I know you.
I like you.
We've similar parts inside our heads.

But I know it's not like you
to ever want to share a bed.

You're ilk as folk,
cracked the egg to its yoke,
as the dyslexic kid couldn't help but laugh at his own joke.

The ice hit teeth,
but the bite bit deep underneath as the asphymatic kid fought for every minute of his sleep.

I woke up in a sweat after having a dream about being so misunderstood that it swept the world clean.

But here's the part where the bristles start to scrape away the dirt that's been left unattended for too long.

Missles out of mole hills,
shot into the long arm of the smartest kid in your advanced placement lit class,
who's been busting his *** washing dishes ever since.

The current bet is that whoever wears the gilded hat is as sure as **** to live in its brim.

I'd just as quickly double it on the off-chance that he'll win.

In a pinch, the picnic table can double as a shelter.
Nevermind the would-be athletes vaulting over it.
The lyrics of our song are carved underneath.
Sometimes, late at night,
I stand on top and remember how to breathe.

Sarcasm's beat,*
is the word on the street,
and those in the know are attempting to grow
something a little more sweet.

Rising from the ashes like a phoenix,
Or a fiery **** that won't flush.

I've never understood the phrase:
*Sweet Irony

Then I would wisk away all doubt,
Which is to say,
That I would mix it in with all the fears I'd rather forget about until it congealed into some edible manifestation of my whole life's worthless purpose baked into some half-crusted pie.

Eat it half-heartedly or else starvationally die.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,"
Said the blind cyclops in his customer review,
which is filed in the Physically-Disabled-Yet-Still-Insightful folder of our Customer's Reviews.
A folder seldom perused by our super,
who seems to prefer deferring all menial mentally-unstable issues to those who are new to the feild.

I hesitate to inform them that "field" is the type of word that I've always been notorious for misspelling.

The thing about being cool with everything is that sometimes people will try to chill you into freezing a frame that you've only ever enjoyed in motion.

Ideally, I'd've gone home already.
Done the dishes.
Wished that all of this had never'd happened.

Anyway, I've a feeling that I'll feel ****** tomorrow.
About it.
And this.
Bliss is offset by unpreferred circumstances.

Meanwhile, the Peter Pan version of myself who lives in the back of my head is mockingly bleating like a sheep.

An ode to all those lower-middle-class kids raging against their own insignificance,
romanticizing their circumstances and chasing cheap bliss.

An ode to all conversationalists,
who kiss each and every sentence with well read lips.

Here's an ode to those who,
while watching a meteor shower,
remember to make a wish.

Only to realize that the roses smell like bile,
because some ******* threw up all over your garden while he was black-out drunk.
Two days later,
you connect the dots and realize that ******* is you.

Pretty much sums up the conversation we had earlier.
The one about how you knew that I thought your pretentious pretty friend was more interesting than you.

Ford and folded to the river bloated.
For whom should we give thanks that our liver floated?
I'll bet three shanks that we'll hit the banks of the gold coast before we'll ever be able to afford it.

The odds aren't in our favor.
Cashed out and half-cocked but still fully loaded.
Goaded into a rhino's bargain for a goat whose milk has already been exploited.

I told you this was a bad idea.

Left the bar to run home real quick because I couldn't shake the thought that maybe I'd left the oven on.

I didn't.

1: Ah, I'm not ready yet.
2. I'm still just trying to get situated, you know?
3. Also, I ******* hate dating
4. I'm totally comfortable with being alone at the moment.
5. Maybe too comfortable! (Hahahahahahahaha)
6. I'm probably more of a loner-type, you know?
7. I've never been very good at relationships, and they almost always don't end well.
8. Oh god, I can't even tell you the last time I was in a serious relationship.
9. It's been a long time since I've been with someone.
10. (Maybe too long! (Hahahahahahahahahahaha))
11. Ah, just the headache and heartache and having to answer to someone else all of the time. I prefer to just only have to look out for myself.
12. And I have enough trouble just doing that, most days . . .  
13. In a relationship, it's almost like you have to split yourself in two.
14. And in my not-so-humble opinion, when you add the two parts together, they still don't exactly equal a whole, you know?
15. I don't know. I'm just too selfish I guess.
16. Are you kidding? Yea but no, totally. She's beautiful, and seems really nice.
17. But beauty and kindness kinda freaks me out, you know?
18. It's been too long since beauty's been nice to me. (Maybe too long! (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA))
19. I'm ******* mental, really.
20. Anyone who tries to get close to me realizes that before too long.
21. No, not the interesting kind of mental; more like the annoying/intolerable kind.
22. I don't think I could handle it, honestly.
23. And honestly, it's been so long that just the idea of becoming emotionally involved with someone else scares the ever-living **** out of me.
24. Alright, **** it. Sure, why not? What's her name again?

