The Last Of The Great Rock And Roll Kids

When we go, let’s go like this:
Hands across our hearts
Tied in the shape of “I wouldn’t have it any other way”,
Singing loudly,
Letting the dead know we are coming to shake things up.

When we go, let’s go like a cheap bucket of “Hallelujah”,
The last bead on the rosary.
Upright, with swagger.
Let’s let it wash over us like truth.

We are the last of the great rock and roll kids,
All action and no talk.
Three chords and no decoration.
We are the romance in the struggle.
We are dust
Waiting to be stars.

Wait long enough, and
Salvation will come.
In the shape of four-year old wrists,
It will come quiet, like Grace.

I am no longer waiting. Amen.

So, when we go,
Let’s go the way great rock and roll kids were born to:
With fire in our teeth, and
Piano wire in our bones.
This is not a baptism.
This is an exorcism.
Non-refundable recovery.

Angelic runaways
Finally going Home.

Survival On Vinyl

I turned up my stereo louder than it goes, and
Sang along to the last song we made out to.
It felt like a funeral.
I stopped.
And I thought of all of the funerals
Of all of the hearts
In the history of former lovers
Until this feeling fell on me:
There is life after life.

There are 72 beats a minute for at least another 50 years.
Let the countdown begin:
Let’s stitch our hands together and bellyflop back into this big, dumb ocean of lust.
Let’s eat onions for communion and kiss our tears goodbye.
(They have stayed long enough.)
Let’s fuck like nymphomaniacal bunnies on a sinking ship.
Let’s have a tea party with zombies and toast to the fact that death is not the end.

Play your cello with your fists tonight.
Stab a way away from the crosses of faraway ghosts
Until we are haunted by only soft things.
Sometimes the gospel comes in clumsy eighth notes.
This is then.
This is “Love without fear.”
This is “Kissing the demons into dust.”
This is “Punk rock at 3 a.m.”
This is “Hermosa at sunset.”
This is “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.”
This is healing.
Caskets into kisses,
Scissors into sermons,
Drugs into poems.
You are brave magic,
A rifle of right hands putting this puzzle back together
For the first time.
And I am thinking,
“I want to steal you away
And baptize this feeling in the alleys of Los Angeles.”

Good love should be dirty.