I'm dragging
all I know how to write is sadness,
and I want to let you know that isn't all I've got
I want so hard to prove that what you see isn't all you get
that the mess that I am has a sheen underneath.
Your voice breathes life into me,
I want to take you with me to the end of my journey,
but to claim to own a spirit as wild and free as yours
would be to clip a rose, to give it thorns.
When my heart is on fire and I follow the smoke signals
it only ever serves to lead me back to you.
And we're both stepping stones,
but I hope that I can run with you as long as we've got time,
I want to fight beside you as long as there's a war to be won,
to pen your story for the world,
to grasp in these clumsy fingers the will o' wisp that guides me,
time and time again back to your eyes.
The echoes of the universe draw me close to you,
I'm hopeless, and I've ever been.
I feel the distance as cuts in my heart
Your touch magnetizes my soul
how I ever went without you, I'll never know.
So curse me with all you've got,
strike me down for generations,
so I'll be by your side through time,
and I can live to give you everything.
Bit by bit, lifetime by lifetime,
I will always find you, again and again
and we will dance,
and I will learn to write joy, year after year
now that I'm flying.

Don't be stupid
You know the many whispers aren't about you
But what if it's true?

Mild discomfort, oh joy, sweet haze
Coffee and creme brûlée cream
To prove we're walking on a dream

Grit teeth and putting on airs
Chains and chairs
A lifetime of lies on the news

Sparks and lit cigarettes
Golden dreams in darkened bars
Everyone is fighting so hard

Library fines from two blocks away
We should just pay
But here there be dragons

Threatening laughter, interim
Chores chock full of bitter grim
Will you be paper or plastic?

Can't hold a tune in a bucket
So **** it
Bang out the beat instead

Sound in every direction
Can't even take your own predilection
Switch it up every five minutes

Don't worry
Mortality means it's not permanent
Just learn to live with it

The worst thing my parents ever taught me
Was to worry what other people thought of me
The worst thing to tell a child with anxiety

At the time I didn't know that it was wrong of me
To accept the burden of responsibility
For strangers who only saw a part of me

I shouldn't have put them before the thought of me
I didn't know it would be the lobotomy
That kept me hiding in my room for 10 long years

I didn't know it would ****** my autonomy
That you can't fake it 'til you make it if your introspection is an autopsy
That you can't **** a part of your soul

With whiskey or with *******
With bleach or box cutters
With street drugs, with a blind eye

Jesus loves all of the little children
And the church loves all its little saints
But when we express our love not with words but with paints

When the checkmark just doesn't fit the box
And our expectations weigh like chains on the children we so claim to love
They are slaves

To the 9 to 5 domestic gods that clash like thunder every night
Too absorbed in their own fight
To see the fear inside your eyes

Slowly wearing down the fire in your soul
With the grit of their need for control
Teaching you how to be the best version of them

The one they didn't have the guts to master on their own
Abandoning the flower children with the starry eyes
They once claimed spoke their deepest truths

Trading in the wild spirit in their currency exchange
For your future
So they can be so comfortable on their thrones
While they forward the blame to a new address

The hordes of walking dead they left behind
Carrying the consequences
Rejecting all the that we were handed

Gaslight me on fire again
So I can shoulder all the hate that tried to smother my spark
Like your right to be comfortable trumps my right to be here

I didn't ask for this
So when you call me by my new name
Remember all the times you tried to tame me

All the times you defamed me
While telling me stories of a God of endless love
You can't take the perfect mess that you've created

And make a masterpiece, because I am one

We are made of star stuff
And I'll be ****** if I deny the perfect love I was promised
just because for once you didn't get what you wanted

Somewhere in my bones, I remember a quiet joy
When I smile in silence it pretends it's still alive
Lost in thought, images flash against the canvas in my mind
Painting over everything and leaving memories behind
Living in a hell like this, faking like I know what's going on
With psychosomatic cinema reeling, playing 'til I'm gone

