The Anthropocene - 12” Vinyl Let’s take the Book of Revelations and set it to a breakbeat; it will be a trap song of myself, a Whitman disco death anthem for the dying planet (just think of the percussive potential—horse hooves! cracking ice caps! the new order opening!). Of course no one makes it through this song alive, which is exactly the point: we’re dying all the time—at the rate of epochs and at three-minute intervals, 180 beats per measure—and there’s nothing like a dance floor to make you aware of your own body. We like it when the record changes under our noses; we want a continuous movement. But it gets tricky when it’s the Anthropocene. Let’s take the Paris Accord and set it to a three-chord slow-burn, the kind of number you either sit out to catch your breath or swing through wildly on the uncrowded floor. Let’s ignore, for a moment, the patent absurdity of denying that the planet is changing. Just because we’re out here on the floor doesn’t mean we’re oblivious. Ineffective, sure; woefully inert (—this is why we need a beat—) but awake! at the last dark hour clutching Egyptian cotton, half-ghosts, grinding teeth over what more could be done. Oh, sweet worrywarts—the world was ending long before all this started. There is nothing to be done. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it. Someone will have to crawl out from the calamity, and they will need heroes about whom to sing. They will reenact our ancient dances, epoch to epoch, until everyone’s forgotten everything but the movements. Hips shaking, knees bent at the twerking floor, this is what we’ve always known: There was once a joyful people who saw about them the ending world, but even still they shook. However we fight, or resist, the burning end, for god’s sakes, for them, we must make it a dance.

River Phoenix Your favorite actor died today, too young, but so are you, rightfully tantruming against pricks, pins and needles, every string you can pull, the fibrous final tethers keeping you in this ungodly room with me here forever the first of November in 1993— But later I will imagine what could come next: if you were to rip free from your failing machinery and rise up in your gown, now glowing, floating, only for your hot feet to hit the linoleum, running, you say, let’s get the hell out of here, and we’re off— flashing by untouched dinner trays and yesterday’s paper ghosts (I’ve never seen you so fast!), already dated cork- board, past the dying and the just-born, bounding whole wards (I’m trying to keep up), flying through the waiting room to tumble after you and out the sliding doors— memory jog over our pillaged blocks and we run this town where we came up dancing—we are now the most alive living boys this city has ever seen!— you, redding, trailing wires, Ginger-graceful in evading the fallen bluebirds scattered on the quiet concrete; and we still make it to the water’s edge with all our old haunts we rushed past behind us, your sudden wings whisk the ram- part and we stop, on heel; you, panting, looking finally at the long blue, and glancing back for a split-second, half-grin; but even in this version, I can’t catch you. She shuts your eyes and I walk home alone to our stoop, the candy bowl with your sign—take as many as you want—emptied, and it’s the same one I use to carry you that day to the very river when we let you go, and just then, the wind picks up—

Punchline, Cooper’s Landing In our rural obscurity we were proud outlaws, outstanding in our field--that was the joke you could always tell when we were driving past grazing pastures, out to the river: did you know those were prize-winning cows? We could always pretend this land was made for you and me, in our city costumes--sore thumbs to the shack, we had wanted to be dangerous, to be told that we weren’t wanted in these parts: you were the depression era drifter chewing straw, me wearing false fangs. What was dangerous was the wanting, because by the river we’d gotten carried away, carrying on like this, talking out the sides of our mouths, and maybe this country could be enough for us, to be only ourselves on this landing, sticking it to the city; to our bodies the country drag was sticking, the sweat in these parts dripped thicker than in town, but felt somehow lighter--that was the joke: So two boys walk into a river, and the one boy says to the other, we are outstanding.

