[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?