Weary with the ghosts of all those lifetimes marching
We can act like there was nothing to it, but overreaction
Fly the flag of freedom to cover up the false,
but down here we collect the blood dripping down the walls.
If I fight hard enough can I remove the stains from my soul?
What makes me weak to you is that I've survived at all

All I've got left is shriek and tooth and claw
Struggling against the darkness threatening to swallow
I see everything that's happening,
but I'm far behind dark eyes
Far behind, struggling against the lies I've been told
It's just something that happens, you just have to fold
Feels so surreal, like nothing was done
It's all fun and games, until someone gets one

Going through the motions, and all the other sheep
Don't realize that persona's only skin deep
No one wants to dig if they've got to excavate
So just keep walking, and leave it to fate
But if I were to die tonight, they'd be weeping
Wondering how they didn't know, having trouble sleeping

When you teach her to be selfless, just remember who gets hurt
It won't be the people she supported left lying in the dirt
If money can't buy happiness then why is it that we
are separated so thickly that we can't even see
They say the grass is greener on the other side
When you've gotta pay to save your soul it's easy to see why

Among us are walking ghosts behind a paywall
Barred from even showing the world who they are
Scream too hard and they'll rip your heart out,
you have to paint your pretty face and fake to find your way out
Always happy, always smiling, 1984
Express your inner turmoil and wage existential war

Show your colors, find a ticket to the prison in your mind
Get out, you mar the landscape like the rest of your kind
This life's a revolution in of itself
Take down the lies and slander sitting on the shelf
Keep flinging names until one sticks,
in the end, if you disagree it means you're sick
Trying to cure a cancer they brought on themselves
You can buy into the game, you can pay to excel

We are born imperfect and why can't we see
Others are imperfect just like me

I guess it never paid to be the son of a preacher
Sometimes the irony is just what murders me
Let's forget all the lies and the promises we're making
Well I guess this life is just ripe for the taking

So ******* is this how you show your god's love?
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, *******

I spent all my time apologizing for those little things
But lord I didn't know quite what the future would bring
If I come out swinging it's cause I don't know where I am
I never said I wasn't just a shell of a man

Is this your god's love?
So tell me where you learned this one

Screaming on the front steps like a bat outta hell
That traitor looked me in the eyes and tried to blame me, well
In this life it doesn't matter where your heart's at
as long as you don't come out smelling like a rat

And the sirens can wail
Shaking like the winter will never end
I can hear myself slam that door
Over and over again
That cold steel embrace never leaves
I wish they could make us wear our hearts on our sleeves

And then what would your scarlet letter be,
does it hurt enough to make you bleed?
well don't you worry your precious head boy
we can help you with that, ha ha!

Tell yourself you're not what you've become
just get going boy, don't think, just run
when you find yourself maybe it'll be enough
to account for the hell you brought with you

The sirens can wail
shaking like the winter will never end
I'll forever be slamming your stupid door
over and over again
And the cold steel you'll see
is as icy as ice can ever be

So wear your scarlet letter, wear it well
If you can forgive yourself only time can tell
I'll never be able to scour out these moments behind my eyes
brush off the names and judgement calls and start it all over again

I'm burning with every soft whisper down my spine, my pulse is vibrato.
Like the soft and energetic hum of horsehair melting into song.
Writhing in dance against the twisted embrace of chromium on the strings.
A clash of furious titans.
Making storms when they collide; the wind and the tide.
Wrestling for power 'til the waves crash one over another, gasping, growling.
Oxygen.
When my lips meet cotton crisp and sweet, and beg for freedom of another kind.
And there in quiet whimpers do we seek, together this enlightenment of lone and fallen ones.
Grazing sharp and silent little wounds, quieted by scar tissue.
Healing through our fingertips and moans, twisted as an ouroboran knot;
feeling mirrored heartbeats strike like savage drums.
When the guise of warpaint loses shape, cast aside for inner feral forms,
grinning cheshire, hidden thorny claws.
In the darkness of another night, heavy with the weight of misty breaths, there from underneath do they then come,
the master and his hound, the lord and fallen one.