Just A Shell

She's mad at her face. Cuts
It like it's her doing
Only a shell, baby: it rots

It turns to shit, gets you around
Is all. Other shells make
Fun. Worm food is worm food

I heard something as
Loud as a mirror. Just needed
A new temple won't come

Down on me & sit 
In ruined dark
Forever & ever

Is worm food
I'll yell at them, kiddo
Daddy loves you, sweet girl

God gives us you kids to
What did she say? Baby,
Don't listen to them

Think you have trouble 
Sleeping, pops? 
Won't do. That boy'll have

His way— we'll bow to his
Holy cocky statue (pray he has
Daughters.

Pray pray. Always in here
Always in here. Always always) 
Pray. Life is on

Your knees. I'm praying, baby
I was young once
He drove his car off a cliff, took

All of youth with him
Haunts me forever
Sweet girl got the wrong face

God don't make ugly, darling. Cut
Yourself when it's the world
You're after. Lightning bug

Summers, little cousins
Slam slam doors slamming
Thunder on the stairs, fussing 

Every which way
How you cared for them! How 
I miss it

Little kids sticking up for
Little kids fill that hole with
Unearthly soil. Night

Light in the grownup's room. When'd
You get so sad, baby girl? What
Don't you see in that mirror?

Baby, look there 
Look look
Why'd you go and do that?

Tell me all about those summers 
Lightning bugs, remember?
Tell me all about it

Tell me, baby
I hate this world, baby

On The Road

Johnny Snakeskin has an idea
has a mouthful of American broken towns
whiskey tumbles past those yellow rocks     in that shitty face
Johnny sits right up against the bar
at its runny weepy lights

highway coils to eat us
breathe when we're somewhere (this is somewhere!)
skinny neon yelling at the unfinis  hed universe
yell   at the squashed black bug of night
scurry   inside already!
piss   on the road and its critters

there's Johnny and that idea of his
float our mystical cloud over him
bring him our noisy rain
where'd you get that name, Johnny Snakeskin?
(the cloud palace is crawling with kids, just so you know)
what happens when you walk outside into 

that wild emptiness?
what then?

I still need to know all these years gone

"I have an idea," says Johnny
into the terrifying universe
up at our horny cloud
"you and me'll trade bodies
I'll make it so you don't make the mistakes I did"
so we did
it's an absurd thing

I don't know where I got this name.