The British Invasion: A Novel

CHAPTER ONE

The year is 1964. We are the middle of our first press conference.
I have only managed this band for so long, but already they have hit the top ten at least six times in a row, and I found myself amongst a growing void of what is to become a movement like none other- an invasion, to say the least.
They were selected upon birth by a supreme council who have, since the beginning of the history, made the decisions for those to be chosen in what the common belief summarizes as ‘destiny’. In truth, this is mere strategy all according to a carefully written master plan. One piece of a giant mosaic that absorbs all nourishing light and the predetermined properties of fate- an illusion we helped craft as well. What you have read about destiny will be re-evaluated upon reading this account. Understand while reading this that the concept of ‘Fate’ is just an operation conceived by those you should fear the most. Yes, I am referring to the Man. The institution. The system. Big Brother. We are also the hands that feed, the keepers of all knowledge collected and every piece of history whether crucial or information that may appear useless to those seduced, sedated, or just plain skeptical.
The Love Bugs, currently the up and coming rock and roll band of the youth, are a developing act (unbeknownst to both the public and the musicians themselves) as well as a crucial part of an elaborate mission to take over the minds and win the hearts of a very feeble generation we fear prone Soviet manipulation and rule. For her Majesty and even our allies globally, we have placed important subliminal morale into the crevices of their material. Already it has been an incredibly successful hit. They have even spread to the United States, where we sit today. I am awaiting the first reporter in a piss poor yet somehow miraculously fancy white room; the sheep skin thin chaps pulled it off. I’m shocked they aren’t taken by my fake as shit British accent, the most obvious red flag beyond the Mod attire.
I could give a fuck less if they call out my phony accent; I’m here for the boys. As an Agent posing as a Rock N Roll talent mogul I play the part damn well. How I wasn’t awaiting Death Row on San Quentin was now a worn shadow of another man’s past.

This was in the making years before I was graced to be spared and selected as an operative, years before I relocated to the UK as per agreement I would help assist Parliament following my proposed execution for the murder I still do not regret committing. I never thought I would enjoy popular music (growing up I was forbidden to listen to anything that wasn’t considered classical), but these boys have definitely got it. They get the act. They’re completely oblivious to the propaganda and I doubt they’d cared at all if they even knew as we throw hideous amounts cash their way and not to mention, endless cabbies of women. Two out of the four of them were virgins when the band formed just prior to me being sent in to “discover” them. Now, crowds of teenage girls (after under just a month’s worth of global airplay) gather to worship these gawky chaps and they can’t keep up with the swarms. The kids are alright.
Gene, Paul, Davy, and Mick- all native Liverpool boys who grew up in roughly the same area- had been selected, as mentioned above, upon birth as referred to by the British Government with equipped with a fake family and new social security number after the reservations had been made based on genetics. They were the purest the English came, blood tracing back to the Middle Ages. Gene was known to be the alleged reincarnation of King Arthur, and his dominant stage presence resonated in a charming way that made you forget about the kid being a complete asshole. He was a bastard and didn’t even know it, but he sure acted like it was his only talent- being a clever little prick.
Gene and Paul both wanted to name the band the Bastards. As an American I was all for it, but I knew EMI would throw a bitch fit over a fucking name so in the phony accent I declared “Get with the program! Look at the youth, the ass-kissing Beatles! Those hideous Stones! People love this! Call yourselves the Love Bugs, mate!”
They willingly and joyfully bought into this after a healthy serving of pills I’d slipped in their tea. All four boys received an equal cocktail portion of amphetamines and downers that weren’t even on the black market handed per a gift of the United States CIA.
During the time Parliament presented me the heavy loads of drugs meant to be supplied as mind control and stabilizers for the Love Bugs, I found myself insatiably tempted to run my fingers and nose through a holy amount of drugs. Drugs that hadn’t been on the market yet, magical pills that would turn an obese hag into a super model, all confidentially approved by the FDA and privately distributed overseas during Government-related functions which tend to result in orgies and shady deals that would even scare a rookie like me. I was a criminal, in my I was under a new name and title with a sudden authority only the most irresponsible and corrupt system would grant any power.

This is why I love the Queen. I wish not to get into the details of how I escaped death row and imprisonment, capital punishment and even my own country probably look at me in scorn and view me as a disgrace- a traitor. What I can officially confess to the reader is that sometimes the most dangerous people end up with the most control, for reasons so crucially unfair to all mankind it justifies all war and violence in every Nation. In short, the vicious killer I was happened to attract the attention of the MI5-who were seeking fresh and virtually faceless people to take on numerous dangerous missions.
I had no choice in my assignment to the British Invasion, a massive scheme Her Majesty’s Government was behind to bestow ancient beliefs and values carefully embedded in the subliminal messages marketed within the image and placed in the lyrics. I wasn’t crazy about the music from the start, Country and Blues was all that played on the radio and me really not being keen on the Classical nonsense my pretentious left winger parents brought me up on. Music wasn’t for me, but I had to act as the Manager and be the one who pulls the strings in the most professional manner possible. I also had to make it fun for the kids. I had to buy these boys everything from credit cards issues by the record label, the executives cared less about the music than the people trying to call it “classless devil music”. I didn’t give a shit or have the patience for the staggering interviewers, who surrounded the Bugs far worse than the teenage girls permitted backstage. I would just smoke and smoke with those doors shut and hear the obnoxious virgin squeals I tried to halt by slamming on the door.
“On stage in five minutes, HURRY IT UP LADS!”
I had the most passionate urge to call them little shits, call them cunts. I was told carefully not to act as a bully on a personal level but this I was willing to break having to put up with the shenanigans they were essentially being paid for. This interview, being taken so seriously as a cultural symbol, made me sick to my stomach. The papers felt so touched by the recent tear-jerking single “Don’t You Leave Me Lonely”, allegedly written by Gene and Paul. I’m not the nicest or gentlest person but I don’t even have half the heart to tell those boys every single word of those lyrics was a predetermined formula meant to brainwash the public with British Imperialism and remind the generation to not tamper with the spread of communism or the consequences will be dire. I had my appetite for drugs and alcohol, my supply a bit shorter than theirs, so I would occasionally crawl into their parties and snatch what I could for later. This was the least they could do for the man behind their image being a hit. Well, perhaps I should not fail to understand myself this is all the products of the purest bloodline there is-the English. The legacy the Love Bugs are destined to leave behind is an impressively laced trick. The songs are, for the time being, very simple. But the expansion and innovation placed in all the subliminal makings unknowingly drilled into them will allow their stages to transcend with new genres and stages until they are historical legends. Gene, Paul, Davy, and Mick are never to know their entire lives have been a lie.
The oldest man I have ever seen happens to be asking a very stupid question. Like most useless questions, it involves yet another journalist pointing out the countercultural significance of the song. How it’s a message for the youth, an anthem for the mistreated.
What bullshit it all is, knowing the true authors are erased numbers of a database meant to redistribute a vessel of mind control. The pink elephant is also that most of the ambition of the boys stem from an enormous hunger for fame and fortune. Paul particularly loved money. His background was indeed wealthy, his Irish immigrant father and mother had been faithful agents of Her Majesty, and domestic rebels like me only they sought to escape the blood curtain of the IRA. Like me they had also been sent to be killed before the glory and grace of the Queen stepped in to assign them new names and surrender their citizenship to the UK. As they had been notorious spies in their homeland they were warned not to sabotage or pull any tricks, they had been instructed to raise the purely conceived child with their own false accents and new names (though ironically keeping the Irish-like pronunciation to the surname) and with that raised “the cute one.”
Being the looks and possessing a buoyant talent, his assigned father was a skilled jazz musician who played every instrument from flute to banjo. The naturally talented tend to stay alive in the eyes of Her Majesty, of a greater worth than the average peasant or pawn.
After being spared I’d gone to learn all the secrets and staged events throughout history, not limited to other countries and even planets. The fact that I had been so naïve as a criminal, hustling and stealing for a savage life of nothing, became a shameful choice of life after upon being enlightened on the truth of existence. I was told the meaning of life, the origins of man, the equation of what is known to humans as ‘love’, the patterns within the architecture...even being the messages in the sky all people fail to notice or see.
It makes a man want to reverse time and fix the nature and all the mistakes of my past. However, I was not permitted for to a project or turf involving time travel.

