People are either obscenely early,
or baffling late.
Yes, they tend to forget.
About you.

Bury your sorrows in debt.
Be alone, usually.
Your words spill out like
a pornographic goremance.
You are redder than blood,
and hotter than breath.

Smoking outside and in,
we crafted a shelter out of
bare bones and sad songs.
Sadly they couldn't cut
sharply or hardly enough
to get through every load
of *******.

You know, I never met a Frank I really hated too much,
except for when I was little and I despised
my ******* grandfather for threatening to
nail my ears to a door every forty minutes.
Having said that, there's a hole somewhere where
people vacation from life and I haven't found it,
but the closest I can get is bed.
I woke up with half my *** still asleep.
I hurt somewhere new every day.
But hey, it can't all be **** coffee and half wilted daisies, eh?
I got my copy of "Eaten by Machines; Collected Poems of Austin Heath."
Look at that.
My word in print.
I'm not making a **** cent off of it,
but there it is. I'll call myself a writer now.
At least out in the open.
Among people.
Sigh.
What if further on down the century,
people decide these years were the first
seeds pushed into the dirt that would
start the apocalypse?
Or, what if we are already the post-apocalypse?
This place smells funny.
What if the past heard about the future,
learned about all the wealth and resources we had
at our disposal, and instead built fancier weapons
for the war machine?
Would they even hesitate to call us monsters,
and declare the future the end?
What the **** do you think we're looking down?
We're all going to go insane,
and **** each other in our sleep,
and we'll sleep rarely because we
realize that it is one big
unprofitable blind spot.
We'll die half-narcoleptic, insomniac, lucid dreaming lunatics,
with manic paranoia and no conscience for violence.
In our sleep.
Sleep.
I can't quite remember why I left bed,
I guess I needed more sunshine in my diet.
My phone is off, it's past noon, and I haven't eaten.
Frank is disappointed.

This tattoo is slowly becoming
an ironic advertisement.
I'm just here.
Writing.
For Christ's sake, if this is how
we make our art, we're all ******, huh?

I'm sick of having what should be
a discussion on a serious topic
turn into,
"You're ridiculous for thinking
otherwise;
this is how it is."

If I leave this place a wretch

I will have found two facts;

We should all fear death,

and every hell of mine  is

chalk full of angels.

Doesn’t make a difference

when you’re lonely, but

if you come across this

wretch in the flesh;

it will provide.

I wear my violet like royalty,
like a badge,
like I have so much "honor"
[-is a concept I don't believe in].
I've shot every enemy I've had
in the back, or stabbed them
with this sharp, silver tongue.
Oh, the humanity;
we're all pacifists till
we're in vehicles,
swimming in caffeine and
road rage, threatening to run
over pregnant women, slowly,
for jaywalking. Smiling and driveling
over empty plates or china full of ****,
Smiling over garbage sniveling,
"I'm so weird, I'm so crazy,
Oh, I'm insane".
I'm insane.
I'm insane.

I think everyone knows that everything
is incredibly stressful and the pressure
is exceedingly painful, but
they refuse to recognize
it could be different.
So when my girlfriend
tells me, "I worked a job
and went to college full time",
I don't know how to say, "Great!
But I would crack under that pressure!"
I don't know why going to college
is supposed to be so important when
college is really a market of
diminishing returns in exchange
for crippling debt.
I just want a simple stupid life
in a simple stupid place
with a simple stupid routine.
Why's that so ******* hard to ask for?

We stopped talking but
you've messaged me four times now
to say I'm worthless.

I decided that
we weren't good as friends, and you
did just what you do.

Jay, I'm not asking
for your forgiveness, just that
you keep your silence.

I'm tired and longing
for a peace of mind you seem
eager to ******.

"Manipulative",
you texted me to say that
you were in Cleveland.

I read that message.
I waited three seconds and
I deleted it.

A long time ago,
yet so close to yesterday
I really loved you.

Your friends told you to
cut me out of your life, like
my friends said I should.

Neither were wrong, and
this is what it has come to.
This. This is the end.

Your interventions
always came up to protect
your own interests.

To who gives a ****;
I left all my opportunities behind once.
I’ve broken hearts, many actually,
and I even had mine broken.
I dropped the dice and lost almost
as many times as I’ve won.
I’m surviving though, aren’t I?
I’m not sure whether I should celebrate
in a suit or in a corner somewhere.
I haven’t collected dust.
I haven’t grown moss.
Are you proud of me?
I didn’t have to step on anybody,
because I didn’t want to go anywhere.
Some can argue I’m cheap, or someone
who despises the mediocrity of responsibility.
I think we’ve all dreamt of wandering though,
and I wonder how many of us didn’t have a
choice in the matter. You can tell the
difference in whose looking for
vacation and whose looking
for home.

