhyme Don't need no cure