and all of us drinking the blood of our enemies

This is poetry for the 21st century, and whatever might come after; the poetry of no-guarantees and no-reassurances, of always crawling blindly through the failure of the past. This is poetry for governments who can no longer be trusted. This is poetry for the lost and the vanished; for Lanegan, for Gorky, for K. Sage and G. Hart. Poetry shaped by the self-loathing and self-destruction of Pollock. Of Cobain. Of 100,000,000 self-made martyrs.

This is poetry distilled from the vitriol of punk rock and the disorientation of surrealism. The idea of art as something more, or less, than commodity. Love letters & notes of despair to Camus, to Maar, to Kahlo. To every version of ourselves that we have lost forever.

This is poetry for when poetry is no longer enough.

"John's new collection continues to isolate that spear in the gut where deadly emotions dare to run with the chance of living... The last chance of living."-Dan Provost, All In a Pretty Little Row

"Forget The Age of Aquarius. That's long gone. Dead and buried. Welcome to the Age of Assholery, where the sons of grandees hunt and kill vanishing species. Humanity? Empathy? Forget about it, greed is good and what else matters in the end? Sweet is Captain Kick Ass in the Land of Nil, "fear is a weapon, of course/ and pain is too." What more do we need to know than, "This is not my century but it's the one I will die in."? I'm with you all the way, brother, and I'm coming down fast. "It's a life/but no way to live.""-Alan Catlin, Another Saturday Night in Jukebox Hell