It's late enough already.
Scrubbing your gamepad, salty at A.I.,
thinking of cleaning metaphorically;
Scrubbing behind your ears.
Scrubbing behind the skull.

Contemporary 80's synth-rock in both ears,
I wish I knew what you were singing about.
I wish I knew who you longed for,
I wish I knew what you did, where you were,
on evenings like this when you can only

think

of the people you wish you were closer to.
Skin and talk out of touch. Imagine;
Conversations imagined aren't enough.
Words you wish were out loud
will eat your sorry *** alive.

16-bit racial stereotypes onscreen
pummel each other to mush faced
ground meat caricatures.

Groove like a shark trapped in a box,
make yourself sharp to the touch,
then make yourself tangible.
Absence lets the shoulder grow colder,
but this?

Things imagined and wished for.
Fantasies a child would seek,
pulling the words off of your tongue
An apology, a love letter, a eulogy
/vulgarities and praise as bedfellow.


Words you wish were spoken
will eat your sorry *** alive.

Ever get the feeling that,
this. Things? We?
aren't even... I don't know the word.
They're not real? Valid?
These things are eventual.
Since no one cares;
I was stuck in a mirror,
or I was dragged into the real,
for just ******* ages.
This house breathes,
but it creaks like a ribcage
without the flesh attached.
Cobwebs in the corners.
Fresh.
I thought of setting myself on fire.
No, that's selfish. I have dreams.
I had dreams.
I don't know everything I guess,
but don't you feel it too?

Last night I tried getting arrested,
and tried wrestling a plastic bag
out of a tree. The cops are
too forgiving. I lobbed rocks over
grocery stores and down the
empty streets of 4am.
I am relentless only
in my want of death.
I am lonely.
I am lonely right now.
I don't want to be lonely but I have no choice.
So here I am being ******* lonely,
and I won't say **** because I want you
to come to me first, to reach out first,
and secretly I want to be dead
before you make it here.
I want to cry but the tears just fall into that void.
I wish I could just feel empty or numb.
I had so many dreams once...

You are a ghost, or
a spectral anomaly;
Appearing out of thin air,
while I am 2 hands and 7 minutes
into a video game. You are
a haunt, with no teeth,
no fear, no presence.
Not particularly interesting.
You absolved yourself from
conversation with,
"Have fun with your video game",
to which I replied, "you too",
mistakenly.

I've seen relatively normal people go insane,
and it makes me wonder when someone
or something is going to pull my ticket.

He had a twilight in his eyes
that made that smile seem sincere.
Sincere in a way that some people
can say, "Go **** yourself"
and sound legitimately concerned
for your well being at the same time.
No, no, no, he was a beggar's child,
and grew up in a broken home
where pride spat in the face of
a legitimate source of income.
Couldn't lose a purpose if one was
never attained, but, you know,
still purposeless. Some people though,
they can be *******, ******,
they can be a lot of things,
but you'll still love them for being
honest. You see, when people see
brilliance in someone, it can just
******* ruin the whole ***.
It's better this way.
Just being honest. Just yourself.
I want that dream again;
the one where I feel like I'm breathing
instead of learning how.

Wake up in the morning with
a chip on your shoulder;
like a **** in a serial killer-
someone's going to learn the truth
if you keep dripping.
Trading in your old records
for something new,
you felt the urge to scream
right as they cut to commercial break.
The price of a commodity
becomes outweighed by it's crowd
How truth is like Starbucks.
The metaphysical quality of truth
you seek/ want to burn between
your fingers isn't even
the worst document you've
cleansed from their eyes.
When they learn you,
they're going to tear you apart.
Don't forget.

Wrecked on the couch,
my victims asked me who I was
or who I thought I was
or who I was trying to be.

I resented them, like most people
who play into my empathy for
some luxury or to **** out a sucker.

I live on a seat of noise.
Everything is deafeningly loud.
Sinking in screams
like a stale mattress
full of bedbugs,
but you need a place to sleep
for at least another night.

I fly on a deranged bird
that knows one word,
and that word is made-up.
Fictional.
I fly by inches, crawl in the sky
crawl towards death with my
head tilted backwards.

I don't even bother asking
many questions anymore,
especially about people.
I'm not so upset that nobody
particularly cares.