Gene responds before Paul to the interviewer.
“Yes, this is our message to the people. The world. We aren’t trying to be the biggest band out there, we want to be ourselves.”
They were feeding the public well. I couldn’t trust Mick or constantly stoned Davy the awful burden of answering the questions. They were told by more sources outside of me to keep their mouths shut.
“Look pretty, stay British!” was my least favorite piece of advice the Record Companies would tell them. EMI needed to calm the fuck down. They weren’t even set for another week for the American tour dates, but they were already acting like the boys image had been mounted over Mount Rushmore. Though I was posing as the manager and there remained a subtle agreement between the MI5 and Record Label, we allowed them their own territory and power. We were only responsible for the underlying but indeed important nationalist propaganda of the material- all they did was book the studio and throw out loads of money. My cut of everything made does not match the calculated sum of each exact time those damn songs are played on the radio and I know because I did the fucking math. I had enough for a healthy sized flask that fit in my dry-cleaned Mod suit. The wearing shades inside trend was hard to adapt to, but the MI5 are only so forgiving each time an operative breaks character. I was also so high and drenched with sweat, not able to see a fucking thing.
The cameras are brighter than the cheesy smiles I can barely make out the chaps making through the Ray Bans.
“What’s next for the band, Gene?”
“Davy, do you have a girlfriend?”
Not only is the amount of bullshit and mutual ass kissing I’m witnessing nauseating, but a deep error of her Majesty and probably why I hated the United Kingdom as an American. I loved the benefits of this humorously pompous society, but there was a polluted sense of worthless present that seemed to have a very real odor. The smell of London was the stench of a failed yet corruptibly insecure Kingdom.
The CIA was very pleased and responsive to the instant press and exploitation of the Love Bugs, eagerly awaiting them overseas.
They already had passports made both approving them and additional back-ups of fake American names, birthdates, and social security numbers. How this all schemed like a natural discovery of stardom was an amazing spectacle to witness.
I’m puffing away on another Camel, grinning devilishly every moment the camera pans towards or away from me, shaking hands with the admiring crowds who I felt shadier than me. A pretty lady with a bow in her hair, almost cartoonish, is asking me to get the attention of the almost clueless tie of lads.
“Boys, answer the bird! She’s a nice lady and wants to ask you something!”
Very rarely do I shout demands at them during interviews, but I felt bad for her. She looked not even over eighteen, a notepad stapled to her chest covering her enormously budding breasts. Her hand raised so high there was a light pinch of sweat has found way despite the very cold room.
“Thank you, sir,” she tells me. “I have a question for Paul.”
The shrill feminine tone and quality of what I could not tell was the voice of an American woman. I had not heard one in so long:
the sound of a young, beautiful American woman. It was like watching the Wizard of Oz for the first with the same curious tone of Dorothy and watching in awe at her wander as a virgin through dark mazes. I felt that same fear for her well being if she was a fan of the group.
Paul’s shallow costume is no match for the potential she must have, but he smiles and winks as if a Prince collecting another wife.
“Do tell, Love! Is that an American accent I hear?” he quips.
“My name is Paige, and I’m a writer for a journal in America. I do a weekly column that runs in the Student Newspaper for the University of Florida. I’m just curious on how your music objectifies women-if it’s for the sake of fame or a genuine reflection of character?”
Paul’s starry eyes are flickering in bewilderment, I could tell the subliminal morale that dominated his formulated brilliant prototype mind, was in danger of malfunction. It would be like an engine going to shit if he had flashbacks pertaining to his real origin. He could have a seizure or far worse- begin to know the truth.
“Uhh...” he has an almost dwarf register to his voice, total confusion and embarrassment appears as his natural charm becomes an almost idiot wind completely new for him and the Press.
“Next Question,” I proclaim.
The smiles fade from the young girl, me, and the three other mates.
Paul’s face looks frozen in idiot grin. I remember the first headshot it seems he’s imitating. The Press is embarrassed too, yet even more interested.
Paul’s stunting is going to make us look fucking bad and I can already see Gene getting angry. We shouldn’t have programmed his story as such a “dipshit in the rough Teddy boy” (really bred to compete with the American 50s Rebels like Marlon Brando and Elvis), his anger and audacity is another problem I don’t want to deal with. His lyrics we programmed that he considers his words don’t mean shit to me.
You will find no poeticism that isn’t a pretentious gimmick in most popular music. 

