Banks

Mile marker 27 says we’re on the way to heaven and i smile at the passenger seat. forty miles from chicago; there is snow on the windshield and you’re downtown dragging your feet. now i’m circling the block around union central station and there are bullets flying into the car. it’s the same as it’s always been. 200 miles from chicago: there is blood on the windshield and i’m reeling as you gather your things. i said i don’t know what to do anymore as if i knew what to do before. i can fuck up almost anything. i don’t think that i would exactly call it love, but it’s dripping down my consciousness as you’re slipping down my lungs. i want to build you a protest out of sticks and rocks i find in the backyard behind the house you grew up in. “in loving memory of all our nonconformity.” i want to sing you a signal that reaches only the ears of young disenfranchised straight white boys because that would feel normal and none of this does. save it for a rainy day and maybe then you’ll see. i am like the earth, old man, there’s no way around me. but even in my dreams i still don’t know the difference between what it is i want and what it is i need.. i wanna see you be brave. i wanna see you surviving. i wanna see both of us prospering and thriving separately. i want the catharsis of knowing something bad’s about to happen, but also knowing that i can’t do anything about it, because your new house just don’t shine quite like the one you grew up in used to. i wanna come and visit. i wanna see this through, but i never will because you’re just not what i need and i am just not what you want though you’re in everyone i meet and we’ll say fuck the banks but we’ll still use them every day. and when we fight amongst ourselves, the banks will say “okay, have you been spending all your capital on causes you deem just? you keep doing what you can and we’ll keep doing what we must.” so despite what you have learned and songs for which you’d take a bullet, you won’t find objective truth in a final rhyming couplet.