I asked if there was anyone there remotely my age,
and she said yes. I had just dumped all the money in my
wallet into trying to make my savings not negative.
It didn't work.
I walked over, stepped inside,
and saw teenagers. She told me,
there's a guy outside and he's twenty.
I got ******* duped by a kid.
Her parent's left, unwisely.
I met another half-black person,
a 15 year old girl who had dark skin
and hated everything that resembled
"blackness" or "black culture".
She even called herself white.
Here I was, outside drinking grape soda
out of a hello kitty mug,
discussing radical feminism
to teenage girls-
and ******* five shots were fired.
Not even 15 feet away, behind the garage.
[A fake 100 was exchanged, to which distaste was shown,
also this sentence is in parentheses,
and technically doesn't even exist].
So now there are teenage girls crying over gunfire,
hyperventilating, the high school boys jogging-
people in a swarm heading indoors,
and me.
The stupid-*******-tragic-yet-benal artist,
running in his stupid ******* circle,
trying to decide if he should go inside
with the crazy juvenile people, or see if he can get shot,
because he already lives life awaiting some
stupid ******* narcissistic tragedy
to wipe him off the map.
My opportunities had rushed away already however.
I walked inside and sat on the couch hugging
one of those puffy round pillows and laughing
maniacally. It was intense after all.
Kid Duper tried to relate to me.
I know she didn't get it.
No one ever really ******* gets it.
Understood, maybe? No one understands.
I left shortly after with a copy of Fahrenheit 451.
I was told I could borrow it.

Lukewarm coffee and the cat,
[not my cat, the cat, a cat]
is making the bathroom floor
look cozy.
I haven't had a terrible nightmare or a beautiful dream
in what feels like months, not years, but close.
I have an odd fascination with light bulbs,
sources of light, man-made fountains of brightness.
Not the sun. Rarely the moon.
I don't sleep well.
My father learned about my suicide attempt and thoughts,
because my sister told my mother, and she waved that banner
like a parade float far above my head for everyone to see.
Above his head as a symbol of his failure.
I couldn't pull it down.
Like Snoopy between two large buildings,
it was just inevitable. A matter of time, really.
My past curls up into a ball and waits,
like a cat on vacation from eyes being open.
The eyes open.
We're standing at the kitchen table.
You tell me that it wasn't your fault.
Not directly, of course.
You tell me about my bass teacher,
my ex-girlfriend.
Insinuate I was depressed about these things.
These are the materials to make the cocktail I drank,
full of not bittersweet poisons, but neurotoxins.
You tell me it's not your fault.
Now you don't have to apologize.
You were wrong.
I didn't "discover" these venoms in some fresh cabinet
waiting to be torn down, you, you [expletive],
I grew up next to them,
an IV drip in my jugular,
direct feed to my brain.
[expletive].
[expletive].
I learned how to sincerely love cursing because you wanted
to censor my emotions. I learned to hate myself from you.
I learned how to look at myself as
not enough
because of you. Surely, daddy the great doesn't owe me
an apology, the selfless man who tore us across the country
broke all the way. Surely, if his intentions were noble,
his actions were pure.
Just like Elvis Costello,
your aim was true.
Depression is like trying to find a light in a room
that is full of dark corners.
For a long time, I had no light.
Eyes closed.
I bomb the parades and smile in a hotel window at the chaos
in my mind-world. My other home away from home.
I ask my girlfriend how often someone should think about suicide.
The floats lift higher than the eye should see.
They become a string of dots in an otherwise empty sky.
Amorphous shapes in clear blue water.
Splotches of paint on a manilla canvas.
Something geometric with the fingers,
turned into a sound, then a sample,
then a symphony.
There is no remedy, no cure,
just placebos and snake oils.
Birds chirping.
Silence.

I don't dare to watch you dance;
I drink a little bit more, and a little bit more.

I'm asking someone to make me a drink;
I say too much, I stand too close.

My lovers go to art school, and then go home for the holidays,
but I live here, like the indigenous left behind after the tourists left,
after the army came.

It's strange how they come here to be artists, and I live like this.

I thought I'd start the year fresh.
I thought I'd be carefree, ******* and happy.
A stereotype, or a cliché.

I'm still black like my brother, and white like my neighbor.
I'm still a princess to my lovers, and some strange man to my coworkers.
I drink a little bit more, and I'm drunk again.

To call this madness is no longer indignant,
nor would it be a cliche to call me;
Insane, mad, crazy, or wild.