I really do appreciate what the girl has to say, but in this setting and my position being on the line if Paul’s brainwashed mind goes haywire, all will end in blood. I grip Paul’s shoulder firmly, and then I quickly press my thumb against his back to channel silent frequencies of mind control for stabilization to refresh his near coming awareness. We are taught thoroughly that if a mind becomes aware, it will question. When a mind acts upon their question or dissatisfaction with any answer, the mind will become defiant. Defiance usually leads to clashes between the citizen and his authority- which we will not allow under any security agency.

“Well that’s just lovely, mate. We’re fucking idiots thanks to you. You can’t answer a question?” Gene tells Paul, once the interview is over. The Press had left us pleased with plenty input and classic filmed footage that may have been part of the simulated event the agency failed to inform me of happening. They’ll do shit like all the time and expect me not to bring it up to them, of course I will.

We are still huddled and smoking in the now empty room, the Media left more trash than they end up writing in the Conference room than the maintenance staff could handle, so they’d already left too. Now it was me and the next big four fiddling a heap of questions pertaining to the pay and the next gig.

“Listen mates, I don’t know if that was necessarily good or bad press we just underwent. As we know, the record has been a hit and the word is definitely out: people love the Love Bugs. You bastards are headed to the top but there’s a big problem we’ll face if you start going blank on important topics. Paul, speak for your damn self for once because the more you make it seem that way in public the more you’ll be responsible for holding yourself to it. Gene, don’t say smartass things to take the piss out of the American political institution. You always talk about how you love the Queen; it’s not that different in the States. No one gives a fuck about what you think concerning global issues; if you want to become Prime Minister or Ambassador of Shit-take it to fucking Parliament. Talk about the music. The tour dates, the upcoming scheduled television appearances. The messages, boys! Love One Another! Stay With Mind! All is Love! Don’t forget the slogan that’s been setting sail on this bit!”

The Love Bugs nod their heads, with some smears of ego and defeat thankfully overpowered by indifference that prevents them from fighting back. I hand them each their wads of cash and we make our way. Even the way they marched in slight angst and repressed fury was programmed in their teachings, and here I was laughing at it like a tyrant. They were told by both the Record Executives and the “management”-composed of separate posed operations-to save their money in addition to being required a monthly fee for our services.
Truthfully, this money was going to Parliament for the purchase of weapons and funding to further the investigation of those Russian bastards silently plotting world domination. No soil could be trusted
in the eyes of the MI5. To me, we are the superior agency; the true knights and noblemen of the kingdom. But I grow tired issuing my account as a lampoon to lobby her Majesty.
I had somewhere to be, and an informant appeared upon my return to the office dressed in street clothes but of an odd breed. He wore a rhinestone suit and cowboy hat; I had seen this agent before. Here was one of the most trusted and trained soldiers, a different case than mine. In his own guise as an up-and-coming rock and roll singer and guitar shredder, he had been scheduled for big things for the Unit. The CIA elected him to be the tough guy of Rock N Roll, a brute but bringer of peace for operations like Woodstock and Summer of Love.

Stephen Stills, from the United States, generous enough to bring a carton of Marlboros I had a bitch finding in England. His job hitchhiking to recruit scruffy folk singers across the West Coast paid off and offered him a free trip to England to distribute LSD and amphetamines for Dylan and the Band. I assumed he had some free time, and I knew he always had a blast in Liverpool.
“You can take a break from that French crap,” he placed the carton of cigs on the table and looked at me as if I was going to unknowingly continue in my forced false accent.

“You’re a life saver, patriot.” I sighed, the Western tone becoming more slurred and heartland. I opened the box and immediately fished out a cig (I refused to call them “fags” as the English did as I refused to acknowledge fags of any breed).
“I heard the latest single. The Love Bugs are due to take over the States. The Agency has been telling me everything. They’re gonna have a real impact on this upcoming movement called the hippies. We’ll be fucking rich in no time.”
I blew out my smoke, “No way will my broke ass be in the History books, though.”
“HA! Oh you’re a fucking riot. You’d be forever known for those murders if they didn’t already erase your identity and existence, Zodiac.”
That got me a little nervous.
“Don’t call me that,” I said. “Or I’ll have to kill you.”
He laughed again, I could make Stills laugh. I had missed him after meeting him in San Francisco when I had first sent letters to the Police as a Political Activist known as yes, the Zodiac. The problem was all the connected deaths after my initial killing were all framed by both the Mafia and CIA working undercover and crafting together the aesthetic I’d put into my work. Word overseas was that I was still at large, not even a known fear to the public. It’s 1964 and I had already been detained and sent to death unless I made a deal with her Majesty-much to the dismay of the United States who could have easily made me their own weapon.
“We really should kill you, but we like what you do.”
I remember sitting there, the shit inflating my jumpsuit pants, shocked and even infuriated with their praise.
“We’d like to make you an offer working for the Government.”
The awe continued, I was certain the Men in Black smelt my criminal stench as they went into detail on how my aesthetic and record held me of high importance to the English bloodline. They were conducting a project to stage numerous upcoming outlines for a generation that was, once again, not to be trusted. There was a disgusting amount of money suddenly in front of a dangerous man.
“You know I don’t regret killing that man, and I would have killed more on my own had you pieces of shit not framed me.”
“We are aware, Mr. Zodiac- but we think your evil mind is just what our allies in the MI5 need.”
“Will this job allow me to kill?”
The two agents grinned and faced each other in unison, laughing much like me and Stills were just now.
“Oh, Mr. Zodiac, the United States Government is going to miss you!”
“Trust us, what you’ll be doing does much more than murder ever could. We’re talking about real power. The thrill and chance to possess the third eye and mind of all suburban America and Great Britain. Not mention good pay and endless pussy.”
I snapped out of my flashback and gave a long glare at Stills.
“You know that really brought me back to the old days. I can’t believe it’s been almost ten years since I was erased from the country.”
I could tell he was stoned, but he seemed worried about me.
“Well, do you miss it?”
“Miss what?”
“America?”
“Probably not,” I said.
He sat up and in his stoner yet extremely professional posture, he was to be off. “I’ll be meeting Neil Young in Newcastle soon. We’re gonna score some dope from Eric Bourdon, you wanna come along?”
“I can’t.”
“Why’s that?”
“I hate that kid’s fucking voice.”
I really knew how to make Stills laugh.
He went on his way and I sat in the office, now dark and lonely. I now, at least, had enough cigarettes to last me the week. How my past had yet to haunt me gave me a sort of chill.