I wish they had an app where you could record yourself making vague responses like:
Oh yea?
Mhmm.
Really?
Uh huh.
No kidding.

And then could answer a phone call with said app, which would play all of these pre-recorded responses intermittenly while the person on the other line blabs a bunch of ******* drunken nonsense to someone who they believe is listening.

Your rough edges have all been ground down.
Calm little pebble, you're so smooth now.

Easy come and easy go.
Things used to be hard.

Feels like forever ago.

"Do you remember when we used to be sad?"

"Oh man, some of the best times I've ever had . . . "

The reasons I stopped talking to you had more to do with my own personal shortcomings than with anything you did.

There's a certain kind of silence here.
The profound and total only-in-the-country type of silence that city folk fear.
(The kind that my poor mother back home staves off with television and beer.)

So heavy and complete that even with your head under the sheets it's impossible to keep warm enough to ever get any decent sleep.
It's the kind of silence that pierces dreams.

The kind that a tortured mind can easily fill with demons of every type.
The kind that keeps you on edge all night with wide searching eyes and adrenaline rushes flooding in behind any foreign sound,
followed by a slow winding down of blood pressure and panic and heart beats.

The kind that when you suddenly wake up in it and glance at the alarm clock,
you hope like hell the first number isn't 3.

*

*It's moments like these that make me wish there was somebody else here with me,
if only for the reassurance that a nearby body can bring.
The sound of someone else's steady breathing.

And maybe, a naked back to trace the subtle valleys of while half-asleep,
thinking little epiphanyish-type thoughts that'll be forgotten by morning.
The kind that usually start or end with: "This is it."

Not everybody is interested in everything.
Everyone's got their own particular sphere and multi-limbed web of general interests.
When one goes on about a topic that another finds uninteresting, then their listener is bound to get bored, (and boredom is the precursor to annoyance.)

This is where tact comes in. Tactfulness is the ability to read boredom (as well as uneasiness, embarrassment, and any other general anxiety-inducing feelings) in your listener. Someone with tact knows when to change the subject and/or shut up altogether. It's a subtlety.

However, the more passionate one feels about a subject, the harder it is for them to show tact when talking about it.

This explains why nerds and drunks get such a bad rap for being annoying. (God forbid, a drunken nerd . . . )
Because they feel so passionately about the topics that they're interested in that they'll often talk at great length about them without any regard for their audiences' boredom. (And prolonged boredom invariably leads to annoyance.)

This is why the nerdiest of nerds is often regarded as a god amongst their peers (with "peers" in this sense really just meaning people of similar interests.) Because they have such vast knowledge of such a particular subject (which is often of very little interest to most Others. ("Others" in this sense meaning people who are outside of this particular circle of peers.))

The same may or may not be true for drunks.
(Although, there's something to be said about both of them being the most likely to have conversations with no one but themselves.)

This also explains general aloofness (a.k.a. coolness, i.e. "being cool.")
The types who seem so disinterested in everything that people often become interested in them if for no other reason than to simply find out what it is that they actually do find interesting.

This is why cool people tend to be so popular. Everyone trying their hand at gaining their attention by drawing it to this thing or that thing, with a weird need of validation being thinly-veiled beneath it.
(This might also explain why "cool" people tend to be such *******; often dismissing these constant attempts to grab their attention as either pathetic and/or depressing.)

Then, of course, there are the word-smiths. The Salesmen.
Those who fancy themselves so intelligent as to be able to twist what their audience would otherwise find disinteresting into something that they can't live without,
often through some combination of communication manipulation and nonverbal tricks.

But just don't listen to them.

If your face were on the moon,
then the world would be nocturnal,
because you're gorgeous
of the drop-dead variety.

If heaven exists, then it's within seven feet of wherever you are.

You're what people wish for when they see a shooting star.

There's something to be said about a whole lotta nothin',
but I'm not about to say it.

Jungle boots work suprisingly well at keeping feet dry in snow,
but they sure as hell don't keep them warm.

Some people are too quick to tell you that you're being a ****.
Meanwhile, there are others who are way too polite to even think of mentioning it.
If you're the type to give a ****,
then this could be a real problem.

"It's awfully hard to lead when your veins are full of lead,"
I said.
"At least, that's what I've read."

"You read too much then," she said,
then dove off the deep end like some kind of bird.  

I'm having trouble with compiling a digest of everything I've ever heard.
Which is to say, I find it all hard to digest.

Converse with one to get some kind of outlook,
only to desert those notions for the exact converse.

The answer's buried somewhere in a desert, underneath a billion minute grains of other answers,
but the words still flow like leaves in water,
and every minute of it just leaves me feeling number.

If luck be a lady, then I've got her number,
but who be the drawer?
And which drawer did I file it under?