I pilot a nightmare
at the speed of homicide
into the jaws of hell,
the heart of a storm.

My friends are jackals and demons,
With eyes glassy and trapped open.
Heartless as myself.
Howling vulgarities into the apocalypse,
laughing as they bleed
From the mouth.

With death as our bride, and
standing elbow to elbow with legends,
we bear gifts of iron and fire.
We scream into the sunset,
And we are immortal forever,
Even if we die every day.

Remember me this way,
as immortal forever,
Even if I don't see tomorrow,
For I am no longer
Flesh & bone
Steel & fire.

I am a legend.

With love,
Yellowjacket

Welcome to the living room,
the bizarre state of all things comes to ******.
Psychic hurricanes and barbarian therapy;
Stab me in the back, stab me in the heart,
but in the end isn't it all the same bleeding?
And you swore they'd never figure out,
and you swore they'd never figure out
and you swore they never figure out.
Welcome to the living room,
the bizarre state of ALL things comes to ******.
Stab me in the back, stab me in the heart,
it's the same bleeding,
and you swore they'd never figure out
and you swore they'd never figure out
and you swore that they would never figure out
and you swore,
they would never figure out.

Peak temperature water levels fake diagnoses white psychopaths starving hunger jingoism violence [systems that deprive us] guns entitlement shots fired accidents grief/mourning choking hazard corporate mascots corporate favoritism corporate bailouts corporate people ideology without monitor nationalism patriotism conservatives patriarchy ******-****-suicide victim silence lack of conviction religious ******* false history infant mortality job insecurity invisible hands trickle down economics union busters corporate police brutal police evil police secret police debt bankruptcy foreclosure homelessness lost confused prisoner criminal banker war preparations propaganda ballots commercials advertisements campaigns money power puppets figureheads armies genocides **** bomb gas fire no survival violence wealthy lawyers assassinations heart complications death sleep.

I was in Buffalo for a week;
she gave me a hand-job in my best friend's
guest room, and I was naive and optimistic.
I was younger then, even
younger than I am now.
So I wanted her; but couldn't understand
she did not want me. I bought her ****
for Valentine's day, but failed the test.
So Instead I ate candy I bought
for a stranger
and watched "Hellraiser".
Partly cloudy;
Partly sunshine.

**** it, why not make nothing off limits,
why not break everything with
something soft and velvety
or a sledgehammer made of
cardboard
executing murders at breakneck speeds.

So maybe nobody gives a ****,
and it's whatever, you're whatever
being lonely is whatever, this life
is so ******* whatever,
banal, passe.

Eyed like a tiger and donated blood to
the vampires, and used like a ******
but only ****** like ****** over;
****** like a father.
Lonely and sad and
contemplating if the bar in the closet

can support my weight at the end of a belt.

Contemplating if the liquor at the bar
tastes sweeter than the people.
Or maybe I should just move on.
Maybe I should pack all my bags
and just run 'till Satan can't collect
and no one knows my name,
so I'll make a new one.

I resent everybody here anyways.
Casual spite. I hope you all die,
so you can't see how much I truly
don't give a **** about any of you.

I'm just tired some more maybe.

Trading in our hearts,
unemotionally here.
Turning to the sun;

We don’t find answers,
we don’t even find solace.
We dance like they do,

like impressionists.
Our art still has clear borders/
Performances end.

We take our masks off.
Pointing out our own flaws, yet…
hmm… Something like this.

Talking at myself
again and learning nothing
new of importance.

So, dance flower dance,
tear your roots and die trying
to amaze us all.

Dance flower dance and
When it rains you might drown but
“freedom” has shades now.

To the mower you’re
just taller now. Just taller.
I had dreams last night,

took ill by morning,
I was on a bus headed
somewhere new to me.

I didn’t know where,
I just knew I was scared and
wanted to go home.

I hate this so much,
and I can’t even give up.
I haven’t earned it.

So dance flower dance,
tear your roots out, die trying
to impress us all.

I ate nothing for several weeks
and in waking lucid starvation
I dreamt I was an assassin;

a pacifist when everyone was looking,
a warrior when eyes were closed.

I stalked prey that hunted,
and as they rewrote history
from centuries away,
I could even hear them smile.

Deep grins, ear to ear,
like blades running across throats,
ear to ear.
Grins wide like rivers,
mountains and deserts,
wet like lakes.

Faster than hell.

I woke up in a sweat,
air conditioner broken,
cats outside meowling,
looking for a ****
and not careful
what they wish for.