I am having nightmares. The glamorous life of not only an Agent but a Rock N Roll band manager, distraught and sweating in fear for the dreams they have been giving me. I realize in the heat of my nightmare that I receiving updates on my assignment, this is a method they modeled after the Russian Sleep Experiment.
In this dream I am in a Victorian corridor, lost. The Love Bugs are in another room, I imagine being knighted. I am wearing my priceless (soon to be iconic) shades. There are men in black appearing and disappearing before me, I expect this regulation is not going too well on their end. I hear one them whisper, “We may have to keep an eye on this one,”-they could be talking about the band or me.
I have no motor skills in this dream. In fact, they’ve just turned me into a slug. The sunglasses are still resting on my head but I am at a loss for motion. There are lizard people, dressed in ruffled medieval attire reminiscent of the early days of the Kingdom. The Love Bugs are now visible, and I see them walking behind the Queen, the most hideously crafted lizard of all. I do not know if this is a reference to the original race or simply the Agency pulling another fast one. The operation develops further every year, a unique way of tracking any potential threats to the government and influence the morale of each movement.

 Their sense of humor exclusively relies on the fear and humiliation they evoke, even the reputation adorned by conspiracy theorists (like my friend Hunter in the States) on their reputation and means of control. I am transformed back into my equally disgusting (the personal jab they’re giving me to me) human form, and quickly handed a blank white card.
“Your assignment, Agent Z.”
“You don’t have to talk like that.”
“Have you heard from Greer? Groden?”
“They’re too busy following that goddamn contract for me to take seriously.”
“There are several.”
“There is only one we care about, the constitution. The one we wrote. Who gives a shit if they want to create fake laws to get richer, everyone’s got to make a living. Let them be dumb, it’s easier having a Queen. The old bitch Bathory lives forever.”
“You’re talking a bit too much in your land.”
“I don’t follow all the spooky shit, mate. The occult is not my specialty.”
He was off shortly after that, sometimes I can’t stand the likes of his kind or even him.  

Her Masterpiece

I knew I was a failed painter

First upon taking LSD

As I noticed she was better than I

No matter how wretched in her craft

I remember seeing the fury

Portraits of blood toned eyes traced in black, glaring

The canvas mocking me while oozing bright matter

From the visceral bonds of her bitter hand

Here I behold what was once hidden

And though a natural painter,

She painted for no one

Her later work uninspired, undaunted

Then silver fractals lined the ceiling

The arms of faceless shadows reaching towards me

Marking their invisible territories

On the unsigned canvas, now fading 

I saw the errors of her details

In bleak maroon backgrounds

Overlapping outlines of poor dimensions

Best worthy to collect dust in galleries so worthless

Hail this vacant home of memorabilia

Though I still collected her art, building shrines

Art made in aimless pursuit

Only to gather warmth when the drug money was gone

She was a star lit prodigy

Once an object of desire

But as she grew weary, she would stay hungry

With no taste left in her gift to share

And so the art became a scam

A petty way to collect drug cash

Sucking dealers for oxycontin

Cocks stroked before brushes by my lover

I adored the Artist

The Artist who lived with me for free

All I asked was she paint

So she sketched me a pair of wolves

When she left me, for my dealer

The wolves were all I had left

And as I peaked, I could at last see

How those wolves were drawn in solace, to rid me

This was when I found a relic she’d made

A torn portrait of me

(Portraits were her specialty)

Forlorn in a mixed media of mania

Perhaps I was her masterpiece

I knew she had given up

Before throwing all but art away

Like one of her subjects

I saw she had burned the edges of the page

Leaving me to complete

Looking almost erased,

I knew I was the failed artist

As I outline the final layers

Here I stay a work in progress

Still to this day,

I let no woman paint me.  

IN BAD TASTE -Chapter 1

How can I take myself this seriously?
What kind of person, of poor taste, deems himself worthy to teach a craft rooted in pure illusion?
What kind of fat bastard tells his children not to take from his supply while he limits theirs?
Who begins a story with bland and sardonic rhetorical questions?
The same who doesn't bother correcting his mistakes after you've drank his blood and fucked his girlfriend. The same who has chosen the foolish, outdated catalogs of dead art and folklore-
with ambitions to become a writer who’s understood his unbearable world.
No one of rational thought or intention would ever consider becoming a writer,
no sane person.
A sane person is someone who realizes to be a dog would serve more purpose than a writer ever could. A dog will instigate and mimic their own kind yet forever obliged to protect his master. His superior. His executor.
Though never in real danger between man and small beast, the dog is warranted shelter and love until the hands of God or his master rule otherwise.
Regardless, the dog will still crave his own shit and be ostracized for it.
If only writers had such value.
Though I am writing this, I'd like to say I'm merely a singer of sorts. The more I read my writing, the less faith I have in my success. My dreams are also the pipe dreams shunned by the men and women of the status quo who trust and report to the hands of the wealthy, their only defiance is to simply bitch about what they'll never see change. As foolish as I am for living my outrageous pursuits, I can honestly say I've never felt bothered after already embracing the understanding of the same mundane realities.
This is still not a recommended profession of choice, but the most enriching decision one could ever make-to sing. Even as glorious as writing may seem, nothing heals like the power of song. An even greater feeling than simply just writing is to sing the words you've written, even if never read at least they can be heard by the ears of the creator. If my goals were set purely to writing and not music I'd so far be in the league of pathetic attempts at prose; which is perhaps a fair statement on this overall-yet another story of a vagabond lost even with intentions. How unheard of. 
I have been unshaven and disheveled for the majority of this unholy year. I began writing these pages some months in the making while sleeping on a mattress of the few clothes I'd kept with me travelling. After some time being a stranger to everyone, you begin to adore a false sense of pride in restricting yourself to the hospitality of acquaintances and kindness of strangers. It ends up being the only charm left in the odds of an unmerciful world. The chaotic void between dawn and afternoon when you wake up to an empty town square feeling like the last man on earth-the one with too many options and yet nowhere to go. A city to yourself. I wouldn't understand that strange feeling until the final days of my travels. Unlike the transcendentalists or romantics before me, there was little appreciation for the world around me during my journey. In many ways, it wasn't a journey at all.