For Chip When We Were Just Kids Some Mormons believe the Garden of Eden was what is now Independence, Missouri--the Meth Capital of the World, as we knew it growing up just outside, just across town, both boys too young to have profiles on Adam4Adam but we did, all that temptation and more, before we had each other and what is now independence, it was this: back to the garden, if you could just split-screen like that Missy video and we are stardust and golden, us in Kansas City at the dawn of the 21st century, not met yet but you see us two girl-boys losing our entire minds to the TV in different family rooms, our first shared language, dancing-- we were dancing to Work It, we were dancing to Lose Control, we danced to lose control of our bodies, ill fit gloves for the soft things we felt meant to be, we must be more, and if your father ever found you, all ass on the floor working it like you need water how bad would it be-- So there we were shaking our asses to the same song in the same limestone ass midwest town, still not met yet, on our school yards both the boys playing with the other girls acting out our Total Request Live fantasies, totally begging to be banished anywhere but with the other boys to Jupiter-- split-screen like the lacey type in a confessional vestibule, we wore our church robes like gowns, serving real altar boy precocious--coy, coquetting for the gods--and we cantored Gloria like it was Whitney, really feeling it, Britney--and my loneliness was killing me, but imagine: If only I had known your ass was across town, spread eagle on a folding chair like it was in love with you, like I was, too-- Picture this, we were both but fourteen, finally meeting, collapse split-screen, 2003, 2004--terrorist threat level orange, votes to drag out the war, watching results roll in on CNN, the living room packed with Kennedy Catholics, and our distrust was seeded, a boom harvest for cynics, and we were sneaking out to share clove cigarettes and band reccs, jumping into old sedans with the exact same abandon New York kids take to turnstiles because we still lived miles away & to get anywhere is to have to drive long enough to be very intentional about song choices, mix CDs, going fifteen over and I don’t think you’re ready for this we screamed to no one, but I mean, were they? The other boys in the high school black box improv class where you learned you love scripts, and we would devour strip mall sushi, talking dick like we were both Sex and the City--never as big as we were, the both of us, trying to be, practicing our eventual success, announcing the winner for Best Director--you had a whole speech prepared and it was the only thing about which we were dead serious: our future far-off contributions to the world of stage and screen and how to the interviewer from New York magazine we’d tell the story of our spit-screen becoming: we would make this all a series and the theme song would be us dancing to Crazy in Love, but a Bacharach version like it’s 1970, like it’s opening night of our new hit show at Sardi’s, but what we were really doing was pleading to our grown selves, please, we are begging you to come get us out of here and into these rooms, but oh please: If only we had known our asses would still be on the same split- screen, even now--and independence is not leaving, it’s right here, between you and me.

The Eagle Lay down your leather halters, I’m no longer running on anything but unbridled disco thirst, reflecting-- every part of me shimmering on the grimy floor like a mirrorball, pieces of sweat in my gaping jaw heavy, proud just for moving in a pack, hound drool swinging, hips unencumbered, undercover darkness-- and this isn’t about you, or for you, for once-- it’s about the only time we get to bend our knees low, supporting all of this, unhinged: we are young and sweet, and only wanting for this night to last forever. It demands mettle, a honey knack for stretching, necks craning at the piss trough, rough trade barters for a cheaper well, for getting what you want in a place like this is risky if you don’t know how to ask for it; we have matriculated in shadow pockets, sweat chests, held glances, the language of a freedom: deliberate touch, tornado proximity, being ready, always, to leave paradise running, if only to wake up yourself again in another strange bright room.

Above the Fruited Plain God shed his grace, so why can’t I? Mark my words, I’ll leave this country Better than I found it, I’ll leave roses On the steps of every police station Until they return our missed calls. Sometimes I get so sick of being fine And upstanding: I want wild life! The kind that gets certain protections. Here is the rare Great North American Grunt, rattling the grate, again. America, America, the beast has been Subdued, by brave young boys in riot gear, With roses in his teeth.

Dovesong Once, if we are meant to return to our childhood Homes, dogged caravan across the untouched country, Working backwards through salt flats and the Valley Of Fire, will we remember still how to embrace? Then, as if the season never moved from spring, Will the thunderstorm afternoons sound more Like the memory of clapping at 7:00PM, or youth Startled, and hiding dogs? We won’t have forgotten Soon enough how April took forever when We were too afraid to touch each other. Now all we do is move--everyone has gotten The itch to spread out, to take good care, and Forget it. This is what we only learned to do after so much remembering, how touching Felt to us like a distant dream. The young ones Who have only known spring will ask, innocently, What did you do when you couldn’t hold on To everyone you loved? And we will tell them We became ourselves strangers to the present, Dreaming instead of this day we’re now feeling.