Throwing myself into wider oceans
with shallow waters,
throwing myself out,
seeing myself inside.
Distant to shelter.

I've seen too many people reach
so far ahead of themselves
they fall over.

I smothered my ambitions,
and I might pay for it, yeah
but then again I might just
save myself from
so much more.

I wake up like this;
toothache, slowly, sweating and
over the covers.

Speak lowly of me
if you think I did you wrong.
I change names often.

Though I'm not hiding,
my movement mimics prey and
gives thanks to hunters.

Seasonal regards.
I can't get it off my mind
so I sleep like this.

No love.
You didn't believe in expressing your feelings plainly,
till you were crying vulgarities into someone's chest.
A strange cliche became something to accept, ordinarily.

"How the trip never stops", MC Ride is screaming,
"On and on, it's beyond insane."
Drowning out your thoughts was something
you only heard in music, or something your ex said
back in high school,
until you fell asleep with headphones and sunglasses on
blaring Death Grips.
"Choose this life, you're on your own."

"I never asked to be a hero"
Hanging your Moon Knight collection on your walls;
Cried to words written on a page for the first time.
You need to be loved by everyone,
and want to be loved by no one.
Understood the pressure and wrote every day,
wrote to be not the best, but just to return from your
fall from grace, to former glory.
"I never asked to be a hero, but I beg you;
Make me a hero again."

"Sono Teido?" = "Is that all you got?"
Studying frame data, unable to sleep.
Thought you had a calling, but you gave up.
Realized a hobby is only as good as it keeps you
busy from all the ******* you could be thinking of.
Good ******* to keep out the bad.
Chun-Li leaves her opponent with wise advice;
"Tameraibe Make yo" = "Hesitate and you will lose."

All you have to do is shine and be bright,
you'll be the type they want to take home.
However, angels didn't want me when I was young,
and they still observe for seconds at a time.
You press your palms into your eyes;
They pick you up for only a moment.
Didn't believe you could be heart broken.
Then they dropped you.

Came back from the dead without prayers.
Found your armor didn't make you a knight,
it made you a villain of the highest order.
Spoke in curses and sang a hex,
to banish your love to hell forever.
"I was a God, Valera", Doctor Doom spoke,
"I found it beneath me."

Found it after the fact. Three too many voices in your head;
Prodigal Son, Nihilist Prophet, Feminist Instigator.
Few believe so hard in something they've tried to erase.
Tried to ****, to smother, to maim, and finally, to nurture.
To give up, to recover, to come back, and decide you still believe.

You couldn't make anything happen with no love.

It happened when I left home,
that I came across this fact;
Summer was murdered
and I didn’t care.
Like the never ceasing ticks of a cheap watch,
merciless protesting, and I play the conservative
atop a mountain of ****? [I can’t save anything].
I left home a loser and came back a martyr.
I am vulgarity and purity in the same essence.
I bleed and I congeal. I am the prodigal son
with bleeding extremities and a worn mind.
I’ve seen so very much.

My mothers between
light skin and dark skin, blacker
than two of her kids.

My face is her face,
yet people ask if I am
adopted because

they don't see her here,
in the pigment of my skin.
Her love runs deeper.

Her conflict is mine,
her quest for satisfaction
frightens me closely,

like personally.
She breaks down and everyone
treats it as okay,

"Well that's just cookie."
Her family, her husband,
all call her crazy.

But her love runs deep.
I was looking for myself
here, at home. Christmas;

She says, "There are ten
people out there you don't know
who love you. At least."

I float away like
a paper lantern in night;
new fire inside me.

I am on the ground,
with my head up in the clouds.
I am crying now.

I am nothing now.
I am building something new.
I am still searching.

I seek ten people.
Ten people I do not know.
People who love me.

I break down sometimes,
but I have my moms wisdom.
Her smile is my smile.

I put lights in them,
and if they float away I'm
here when they get back.

I'm trying to be
gentle and compassionate.
Honest and caring.

Her face is my face.
My quest for satisfaction;
my love will run deep.