"With the birds and shed it's a lonely view."
- Scar Tissue   The Red Hot Chili Peppers
(My brother, I think. It might've been me. Maybe both of us. Still a great song, either way.)

"I came in like a raiiiiiiiiinnbow!"
- Wrecking Ball   Miley Cyrus
(My sister. (Honestly I like her version better.))

"***** deeds, Dunder chief!"
- ***** Deeds   AC/DC
(My dad. Easily my favorite of all these.)

"There goes my hero, watch him as he goes.
There goes my hero: sergeant Harry!"
- My Hero   The Foo Fighters
(This was all me. For the longest time I thought this song was about a real guy. Good ol' Sgt Harry.)

"The boys of Becking town! The boys of Becking towowooown!"
The Boys Are Back In Town   Thin Lizzy
(My dad, again. (He's deaf in one ear.))

"With the birds and shed it's a lonely view."
- Scar Tissue   The Red Hot Chili Peppers

"I came in like a raiiiiiiiiinnbow!"
- Wrecking Ball   Miley Cyrus

"***** deeds, Dunder chief!"
- ***** Deeds   AC/DC

"There goes my hero, watch him as he goes.
There goes my hero: sergeant Harry!"
- My Hero   The Foo Fighters

"The boys of Becking town! The boys of Becking towowooown!"
The Boys Are Back In Town   Thin Lizzy

Medicine is all relative.
The trick is to find something that makes you feel okay by the end of the day.
I think I've found one that works well,
(with a slight side-effect of sometimes making the next one a living hell.)

But I've found an antidote for this problem:
Bacon, eggs, toast and coffee.
Though I can't have more than three or else I'll get all jittery,
and start saying really weird things,
which may drive me to self-medicate a little more the following night.
You know, just to feel alright about all of the weird things I may have said and end up regretting later on.

Luckily, there are medicines that can erase regretful memories,
but you probably shouldn't have more than six of these,
or else some really weird things may start happening.

Like remembering where you parked the opossum car in that one dream you had when you turned thirteen,
while forgetting that today is your nephew's fourth birthday.

Here, I got you this.

"Hey, I don't think that's really an appropriate gift."

"What do you mean? I would've been thrilled to've my own taxidermied bobcat's head when I was six."

"There're so many things wrong with that sentence that I don't even know where to begin."

Medicine is all relative.
Subjective, if you will.
If what works for you doesn't work for them,
well then, who gives a ****?

We've all got our own illnesses to deal with.

A liquid thing.
Somewhere between melting and floe.
A shifting thing,
separating sheets that shroud the unknown.
A spiraling siphon that grows as senses heighten.
A quickening pulse that gathers and glows.

"Man, I thought I told you the show doesn't start til eleven."

No man, the show goes when I do,
to wherever I'm headin'

He glides down the street on free swinging feet.
Slides through the scenes in this ballet of dreams.
The only audience he needs is watching from heaven.

It's a burning thing.
Somewhere between an eruption and candle,
with sizzling skin left behind by things too hot to handle,
and footprints singed into the sidewalk.

It's a shifting of plates inside the brain.
A breaking up of the saner parts.
A typhoon of thoughts and a flame in the heart
that hits the body like an earthquake.

"Why are you telling my any of this?"

"I don't know . . .
I can't really afford a therapist."

He started stringing dollar bills along with his words to increase the odds of someone picking up what he was putting down.

"I think I ****** that one up,"
he said to the ghosts in the room.

We get where you're coming from

I wish I would've been looking up when the moon fell on my head.
(How rare to find a crater with these exact dimensions?)
I think I can hear an ocean's longing for the echo of a lost tide,
like a billion and one tiny grains swirling through my insides.

We get where you're coming from

No you don't.

A swift crack to the head and suddenly I'm off my feet again.
A bit of paranoia settling in.
A lingering sense of regret over things unsaid.
Things I might want to give to friends just in case I never see them again.

A quick jab to the ribs and suddenly I'm taking it all in.
Seeing the importance of it.
The implications of knowing where to begin.
Beginning again after everything else has come to an end.

A clenched jaw with fingernails digging in.
A slip of the tongue that should've been bitten off.
A song sung while lying in a field thirty yards from the bar.
A poster hung from the walls of the place where we used to live.
A bit of bone sticking out from a sawed-off limb.

A fist hits me in the stomach and suddenly I can stomach anything.
The twists and turns and cigarette burns and the lessons twice learned but never accepted.

This is how it starts.

Watching people watch football is like watching a competitive sport of its own.
A kind of histrionical show-down of who can be the most obnoxious;
Who can really drive home the fact that they want this particular group of color-coded men to win more than the other,
with egregious displays of enthusiasm being the most popular mode.

In a parallel world, some of these folks could make decent actors.

