A ******'s a ******'s
a ******'s a mask.
Unless it's a suicide
shattered by the past.
another best friend suffering
from proximity infatuation
is just another turning cog
in a lucid dreaming nation.
Part one, a romantic drama.
Part two, ****** mystery.
Part three, an epic mind-****
of father figures and Penelope.
I died on a soft Vanilla sky
and awoke in the vast salt flats
I guess I'll see you in another life
when we are both cats.
I wonder what's real and what's fake
and if she'd ever really seen me,
I think she's the saddest girl ever
to hold a martini.

Liquid karma seeps into our cuts
The density of blood is defused by courage
The sun sets in our arteries
and the moon grows with each heartbeat

Sometimes I forget that no one has felt this before
That exploring the unknown comes with a price
And like a giant drowned in ant hills
I am lost in things too small to comprehend

A star lost amongst the infinite sky
A koi struggling against the never ending tide
You are the priest caught in a fight
finding your true self amongst unsuitable affairs

And all I want
is for you to know
I'll be by your side

It's the way those lights pull at me,
that's how I know I don't want to go back.

It's how gravity seems skewed
and I'm falling
into the endless doorway
that is Pretty Lights.

Talib Kweli sang my lullaby;
I finally fell asleep to Kanye lines.
And the bathroom floor shouldn't melt this way,
it needs to be more esoteric.

The first fight club was just Tyler and I
pounding on each other.

It used to be enough that when I came home angry
and knowing that my life wasn't toeing my five-year plan,
I could clean my condominium or detail my car.
Someday I'd be dead without a scar
and there would be a really nice condo and car.
Really, really nice,
until the dust settled
or the next owner.
Nothing is static.
Even the Mona Lisa is falling apart.
Since fight club, I can wiggle half the teeth in my jaw.

Maybe self-improvement isn't the answer.

Tyler never knew his father.

Maybe self-destruction is the answer.

Tyler and I still go to fight club, together.
Fight club is in the basement of a bar, now,
after the bar closes on Saturday night,
and every week you go
there's more guys there.

Tyler gets under the one light
in the middle of the black concrete basement
and he can see that light flickering
back out of the dark
in a hundred pairs of eyes.
First thing Tyler yells is,
"The first rule about fight club
is you don't talk about fight club.

"The second rule about fight club,"
Tyler yells,
"is you don't talk about fight club."

Me,
I knew my dad for about six years,
but I don't remember anything.
My dad,
he starts a new family
in a new town
about every six years.
This isn't so much a family
as it's like he sets up a franchise.

What you see at fight club
is a generation of men
raised by women.

...

You aren't alive anywhere like you are at fight club.
When its you and one other guy
under that one light
in the middle of all those watching.
Fight club isn't about winning or losing fights.
Fight club isn't about words.
You see a guy come to fight club for the first time,
and his *** is a loaf of white bread.
You see the same guy here six months later,
and he looks carved out of wood.
This guy trusts himself to handle anything.
There's grunting and noise at fight club
like at the gym,
but fight club isn't about looking good.
There's hysterical shouting in tongues
like at church,
and when you wake up Sunday afternoon
you feel saved.

I woke up drowning
in the sleek black ocean
of unfamiliar pavement.
The cries of worry,
sorrow and shame
bled together as one.
I was asked questions
in what seemed like strange tongues
and responded with foreign answers.
And then, suddenly,
the road swallowed me whole,
like a pill, with no water.

I woke up floating
in the bright ambience
of an unknown struggle.
Needles prodded,
strangers argued
and loved ones watched on.
Confusion set in,
'Did I do something wrong?'
they told me just to lie still.
And then, abruptly,
the morphine surged
and the night fell away.


I woke up relaxed,
the I.V. saw to that,
as did the OxyContin.
Five stitches,
one for each separate time
my body bounced against the blacktop.
A fractured skull,
splintered like a rotting stump
struck by the dullest hatchet.
A broken leg,
encompassed in a new kind of boot,
for once on the receiving end of support.

And now I'm confined to the shrunken world
I map out with each small, slow step.
It seems I'm to die of boredom
rather than in the middle of Round Lake Boulevard.

It drives me crazy that Atmosphere is bigger
in New York than Minnesota
and yet none of them give a flying make love
about the one and only Purple Yoda.
It's how they call it solo
instead of a ****** island
and how instead of three and ***** back
same cup is an automatic win.
It doesn't matter if I'm in a backwoods cabin
or if im stuck in the big city.
No, no matter where I'm at in this state
I'm always anxious and ******.
I haven't seen one genuine smile
or a single pretty sun dress
and though I didn't think it possible
I'm missing home amidst the stress.
But I think what I hated most
about this trip to this place
Is in the middle of a long ****** night
after being down all **** day
I stole my dads truck,
went east on Sunrise Highway,
almost ran it to E
but didn't stop anyway
then I finally saw the exit
and turned left on Carmans Avenue
went right at the first stoplight
and I still didn't find you.