Joseph Lease, from "Free Again"

When I can't sleep I am full of red buds and torn curtains and shiny cars parked in a lot. My lower-middle-class manners tear through my upper-middle-class manners: I stared at braided colors in water while my peers figured out the art of the deal. I was (I wanted to be) a Miwestern boy with a disco in my eyes—Chicago Jew, greengold suburb Jew, son of a Coney Island Jew. When I drank I got punched up by luminous waves of anger. I thought I had to chhoose between winning in New York and being a good person. I'm not a good person: a good person doesn't talk about himself—or so good people tell me. What is our country. Did it start as blank, as blank blank, as blank blank blank. I would love to fly to Vegas for the Punk Festival—we aren't the first culture to "monetize relationships"—force steel splintering, force breathing, moisture in the air: the city dissolves, one long story of corruption: USA means the outer miracle kills the inner miracle: history has to live with what was here: no images, no lightning, no letters of flame: leaves move, clouds move, money moves, night pushes through the money—

From Broken World. Lease reads tonight with Paul Vazquez at the Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church, and also at Labyrinth Book this Saturday afternoon.