The philistines and suburbanites had raised a generation where the only kids trusted felt the need to study psychology. In an age where most abused prescription medication, the only respected and invested youth chose medical school. Or the military. The most hope our world had was that it's own damaged breed could fix each other. They were the most fucked up. I hated my generation. I hated the popular antics of conformity. I hated my town.
So I ran away.
I was left to forever be remembered as a delusional shadow of a pseudo-intellectual poet in my retirement community hometown, one so ungrateful and arrogant to the point he couldn't even settle for the glamorous life of a substitute teacher with a Degree in Communications.
"He left to go become a musician."
"Your son?"
"Yes, the one who was in the mental hospital."
"Do you think he's going to make it?"
"No."
"Is he any good?"
"Not really."
"Which one was he again?"
If the popular opinion of my close and extended family dictated my decisions in life, I would have gladly remained a cocaine addicted telemarketer in South Florida. Making money. Being a team player. Working your way to the top.
I could masturbate in the bathrooms after speaking to beautiful and unusually cold women whose profession it was to manipulate the will of local business owners nationwide, here and there inviting them to see me open for my friend's band at the Tiki Bar where they'd just sleep with my friends while I'd spend the night chain smoking outside before being left to amuse the attention of strung out homeless new fans. These dedicated men and women claimed to love my music and voice to the point they felt I should pay them in return for their praise. The girls would be gone. Most nights I'd purposely forget my wallet just to remind myself I would most likely never be paid for this- even if I'd remember to bring it. Some people have the misconception that playing guitar gets you laid. Maybe if you're doing something that's worked in the past, playing covers songs from a world so dead yet alive on replay for the Jukebox Memorial Service, or if you’re just traditionally good looking.
No matter who I invited to see me play, no one would ever come to just see me. The results of those who did pay attention didn't greet with give much acclaim.
"HEY! Was that you playing that show alone at Harry's?"
"No."
"OK good, because I was gonna say it was really bad. Not many people showed up but they all left when that guy who looked like you went on."
Oh, take such pity on the Promising Palm Beach Lounge Singer. For the most part, I knew I wasn't great. I was driven and intense, but natural talent and knowledge of the guitar was at times obviously lacking. So, like every sad sack, I stuck to the Blues and sang songs about places I'd never seen. However, being a lover of experimentation and the avant garde, my music was becoming more to my abstract preference. This was probably why I didn't fit in the almost-virtually-nothing music scene of my hometown. How I hated Florida.
Now the somewhat deemed "promising" singer did leave his hometown at last, with little money and only an old guitar not even worth stealing. I was sad to leave my family, who had stuck with me despite my troubled history of being sent to rehabs, halfway houses, and mental institutions-but I was well over eighteen and after being in and out of the house it was time to leave. I left for the bus station early in the morning and didn't even say goodbye to my sister. There was such an urgency, being so discomforted in a mundane suburban environment that it almost numbed me of decency. I was in the heat of drug addiction, particularly cocaine. My last weekend in Florida was spent on an acid trip in the slum town of Lake Worth. Coming across the acid was a classic after school special: sitting on a bench stoned when a stranger selling tabs approaches you with a five-dollar-hit deal. I was already searching for my second gram of cocaine, LSD seemed like a great solution for the existential crisis at large. It ended up being a strange night spent basically alone, sleeping under a bridge and only wanting more bumps of cocaine to stop the world from melting and spinning.
This was where I had the revelation to free myself from the palm trees and ignorant corruptions of what I had become: a loser. As I stared into the abyss of night between by concrete walls I began to fear this resort would slowly become my ongoing endeavors. I'd seen the face of God himself before on acid but this time reality was scaring me more than anything hallucinatory could have been perceived. There wasn't a single person to even witness me at my lowest, which may have been a blessing. Still, a friend or warm body through that night while shaken by the drugs and desire would have made some difference.
The memory of that final weekend, all I'd felt and seen, followed me as I departed the city of West Palm Beach.
The moment the Greyhound passed the scorching border of my home state, I recall feeling an invisible weight being released from my shoulders. Sweating and eager, I was happy to be ditching the tar colored sandy beaches for the dead plains of rural (and at that time, freezing) Pennsylvania, where the only folks kind enough to help the poor are the Amish hidden in the God fearing outskirts-too wary to even speak the fools running in an out of superstores with cases of cheap beer.
I still wasn't gonna miss Florida.
"I hope I never see the Ocean again."

