I’m looking down the barrel of my instincts, loaded with my favorite liquor and my ego and I may not have let the best of me out but I think I made a go, at not letting the worst of me show through. Big block letters always seem to spell your name, read this page just like a cypher the paragraphs bend and fold away you always saw right to the heart of everything. So I’m left wondering if you could even see me. I shy away from crowds the serpentine lights of fast cars and television screens these days I just can’t take the heat or maybe I’m strung out on stress everyone always tells me to do my best but that guy is gone now, my best can’t get out of bed, the doctors have already diagnosed him upon arrival he was dead now shut the fuck up and get out of my head I’ve been around for far too long and I feel my age line up to take punches at my stomach, they’re mad cause I tried to leave them, each and every season, to forget my past and jump headfirst into my shiny new shoes, try to polish me up, let a better me show through, but I vomit all over them, blame my past, forgive my games I build up to break me but I really did try to shake the dirt off my feet. I swear, my soul is all I got to keep so I’ll share it with you if you just believe that I tried to keep the cuts off my feet.

I read the writing on your forearm, a short book of yours it read like a roadmap and I never felt so sick with experience. You said it helped you learn to count and then it just became a way to keep time, to help you stay beautiful to help stave off the lines that would dwell on everyone elses faces as they marveled at how young you looked. You said if you didn’t everyday then you shook. Your ribs struck out at odd angles, you remind me of Picasso in little ways that I can’t quite explain I think your face may be on upside down, I think what you really mean to do is frown but maybe you forgot the muscles, maybe misplaced them when you misplaced your face in favor of bigger tits or a bigger ass or more plaster with which you form a cast of the grin your mother always wore whenever she spoke to the neighbors while you sat inside a dark room and began to wish for a way out. Said you used to try tunneling, deep into your veins, but the needles were thin and brittle and they just never made any sense when they told you that they loved you. They were only using you for in and out. Then you tried boys, but you think you mighta had them reversed, said they only provided a few hours high and then you threw them out. Used to claim they loved you, but everyone says so, the needles and your parents floor. Sent you to a room where you could get better, locked you up without your tools, so you took up the habit of counting out silence when the world would have been so much clearer had there been an ounce of violence and your arm reads like screams that noone could hear and your eyes read like a book of mine that I might write in ten years and I am scared shitless of my weakness and what it might bring me but all I can do is keep watching my road fall away.

I read the writing on your forearm, a short book of yours it read like a roadmap and I never felt so sick with experience. You said it helped you learn to count and then it just became a way to keep time, to help you stay beautiful to help stave off the lines that would dwell on everyone elses faces as they marveled at how young you looked. You said if you didn’t everyday then you shook. Your ribs struck out at odd angles, you remind me of Picasso in little ways that I can’t quite explain I think your face may be on upside down, I think what you really mean to do is frown but maybe you forgot the muscles, maybe misplaced them when you misplaced your face in favor of bigger tits or a bigger ass or more plaster with which you form a cast of the grin your mother always wore whenever she spoke to the neighbors.

