Leaving New York

6:05, Brooklyn Bridge:
Failed and tongue-tied
Body aching, hands shaking, bloody inside
I'm still alive
Sunrise like a pillar of fire
Still running like the static on a blank channel
Sunken to the bottom of the barrel of a gun
Braced against the railing looking straight into the sun
Like I was waiting for someone to burn a picture in my mind…
Like i could recite scripture off the lids of my eyes…
Fishing in the East River for a reason to die
Voices whispered in my mind, I believe they were mine
Another pilgrim come to find that the bridge is a lie, and
There’s nothing on the other side…

I was told to pick my battles. This isn’t my war
My fight is with myself. I’m leaving New York

Leaving my prayer rug in the apartment off Van Cortlandt
Caught in constant paranoia coughing someone’s jagged hallelujah
Buildings like a burning cross, withdrawal
The drive north, all five burroughs fall
Lizards listen through the walls, born into this funeral
News of war from city hall, subway station, FDR
Tanks and guards, riot squad, movement of the violent mob
I dissolve
Fall apart
Dusted in the dark, watching the war start…
They’re going to send us to the deserts of Mars
Where we’ll die or go crazy with our legs blown off
Don’t want to suffocate in space
While God and the State face off
Flags waving in the grey dawn
Better to break north

I was told to pick my battles. This isn’t my war
My fight is with myself. I’m leaving New York

I never found solid ground
But slept in a burning bed
There’s a couple landlords
With a bounty on my head
Never learned to bend my neck
Or to worship the dead
Metro card expired; hop a turnstile and then jet
Was I a coward to abandon
The broken down mechanics
That crowned Biggie Smalls as the King of Atlantis?
“Like trees to branches, cliffs to avalanches”
The sea in which she vanished…
Lost Kingdom of Jay-Z and Def Jam Cannibals
Beating a dead break on the decks of the Titanic
I am it but I can’t fit
So when the sky fell
I felt like one of the guilty
With the populace in lockstep
Ready to come and kill me
Did Providence demolish the buildings
That rust and rot beneath the Hudson?
All of it came to nothing
And the devil’s still running…
And the devil’s still running…
I was told to pick my battles. This isn’t my war
My fight is with myself. I’m leaving