I had been talking to a former band mate Virgil, who had problems of his own, and he'd offered with open arms to collaborate and pursue the Rock 'N Roll dream. I knew him from a previous group we'd been in, which was formed when I was seventeen and fresh out of high school. The band we had been in was a losing shot, an annoying and desperately catchy pop group called the Gentlemen (which was ironic because the three of us were all complete assholes). The group did not last long, and Virgil endured financial troubles until finally moving to Pennsylvania while I suffered a nervous breakdown that landed me several weeks in the mental institution.
Now he'd convinced me it'd be more direct and strictly professional. Writing songs every day, recording on a regular basis, and playing the ramshackle Northeast until we'd make it to the Holy City of Nashville, Tennessee-an odd selection for "Rock N Roll" but a recently reformed destination for all forms of music. Perhaps even us.
He had gotten into the spell of combining Country music and Blues like the music before us. Rock 'N Roll was dead and we were in denial despite the petty dreams of stardom that was to fuel a sound even I wasn't sure of. This attempt at making a band (consisting of two people this time rather than three) would be an entirely different process. I was both confused and fascinated with the idea of moving to Nashville. Even though country music had become far worse than the pop majority of today, I was certain there were as many artists frustrated with the inflation as we were. I was thinking far into the future ahead, as usual, already planning my success and how to establish myself in the music industry. Most importantly, I was dead set on resurrecting the dead art of raw sound.
There were multiple basic creative differences between me and Virgil. He didn't like anything that wasn't catchy, he didn't like Bob Dylan, and seemed to hate anything that wasn't musically up to his standards.
I didn't worry much about this as I'd already worked with people of different taste and never played music with anyone who had matching aesthetics; you probably wouldn't ever want that to make anything original anyway.
I didn't tell him when he picked me up from Philadelphia that I had barely any money, I'd promised to pay two weeks rent in advance to Virgil's roommate-then we'd be off to Nashville. 
"Yeah, I'm just waiting on the money from my last paycheck to come in. It's going to be wired to me," I'd said.
The drive from the city was into the depths of the countryside to a town smaller than any place I'd been before-Kutztown. We pulled into town at nightfall and suddenly I'd felt like I had been transported seventy years back in time. The oldest and dirtiest buildings I had ever seen (and I'd lived in the ghetto) that appeared untouched by man for centuries. The town was the smallest place I'd ever seen: literally only one strip of land that one could walk through in entirety in the span of forty five minutes (I would come to know this having to walk it for various drug-buying errands in the following weeks). When we first drove through there was not a single person on the streets and the only lights on of the buildings were those of the dive bars located sporadically across the strip.
This was to be a temporary home. For some reason the most beautiful thing about being away from home was how thick the snow was on the endless plains surrounding the area. It had been years since I'd seen snow. Working in the cold weather would be a perfect excuse to force the creative process.
The home Virgil stayed in was a pretty, old-tyme styled three story home that resembled the residences of cannibal bible thumpers. When we stepped inside we instantly rushed to the basement, decorated in classic filthy punk fashion of vintage equipment including a 1980s 16-track recording board. At last I was able to create sounds on something that would secure fidelity and not have to rely on various computers that made my early work sound so shitty in quality you couldn't even make out the lyrics. We had a quick jam session that was untamed and raw, I jumped and howled into the old microphone and almost shattered a light bulb with my huge skull. Our drive, no matter how little faith you had in us, was undeniable. After the jam we decided to celebrate by getting drunk at the home of Virgil's girlfriend. To avoid bothering his roommate and rent keeper, we'd crash there for the night.
"What's it like here?" I asked Virgil.
"It sucks, dude. Not much to do around here. Lots of Amish people."
"We actually see them?"
"Yeah, they ride by on these horse-driven buggies all the time. They don't talk to anyone in town. They think we're evil."
"Maybe we are."
The most vibrant and civilized area, outside of the townie rule, was the University. Virgil would tell me about the school over the phone, how it was "loaded with babes."
Babes from everywhere in the country despite how strangely located Kutztown University was. I assumed he'd gotten himself a fair amount of trouble, already being a student but dropping out years ago, with the female majority. 
"It looks like nothing changes here," I said.
"You're right."
We spent the first night catching up, reminiscing stories of the previous band and getting drunk off Yuengling (the beloved native brew of the Pennsylvania Sticks. Virgil introduced me to his girlfriend, who was not pleasant to look at. The house she lived in looked haunted, located only a mile away from an eerie cemetery and probably shared the inhabitants of dead souls like the rest of the town.
In the past Virgil had proven himself to care little about a woman's personality and, as a self-proclaimed "sex addict", would indulge in hookers and women much older than him who were just as desperate for sex. Some guys seem to have it all. Though she was nice it was obvious she had been previously lonely and was completely into the brute, even upon first encounter it was evident that she had a sex problem equivalent to my bandmate. After Virgil and I sang corny Beatles covers on his rusty guitar, she requested he fuck her and thus I was left to explore the confines of the haunted house. It was old and empty, discarded furniture and cigarette butts resting next to landfill sized piles of clothes. I was drunk. Feeling sick and weak of tolerance, I headed to the toilet to puke. This was the first time in months the drinks had made me puke. Perhaps the journey made me sick to my stomach as anxiety riddled the day-long bus ride over. I hadn't eaten much and I knew I'd get used to that.
As I threw up an acid caked mess of vomit, I thought of Nashville. I'd just arrived in a completely new town, but the destination was Tennessee. For years I'd listened to the old songs that praised the country as a promised land and Mecca-soon would come the time to be a part of such a history. For now I was puking in a pube-rimmed toilet, careful not to worsen the condition of the already dirty bathroom, a kaleidoscope of snot crusted tissues and old tampons. Understanding the validity of this bathroom only caused me to puke further. This was how someone just under a year of being legally allowed to drink acts. This was the premature "rock-star" life. The only difference between me and my idols is that someone knew their name. I crawled out of the bathroom like a solider who'd his legs and that was when I first heard the squeaking bed from the room accompanied by the sounds of violent fucking.
I slept on the floor. I still don’t understand why the first episode of my journey concluded with the feeling of my dreams dying. Of all the awful music I was to encounter and even worse-play-I find myself understanding the importance of being young and no one knowing your name. 

For James Franco.

There you are again,
with your bad boy charm
suavely dressed in your angel eyes and demon smile
prancing the red carpet as if you truly are who you believe 
while I roam the streets
hating all mankind like you once did
what is there to rebel to now?
you won.
you’ve done it all.
you’ve shown the prince bastard you’re the only giant
spitting on his grave like your ancestors who rigged his brakes

If only I had your power
to convince the world I’m an original
with a humble motif to bring in the women
and a healthy balance of
shitty films and overrated, short-lived shows
plenty of cameos and appearances
the REAL poet plays a
to show there’s something for the kids in everyone

No longer is it the days of rockabilly and lucky strike,
make way for dub step and Marlboro Light’s.

Most of all,

you have proven the poet in squalor you can steal a man’s dreams be the image he always desired
play his idols on the silver screen,
seduce the approval of your scholars
seduce NYU
seduce Anne Hathaway
even wear designer clothes with ripped jeans

Hail the one armed king
with the newly forced facial hair and Gucci fragrance
as he awaits his next nomination
until he takes the throne and shows us what
Faulkner’s vision was supposed to be
Dear God.

My Black Hand Massacre (The Festival of Gnomes)

 Cole of the Massacre rises from stage left, with spit hanging from his possibly cocaine numbed mouth. Like a breeding mantis he sucks the dribble from the hanging corner back into the cradle of his mouth, lubricating his voice with the cold saliva before wailing into the next number. Though he appears distant and inebriated-concerning perhaps even the most drugged of downers scurrying the mob of screaming fans-this “spit trick” is a regular antic of the band and his voice is stronger than ever. I’d never heard a voice like Cole’s-a screeching, enigmatic growl of sandpaper soul that shocks the classically trained with unexpected range. The venue is quite small and incredibly dark with the surreal placement of audience and artists almost arms reach away. I light another cigarette and nearly burn the underage girl dancing next to me while sardonically thinking stadium entertainers wish they could be as intimate and communal as the nomadic vanguards filling the Punk Rock Club. 

