Dream at night always / of your loved ones in danger. Wake / tangled in the gauze of your sheets. / Draw yourself a hot bath. Unhood / the windows. It’s becoming harder / and harder to tell whether the motion / detector has been triggered or it’s already / morning. Try to practice your breathing. / Let the day open up to you with the hiss / of automated doors. Find something / in the near distance to look forward to. / Hold on. Even if the boot is crushing / your fingers. Hold on. It’s not the fullforced / crush of anxiety that makes your / legs do that aching thing, that tenderizer / thing, that feral, fidgeting thing. It’s / the protocol, the tools of the trade, the / glare of the moneybright capitol. Fuck / protocol. Fuck the tools of the trade. / Fuck the lone animal bullshit, the / survival of the fittest. Fuck the lions in / the millions, the billions, the abasement / and ache of the blindly entitled. Distrust / the unconflicted, the unaccountable, the / unworried, the unwounded. Distrust / your own impulse to leave your love in / the ruins. Your pain is not the only pain, / not the worst pain. Your guilt is not the / only guilt, not the worst guilt. If the / cop says the thirty-year-old musician he / shot dead on your block was drunk, was / belligerent, was reaching for the gun, / be immortally suspicious. Pay closest / attention to who shifts the wind. Always / wonder what exactly is burning so close / on the air. Smoke, now ghost-smoke, / now gone. Listen everywhere, to every / one, always. Make reckless, bloodbright / basement music. Make blackout bedroom / make-out noise. Make language like / nosebleeds and rug burns and snakebites / and shiners. Language like warm hands / on warm chests, between warm legs. Fail / ardently. Fail gloriously. Fail over and / over and over again.