As do boats.
As do bodies lying in moats
surrounding castles' fortified walls.

Hope mopes.
Waiting in line at the airport to be cleared through customs,
unaware that it is itself contraband.

Hope is for dopes.
Every man is an island.

Some haven't developed proper ports yet.

So you found yourself in over your head.
Bit off more than you could chew.
Stretched yourself a little too thin,
then what did you do?

Sent out a veiled cry-for-help to a friend,
knowing full well it was a torpedo.

Sometimes all you need to admit that you're uncharacteristically cool with all of this is a bit of liquid courage and a pinch of frustrated madness swished around until you're sarcastically committing to loving the **** out of your current situation with a vague suspicion that you're not actually being ironic.

Disillusioned youth all drunk on ideas of change,
passing around their ideals until we all felt the same,
or felt better about not feeling the same,
or felt normal by being surrounded by people even farther from normal than we'd ever claim to be ourselves,
or felt like we were in a safe space for the first time in our lives,
a space in which we could actually be ourselves,
or felt as if the weight of the world thrusted on our shoulders by our parents was no longer a burden we had to bear alone,
or felt sane enough for the first time in awhile to recognize how much we'd actually grown,
to have sorted out all of the ******* from the things we'd always claimed to have known.

God bless 'em, every one.

Oh, how we've grown.

Love is not dependency.
Love is not some broken-hearted teen crying,
"You were the only thing that ever completed me,"
in the middle of the street during a full moon in which all the willows weep or whatever.

Whatever love is, it's surely not that.

Love is not a scam.

Love is not crying when you could've laughed.

In fact, love is the exact opposite of that.

Left to my own devices,
I go to places that aren't very nices.
But you believe in a spectrum of sorts.
One I used to live on before I blew it all to bits.
Sometimes I wonder what the incentive is;
The reason why I keep you arounded.
Times like these, I see what it means.

You're my canary.

You keep me grounded.

Sometimes, I feel too old and cynical to appreciate the beauty of anything anymore, and it's times like these I'm tempted to walk around at night with headphones on and listen to that one song from Blonde Redhead with the heavy piano and ah's as the only lyrics.