“Do you have another one?”
“HEH?”
She repeats herself, I hear the youth in her voice. How the fuck did she manage to get in here?
I don’t need to answer, so I hand her my last red. I wasn’t attached to this particular pack as I had snatched it moments earlier from the dance floor with finish-last luck. I turn my head up, and notice Cole bleeding. He has cut himself now with the sharp end of his b string, spilling blood from his thumb as he imitates a slide-guitar like motion. Using his voice as an instrument to close the continually distorting song, I watch the mighty King Cole strum faster and faster with the drummer and bassist following behind-the speakers blaring louder than sirens of war. Now I see fans gathering to join the Black Hand Massacre on stage, the blood of a punk rock star now drying on his squire. I see the expressions of the bouncers standing way too close to the band growing less patient. The rest of the band seems to notice as well. Cole takes his now blood drenched thumb and attempts to place it in the mouth of the scarier-looking bouncer. The new makeshift backing band roars in awe as Cole falls and is beaten by the bouncers, who are built and dressed like aged wrestlers out of the Regan era. Most of the great new music is unappreciated by the guards, and their company is all but a security device catering to pussies of the lowest order. How a club with such taste could only assemble dopes for protection is a classic outcome. Bewildered by the cries of the moshing public, he gasps for air in the mire of blood from his own instrument.  His hands are trembling, saliva lactating from his dry mouth, and the bold echoes from his colleagues beg him to cease the thunder of his guitar feedback and in place bless the public with the vibrate sounds of the pedal board. I watch him from a growing distance, walking further away from the chaos, envying his ability to whore the masses. Even in envy of the youth violence I prematurely feel too old for.
This was the life I was still destined to live, as a folk hero of self-destruction at odds with the status quo. As if I have known his band in previous lives I dare wouldn’t share openly to protect the false sense of pride left in the naysay Generation. In this strange, post-apocalyptic future following the death of rock and roll, music has evolved into a crazed cesspool of indie confusion. None have made a better mark or impression, to me at least, than the Black Hand Massacre. Cole is the martyr of punk rage and an ambassador of psychotic genius void of any faux pas, like a Herzog leading man. In the crowd I see his body being passed like communion bread amongst the hungry fans. Men and women grab at his loins and smear the blood from his now severely wounded thumb, screaming obscenities at the bouncers. I see his blood drenched body hit the wave of zombies in their Deerhunter shirts and purposely mismatching colors, as no mercy is shown the barbaric swarm engage in a rock and roll suicide. Even the term “indie rock” is a bastard child of what we consider original, or God forbid even ironic- Richard Hell and Patti Smith make love in their decaying memorial while Darby Crash is crucified by Neo Nazi Punks.
While the guards run authority on the menace, the frustrated true colors of the bassist, Mr. Hollywood, begin to shine as he is to sing the next song. He is a true talent himself, an ambitious co-founder of such a radical project, he shows no empathy for his ragged guitarist Cole, who is now taken as a burnt offering for the swarm. Still I must commend him for letting the show go on in the midst of an apparent professional crisis. Mr. Hollywood has gained some weight since the early days of the Massacre (perhaps from his recent absence of hard drugs), his voice now strangled in an asthma ridden, almost cowardice croon singing a dope tuned hymn where he asks if there's a God in Heaven.
"I got the Virgin Mary laying naked on my bed,
Sweet Lord Jesus living in my head."
He wears glasses wide as his face at this point, once thin except for an awkwardly protruding, small paunch- possibly used as percussion instrument for early recordings in broke times. I know the history of this band very well. Mr. Hollywood now puts his bass down, at the insistence of the concerned lead guitarist, he attempts to lend a hand for his withered guitarist. A woman with high breasts, glasses matching Hollywood, rubs her shoulders next to me as the dope kicks in. She is in all black as I am, and struggling to fight the noise from the speakers placed next to our heads, I tell her the tale of my arrival.
It has been a glorious night, I got into the festival after hitchhiking across the country from Memphis on the hunt for Jesus Christ and cocaine.
The festival, upon my arrival, was like Thompson venturing with the San Francisco angels. It was  a wasteland of scruffy brutes and noblemen to drug-induced desecration ruining the woods of mother nature with used needles, empty bags, and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon. Like a city boy gone Bonnaroo, I demeaned their company for the presence of their young female companions.
"Oh hey man, can I hit that?"
I'd brought my own supplies and as always catered to the whim of those looking for cheap thrills, never disclosing how spiked my stash truly was. A young fan, whose brother was the same man I'd betrayed by channeling his woman into adultery, couldn't handle the high and ended up slashing his wrists in front of his posse.  They'd found me in bed with his brother's woman, and like Cole I was beaten during the opening of Edward Sharpe. A frontman of zen like Sharpe should have noticed the bewildering reality of his pathetic followers, the taste of dreads in my mouth seasoned in my blood ending in a fractured nose. I don’t think the musicians would have approved of this. This new era made me think of my old life with Trisha, who had broken my heart like no old soul could have broken, my Bonnie laid with my own neighbor, which led to my cross country exploration to find myself or in other words just get the hell out.
So here I was, watching the Black Hand Massacre, the brainchild of my God founder Anton NuKumeyer. The founder and frontman, he stood with his nestled stringy hair in the dead center, stoic and almost stone compared to the wild activity of the rest of the band. He must have taken the roughest blow from their rock and roll past.
Here they were, with feedback and bliss, playing the incredible Anthems of Glory before an audience saturated only in what they’d previously heard in records. This was their first appearance at the festival. A moment like this meant more than life with any companion.
 I had traveled so far just to find the women in my fantasies, to defy my broken past that still lingered even with the self-medicating aid. While I explain this to the mistress of the show, all she wonders is what this had to do with the festival and the band. She strokes my scars and our bodies interlock with interest yet little passion.
Sadly, the great Cole is taken hospitalized while I make my move on the black clad princess, almost feeling the pulse of her vulva as the band plays Miss June '75. 
"She makes me live...she makes me liveeee...
My God, I'm gonna live forever
We'll be like two bloody stars up in Heaven..."
I mutter Hollywood's sweet words into her ears, and goddamn I finally feel alive again. Aside from the affair that gave these scars, this was the first encounter of what would be many in my travels, in the vein of Hemingway and Byron I was a Casanova of criminals. I couldn't mention any of my dirty work but I spoke with my black hands to show her the danger of my perversions. 
At excellent timing, Anemone plays with the sexual vocals of a faceless angel (the lighting covers her for some reason), and I harmonize with Anton as she mouths the words. I shut her with tongue and feel like the very men I despise, but this was simply heroin speaking and this was the time. I can even taste her drugs. The needle was something I'd feared in my youth and had no time for, after the dysfunctional nature of me playing a worried Clyde for my lover, but now nothing seemed to matter but living each day expecting it to be the last. No longer was a fear of death relevant but a desire for it, spiting the worry signs from all the concerned squares from back home. I never knew the woman's name, and she is one of the first I can call woman and not girl, being only twenty years old I could felt something of a the sea change come over me.
I am the Gonzo of my generation.
The Miller of America. The Cohen of New Kings.
The sitar is now brought out and we decide we must make love in midst of this madness, which wasn't my suggestion, but the idea was rooted by crowds around us. My humility called me to button my shirt up and yet I let down the bandanna sporting nasty liquors as I was stained with the aroma of Coors. 
How a woman could be so drawn to such a mess even bothers me.
Now the music becomes just as disturbing as her prowess, kissing me below the waist before the blackout occurs.
I awake, in handcuffs, sitting in the same cell as my idol. I am dreaming?
No, Anton NuKemeyer. In the flesh, and somehow he was in trouble like I was. I am speechless, knowing his appearance from every era-I wonder how he ended up in here with me. I wonder if he was treated the way I was by the police, another memory I can’t recall. He looks in better shape than I do, his scars healing from the guards. The shattered mirror of the jail cell shows me that I have been beaten by the same guards that led him to this demise. Only difference was he was getting out of this early, I was to stay in holding. My hands are cold and lazy, my sunglasses were shattered in my pocket and the music plays no longer. I wish I had the confidence to tell him how big of a fan I was, but he seemed just as dissociated with life and the moment as I.
"I'm a huge f..."
He passes out, cold and in a pool of what I fail to tell is either my blood or his. I'm not sure if my idol has been killed in the midst of this, yet emotion and reaction seem delayed. I blame the drugs. And this was when I realized the true nature of music festivals, mere retreats from the aimless lives of those with good taste. 
Bonnaroo was not the land of free love it once was, now it was a dumpster and safe haven for the under-aged and depraved. Aside from the only two acts I had ventured out for, the festival was now a product I'd despised. Shards of glass were piled at the corner of the cell, and the only music heard was the static from the Police walkie-talkies. Saving me as always, I can hear Anton quietly singing. My idol is now coughing up the lyrics of a classic I couldn't even remember, something from Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Or the soundtrack for Easy Rider. The greatest isolated vocal take ever heard.
The police arrive now, in uniforms that look shoplifted, and explain to me and my idol we are to confined for another 48 hours. They are rent-a-cops I’m almost certain but they manage to inflict fear like the duty requires. 
They told me the girl I'd encountered was sixteen years of age and charges were in the process. Anton was free to go but I could face years in the pen. Unfortunately he was passed out, and when asked my name I said I was his brother; that I had no recollection of the night before. With this they were hesitant to let me go, so paid a fine that consisted of the money I had left in my pocket. The money that would have gotten me home, but of course there was no home anymore.