I got stacks of boxes in my bedroom

a room full up with emptiness

so close the door shut

I can’t look anymore so cut

end scene, I ain’t got time to fill em up with my dreams

So I’ll sleep on the couch

and if they spill out

in the middle of the night

stack em back up and lock the door up tight

Cause I don’t wanna know what happened to my toys

or my action figures

or my collection of comic books, carefully alphabetized

and further categorized by number

see I just woke up 21

ain’t got time for catching bugs

in mason jars

then watchin ‘em grow, lettin’ ‘em go into the deep blue sky

that’s still there it ain’t fell down yet

but I’m fallin’ apart underneath it all

they say day broke but I don’t think it broke too much

but I’m not too tall

so maybe I can’t reach high enough

and even if I could I don’t think I could hold it up

just a weird kinda prescience and I don’t wanna know that much

i’m gunna need a few packs of cigarettes

to get me through the next two weeks that i’ll spend without happiness

and no, i’m not a smoker but  i’m thinking about taking up the habit

get me through the next two weeks of I damn-near-had-its

a grab bag of what-ifs and ill add it to my list of habits

and things that hold me back

an inventory of the boxes that i keep locked inside my attic

see im always retracing my steps but i always end up where i already been

look around and wonder if I was happy here and if so when

if I go back further maybe i’ll remember then

I can’t don’t you understand that its hard I just can’t i’m a tin man with oaken arms and I won’t it hurts too much and my schedule is fucked and I might try otherwise but I just can’t it’s a matter of time, i’m a busy man I have places to be and if I stop i’m afraid that I’ll have time to see everything that I been missin all these years the mile long stretches that lay behind your eyes that your not just something that I lay beside or would like to you’re a person and I think you’re lovely but I just can’t reach out and grab it i’m locked inside my endless list of habits and “had-it’s” a grab bag of what-ifs so I just can’t I hope you’ll understand

You take up your habits

hide behind crutches that in hindsight look like madness

always sayin change is on its way but it never arrives at the station she is always waiting for strange men to arrive from foreign nations to grow old with her in about ten minutes and then they leave moneys on the dresser she never dares to breathe sadness flowing over her naked body like the hands of a man she closes her eyes and hopes is somebody but they always leave her bedroom fitted with a revolving door closes her eyes and wishes for more than she has ever asked for just a love that she promised herself as a girl white dress dreams locked into a hard world treats her like a sucker licks her up under covers than throws her out for another no hands come up to love her always mechanical the creaks and groans robotic in the way they never say a word about intimacy while saying volumes about the kinda world that we see screaming in fact about gears and black soot smoke drifts down over my window and I know i know sometimes I see myself no clearer seeing hypocrites in the mirror and she is crying out for someone to hear her praying to a god that her prayers will be answered while every day she gets a little bit nearer to total breakdown maybe then we’ll all hear her no she won’t be ignored then when dark tall handsome men are standing over her but jokes on them she’ll be dead so ha ha…ha but just maybe had someone evereverever called her baby had she not been valued and undercut by the tv told she doesn’t drink enough and then that she drinks too much maybe had her habits not been the antithesis of save me maybe…just maybe.

Borne into a world of hurt that we are all at together

waves we rode tied the ropes around the mast fear stormy weather

and if youll allow

id like a minute where noone hurts

but everyone talks to loud

the silence gets drowned out

so lets all be real real quiet

see if we cant hear the words that are being shouted by those who don’t hold anyone near

im trying to try here

attempting to attempt

blustering like the wind

I try to hide all my dents

this rust is fading on the other side of the car

and as long as you can’t see it maybe they won’t feel like scars

but if you have nothing that needs to heal you aren’t tryin very hard

we are borne into a world of hurt but we are all here together

waves we rode bound by ropes be my mast I swear that this gets better

Borne into a world of hurt that we are all at together

waves we rode, tied the ropes around the mast fear stormy weather

we all arrive here, clutching cowls over our eyes stumble blind into the waiting darkened shores, the bramble’s vines stretch down and over the main wall tear apart the once beating heart of this new continent and we’ll find that we grow apart if we let ourselves so I intend to hold onto  if you’ll allow I’d like a minute where noone is hurt but everyones too loud they always drown out so lets be real real quiet and see if we can hear what we are being screamed by those who never hold anyone near i’m just trying to try, attempting to attempt putting up a front just to have it all come undone at least I’d like to think so because we are borne into a world of hurt but we are all right there together waves we rode all bound by ropes be my mast I swear this gets better.

We are duelists at ten paces,  waiting for silence to settle in

but the nervous sniffles and creaks take sides with the tension

solutions in hiding playful tricksters they are laughing in the boards

slowly being crushed by a house that never quite got to be ours

we are haunted by smiling pictures with eyes that follow everywhere

we never listen only talk scream words at the wall behind sound insincere

throw our hands into the air turn around and walk to separate rooms

I hear the door slam closed remember thinking is that it are we through

was it all too much I’m thinking maybe probably neither of us is to blame

we’re just too different you and I or maybe two of the same, either way, its a shame

tonight im gunna burn the bed throw gas onto the fire

do away with everything you offered me pretend im not tired

act nonchalant, the bed didn’t mean anything to me

it wouldn’t be nice to lay my head down…and get a few hours sleep