My brother, for instance, reminds me of a young Leo:
He yells and shouts but never quite manages to sell me on it.

My uncle's more like a Michael Caine. Calmly sharing reassuring statistics and factoids throughout the game.

Meanwhile, my father's much more stoic. If he has any real interest in who's winning, he doesn't show it.

I've seen this behavior on display in other venues
(the workplace, concerts, church,)
but it definitely seems to be the most pronounced with sports.

"You're on the precipice of something, and soon you'll be left with nothing but memories and time."
"Sounds like a recipe for disaster."
"Sound's like it'd go good with some wine."

Get to the car and run for your lives.
Hit the deck and call it.
Slippery when wet;
this floor's too dry for me to mop it.

Let's get together and be lonely.
I'd feel a lot better if you'd just hold me,
I mean lonelier.
It'd trigger that mental state where I'm floating six feet away from the scene,
where I can see everything with the added bonus of not having to experience what I'm feeling.

Let's be lonely together, only,
I'd feel a lot better if you uttered a phrase that ended with "forever."
It'd make it easier to remember that I'm not the type to stick around,
and I could really use a good reason to leave right now.

Win or lose,
you're bound to lose some friends,
and even though memories may be like little movies in your head that you can play over and over again,
the truth of the matter is:
They've already ended.

I know how to grab your attention,
but I'm not sure how to keep it,
so I'll keep this as shallow as I can before diving into the deep end.

I know how to bob and weave,
but I'm not sure what I believe in.
Something to do with the conservation of energy, I think;
expending it in a dream-like series of experiences before eventually going back to being a part of Everything.

I know how to cut a rug,
but . . . well actually I don't think I know what that means.
Hang on while I look it up:

13 minus 27 is 38.
Took the east-bound train to Missouri by mistake.
Halfway between the station and my home-state I got decapitated by a snowflake the size of a plate.

Twilight sprinkles tinkling in the fog.
Swirling eddies in a shot of egg nog.
Snowmen wearing blonde wigs with broomstick arms.

What the hell,
it's Christmas.

I'm going to come back to this one and write it when I'm sober/have a free moment. I just don't want to forget it while it's in my head. I'm just posting this now as a sort-of mental post-it note.

There's a formula that can keep me going indefinitely.
They say immortality's nothing but a myth,
but I've got the recipe.
It was passed down to me as an ancient family secret:

"Three strips is never enough."

That's what the voices in my head told me every time I set out to make some kind of statement in an antiquated form that would most likely be overlooked by every one of my friends.

But with beer and vanity and pigheaded persistence,
I managed to ignore them.

Tonight I'm on that metal horse.
Meta-force.
Went to the bar and met some ******.
**** was talked and shots were poured.
Drank 'em up then got real bored.
Lectured til I heard some snores.
Went back to the bar and got some more.

Diseased without a hope of cure.
Your face is like an emery board,
and your hair is like a handful of snakes curling round a Sycamore.

Throw it up! Down on the floor!
Two more steps and I'm out the door.
Don't compare me to your paramour.
I don't want to know the score.

Baited hook, shiny lure.
Fighting thoughts that can't be ignored,
but I'm not sure what I'm fishing for;

All you'll get are metaphors.

Quick and in short order,
we slid back to our separate sides of the border.
But it didn't feel that way at the time.
Every second an eternity spent drawing the line.

Who drew first?
I couldn't say.
I ran through my entire playbook on the very first day.
From there on out I was making it up as I went,
and you went along - every now and then -
until the last of our words were spent.

A penny for your thoughts?
I'll give you two cents.
(With my heart in my throat after every text message sent.)

Now all I've got are handful of songs I find too hard to listen to anymore,
and a nagging guilty conscience.

Everyone loves a low-born story,
as opposed to the thematically villainous silver spoon -
unless of course they give up too soon,
and let themselves be consumed by the rest.

*Could've been someone,
maybe even one of the best.

A flock of birds.
A group of geese.
A gander at a stranger gathering of winged things.

Don't clip mine 'cause I'm running out of time,
and I've got promises to keep and miles to fly.

Just trying to escape the Frost.

I'll try my hardest to refrain from mounting this phony high pony and preach to you,
and to keep from using ******* rhymes and fancy lines that do little more than convolute the truth,
but the fact remains that there's a certain amount of irony inherent in all things,
and I can see it clearly raging inside of you.

Blah blah blah.
These and other platitudes.
You're struggling and you're sad and you're lost and confused.

Don't you realize that you're just climbing up and sliding down the eternal staircase that the rest of us have already grown accustomed to?

Of course not,
and that's why you're smart.
Giving up on the race before it even starts.

What do you want?
No, really.
Out of life,
out of love,  
with hell below and the stars above,
where exactly are you aiming for?

You don't even know,
and somehow,
that's what makes it beautiful.