Upon my release, the sunshine covering over the ruins of trash and soiled youth left behind, I was walking towards the campgrounds on an endless road. A van is close in distance, and I call for them. Whoever they are. Three men, quite hairy yet no older than me, peer out smoke-pouring windows.
“Hey man, you need a ride?”
“Yes, do you have drugs?”
“We just may. Hop in.”
I found myself hitching a ride with a small clan of the very people I'd come to the festival to avoid. But as they offered me a smoke, a brew, and playing the best of Black Hand in the pot-smoked van- I feel a new chapter being written. I had joined a bandwagon of drifters following incredible new bands I'd yet to encounter. And though no wives for the taking were present, none of this seemed to matter. Perhaps I’d find less trouble wherever we were to go.
Only with music can we be instantly and enigmatically healed, the stigmata of my wounds became no more once I heard Anton imitating the British yet again, mesmerized by his performance last night that was now like a religious experience, and All Around Us blares until it fades with the final crash of a makeshift tambourine.

"Just like you,
Everyone is so happy here
Here it comes, Here it comes..."

Beautiful lyrics heard just the night before, in person, if only I could relive that show once more. I rejoice the echoing repetition of the very familiar chorus and let myself float. As the flashbacks of LSD grace me by the presence of such a sound, I know there is no end to the journey I was to embark upon. I was young Anton. I was my own idol. In the horizon I could have sworn the face of God had shown itself-in that moment where the worry dies and the drugs take over-so perhaps it was a mere side effect of the trip. Only in the moments of musical trance or psychedelic tension will I contemplate the volatile realities of an afterlife.

I wish to mention my encounter with Anton to my new friends, but perhaps that was our sacred intervention not meant to be shared to all. Even with the wounds of yesterday’s brutalities I have trouble believing if any of it, even the show itself, had happened at all. Knowing they were there and my meeting was very real (at least to me), I’m brought back to Earth and away from a diluted self-made Heaven. We exit the campgrounds without remorse, and now the stereo sounds busted.

Whether there is an afterlife at all, I thank my Gods of musical expertise for usually answering for me. 
Even at the worst fidelity. 

The Sun is Racist

Moses warned me
Touch not, and the sea will rise
trust the sun and swallow your pride
He mentioned nothing of sickness,
or poverty,
or pollution,
or suffering,
or the true nature of man
who hates the sun for his cancer

When I was a child I welcomed his arrival
but now old, I wait for it to set
Neither sites proving to me the existence of God
I've been blinded by the rays
Seeking the Eye hidden in the center
"The Eye of God" they say
But, like all Bigots,
The Sun refuses to show his true color
So he blinds me in spite

Now I curse his arrival
Sleeping in the day until the ecstasy of night
when the moon soothes my wounded soul
A selfish bastard, I am
Knowing somewhere beyond the horizon
A cold young girl prays for light
as her praying fingers freeze black
and her world ascends into darkness
while blessed by the bastard sun

A worthless circle of flame,
giving me only drought and distraught
Thinking of Moses,
who thanked the Lord for it's warmth
and of the tribes who worship it

Though I am no religious man,
each night I pray for that frozen child
So the sun will lift my own suffering
and depart my coast
to greet her in the morning of the Sabbath

Gray Suits

It's only half past noon
Sunday morning
I am drunk, yet again
waiting for the morning paper
the neighbors stare my oafish grin
noticing my intoxicated glory
laughing in their gray suits
off their day jobs, to pursue bigger and better things
I shake my head in disgust
For they're no different than me
To have such riches
is to first give up all hope
knowing that you will wake up each morning
to an angry wife and ugly children
hideous like the man you've become
demanding food and rent
leaving you empty and restless
but this is the fate of man
Gray Suits and fancy cars
deprived of joy,
withdrawn from morals,
even too tired for sex

And then you will die
your money given to the people you despise the most
to be wasted on all unnecessary virtues
wasted like every last dollar spent
Hell couldn't be much worse than this
So here I still wait by the porch
Burnt out and hungry
Going home to a worthless woman
and her ugly children
who once brought such joy
but now only shame
To the man in the gray suit