#patriothardcore

[calfleather]

Recording “Gagged” last year

PATRIOT

[calfleather]

Stripper, Pool of Fat

Blanket me sweet nurse

To keep me from burning

The glass that rides the sea is full of loathing for the soft winds allowed by your indifference

The copper inside the burnt black rubber is missing, stripped like the dancers down the block, spitting poison lead, noxious fumes from the cavities in their chests where an organ should be pulsing, you forsake them for your apathy

I could dance, I could strip for you, pry away layer upon layer leaving leathery grey garments at our feet, I would stand naked before you, then I’d strip away my nakedness, I’ll take it all off until you’ve had enough, I’ll give you everything until you’ve grown cold and bored, then I will keep stripping, unsure when to stop, uneasy in your eyes and your lips won’t move, your lungs won’t breathe, I am paralyzed beneath your gaze, waiting for you to let me rest, yet my hands move with your will, my body contorts to your perfect vision, my bones scatter and reform, my jaw cracks on the pavement as the muscle melts away from my skeleton and I collapse, a pool of fat and sinew flowing freely through my thighs and into the gutter, I keep stripping, I keep stripping, I keep pleading, silently, to be done, to be beautiful to you, to be something you cherish, to be something you can tolerate, to be anything at all that might make you smile

[calfleather]

What do you want I can give you save for symbols, Is there anything you love so deeply? Obscured by message, a video camera, thousands of stories that have not a meaning, not an ending but an object of infatuation, An entity, pure potential to be everything you need though you could never hold your head up high enough

The stones in your sleep and dreams dying and deserted upon the beach it all must be so important it all must be the symbols it all must be,

You put your pen to the brow of nothingness and believe you have God’s gift in your fingers, yet your hands tremble with the weight of emptiness in your soul inside which you pour these images, these representations of something you’ll never understand like the sand in your sweater that will never stay too long, morning air fills the hallway and you’re alone again, they never want to be with you when light comes through the window and your body knows the truth, so the rising sun fills you with cool despondency,

Folding into your bed sheets soaked with water and blood you lie back, reclined before the priest you pray and practice patience, still every time he leaves you weep, still every morning you wonder and every night you beg for dawn’s solitude, you don’t want anything you can have, you don’t need anyone but him to speak your name,

But you are perfect in this room, you are symbols in the morning, you are perfect to me this evening, you are everything that I cannot understand.

[calfleather]

This is what I listen to hungover at 7am working the steel mill drilling unistrut while staring straight into my coworkers’ arc

[calfleather]

Walking up Wyckoff from the club last night around 3:30am I met a man named Marcos Vasquez who was even higher than I was. He showed me his fucked up fingers saying he had dope he wanted to smoke but his hands didn’t work. He shoved a jar into my chest while I asked him for some papers and we sat down on the sidewalk. I was losing my mind and sprawling across the ground as he told me to roll one for me and one for him. He didn’t smoke tobacco so I threw my cigarette in the drain and rolled one terrible joint, lit it with his long reach Bic lighter while he told me we were going to look at the sky and pray. I told him God loves me and I love the sky and he asked me if I believed his story that he was the best BMW mechanic in Queens before barking at some finance guys strolling down the block. I did believe him but it didn’t matter. I smoked half the joint as he told me I wasn’t sitting comfortably enough and handed me his phone when I fixed my posture. He pointed at the photos app and told me to look. Hundreds of pictures of rotor jobs, broken pistons, dismantled starters, and his nephew - a black belt. He was frantic in his expression of desire to be believed. I knew he meant everything he said and I wanted him to know that but he was fading. I tossed him the rest of the joint and said God is good. He stayed on the sidewalk. I walked back home and stopped at the bar on my corner. Asked my favorite bartender about his night and finished an Estrella alone as everyone trickled out onto the street before 4am close.

I think that meeting Marcos Vasquez was one of the best things to ever happen to me and I hope he knows I believe him.

[calfleather]

Finally Comes Rain

The noises that precede me are the breath of the city, tendrils of rain reaching, pressing down on this filthy white blanket, ushers towards the tunnels where they will die,

In rumbling bass, guitars that grind against the masonry collapsing on every corner, today is the day I see everything for the first time again, tomorrow may fail me but yesterday the rain was a prayer

Where will I be in seven minutes?

Exit 31 to Flushing Ave, the sun is rising, my coffee is still too hot to drink, is Springtime coming?

But they are needles piercing the veins of the single bluish cloud, they are companions for the weak who flood my radiator and they are calling me home as I cry out, alone, again, admitting, they ask for hands to hold them, lower them down to me I will catch it, I will hold it all before me and I will kiss it on this temple, let me be something that I adore,

Slip out of my wool base layer and into my work boots, heavy steel toe, I want to dance between the concrete and sing to the friends that I will make but the clock is approaching seven and I am running out of time,

I should get to work.

[calfleather]

12/17/2026 8:16am

How can it be that each reflection to hold my gaze presents me with a new image? How can my body be absent of enduring form? Am I beyond these things? Is this my sign from you God? That I should be alleviated of the weight of a physiological vessel? But what beneath this is anything at all? What above this?

Chemical dust

Should endurance bring eternity? Is eternity my voyage? Do eternally the skies prevail over peeling skin and muscle aches or is it all the same as myself, my ever changing image?

Fear of feeling static,

Perplexed by the impermanence of the street walk to the bar after work, holding hope for a ray of light, grayish iron beams are bending every single day I step,

Forwards unto yesterday and the day before, backwards in the face of my Father,

Please answer me

[calfleather]

Sexless