The ’97 Bank of America robbery was one of the last great patriotic crimes,
attached to a real need and a real motive,
in a real nation,
the kind you can put hands upon,
divorced almost entirely
from the bridegroom violence of today;
petty emotionalism and outbursts of weakness.
Firing randomly into a crowd is only done to further a brand
and soothe oneself, through the fear of the coffin lid closing,
with the meditative clicks and notification chimes,
that last gasp affirming that you did something in this life,
or in this news cycle.

The ’97 Bank of America shootout was one of the last gasps of
a dying Americana,
before we exported all of our spectacular malfeasance to China
and Pakistan and all the countries that will do it for cheaper
but with far less panache.
But Larry Philips Jr. and Emil Matasareanu met in that Gold’s Gym
and felt that love that runs concurrently to any childbearing, above the
amorous teen suicides or head in the Metro bathroom
because theirs was a love of just what exactly it is
that turns the gear of history,
a war-like homoeroticism of old,
before it found itself declawed and deterritorialized,
left to wander in the pasture of the marketplace.

The ’97 North Hollywood bank shootout was back when
delinquency still had virility and necessity,
back when men with guns knew they were just as much making art
as they were transgressing another man’s written law,
because what is lawlessness but poetry by other means?
What is another man’s law but spit in the eye of God?
And who better primed to put that art on the world
than an American and a Romanian in tandem? After all,
there’s no better art school than the Western jubilee of Man
or the way existing under Communism births one übermensch
for every ten thousands it throws into a bread line leading to a mass grave.

The ’97 North Hollywood bank robbery couldn’t happen today!
when most of the remaining artists stare at screens that stare back
or suffocate to death
when they lean forward too far on fentanyl in their parents’ spare bedroom.
Nobody has time for the God-given need to pick up a rifle
and say “no” to the world.