"I don't know if you're going to read this or not but, looks like you used your Bandcamp profile recently.......and I've been thinking......your a ***** .....and I never got the chance to tell you. You can ******* off thats fine, its been a couple years and you just completely wrote me off. I understand you may have wrote other people off because they did you wrong, but you wrote me off on judgment alone. I did you no wrong! You deemed me unworthy of your company as if you are somehow the dictator of all social interaction, because you didn't agree with decisions I made about my life. **** move....you could have at least had the decency to say, "Hey, I don't want to hang out with you anymore.....or even speak to you for that matter." It would have ******..... but it wouldn't have been a **** move. plastic blood indeed"




You are one of the most beautiful people I have ever had the pleasure of meeting in my lifetime.
I was a ******* kid back when I knew you man, **** I still am in a lot of ways. The truth is that my father got really upset when he found out you were smoking **** with me in the car and guilted me into not making music with you, and being a stupid kid I handled it as well as I handled everything else. After that it just seemed awkward to try to say hi. I'd figured you either hate me or move on, and either way we both probably had lives to get to.
I'm living in Cleveland now, been here for three years since my father kicked me out after we got into an argument. It ain't bad. For the most part though, I've kind of quit on music. I make a CD here and there and record a song, but I'm just really tired of trying to impress people.
Nah, I still think you're one of the coolest people on the planet, and I did make a **** move, and wasn't even the last in a string of **** moves I'd have done to a lot of people, and I did do to many.
I'm sorry. You made me a better musician, and person, even just by knowing you, and you deserved better than that.

Laughing my *** off because Louis Keys called me a ***** today,
Austin Heath.

A bleeding hearts campaign;
Spend most nights
vacant.

Wishing you were a smoker,
a harder, speedier drinker;
an alcoholic like your father
&
a ****** like your mother was.

Wearing sunglasses,
staring at the ceiling.
Coast, and
you’re stone sober.

Spend most nights,
laughing it off,
*******,
and you’re already
in debt.

Ever wonder how that guy in the papers wound up that way?
Do you think about why you may believe it's bad to **** people?
Ever fall down and lose the desire to get up?
Ever stare at a door because you don't want to be on the other side?
Have you stared into mirrors for far too long
in public bathrooms because you realized your mind
is somewhere in that carcass?
Did you say something you didn't mean to
absolute strangers just to get them to say
something interesting? Did it work?
Did it surprise you when it failed?
Do you feel emotions or just wear them?
Is your natural state humanism or sociopathy?
Do you think about suicide at least twice,
even on a good day?
Does your head scream at night so loud that
you can't believe others aren't deafened by the noise?
Do see others as putting toothpicks in the sand,
and failing to measure things that are ephemeral?
Are you alone?

I dropped a bag of free muffins
on your shins and the cat
freaked out on top of you
ran off, and knocked over your water.

You're such a ******* stiff
you might as well have
rigor mortis.

Gorgeous though.

So I tried to be nice,
but I laughed too ******* the inside,
and I'm probably
never apologizing.

If you're looking for one,
*******, buttercup.
I got fuel to burn
and I'm saving my remorse
for the people I've ****** over
worse
and you ain't topping that
totem pole.

I walk through life

as if it were a stranger’s home;

trying not to break anything.

Ghosts sitting on the trunk of
a sea foam green car
smoking Marlboro golds,
their teeth gnashing at
carcinogenic tips.

Discussing tastes.
Aesthetic pleasure.

The past can't haunt you anymore.

She said, "we all wish to take a scalpel to
our past.
It's like a sore muscle and you need to
stretch it out."

This repressed everything, and
enforced amnesia; more complex
than conspiracy or tacit reality,
because

you're not supposed to hold on
to something that hurts you.

This house in on fire,
not home, house,
and I'm leaving,
and I've taken what I want.
I'm escaping.

She asks if I'd want to know.

I wake up missing something,
and missing a past.
I don't mind
the weightlessness.
This is how I will live now.

We invented god, and fear
ourselves
and our
own creations.

Torn in flesh, worn in faces,
I like it when I walk somewhere
and the sidewalks are suspiciously
empty of strangers.

Thumps like clockwork,
and speeds up for all the same reasons.

Listening to Miles Davis,
******* a stranger in the bathroom,
falling in love again,
screaming and crying
and banging your head against the wall.

The clouds dissolve and when they
almost see you face to face,
you burn down your bridges
and make them start from
square one.

I didn’t know it’s
unfashionable to wear
Your heart on your sleeve.

I didn’t catch that
lying was part of a game
that we’ve been playing.

It’s just a story
we tell with our bodies and
wash with our bedsheets.

"Affected"
is the only word I have
to describe what you do to me.

There's no risk in you.
I think it's what separates
us from each other.

I've been here too long,
I have "go" in my blood but
"stop" in both my hands.

I'm a boiling man,
and moving too fast for you.
Oil in my veins.

The world is spinning
way too fast to be insane,
I'm just keeping up.

I sank my heart just to be with you.

You put towels under the door to hide the stench of cigarettes.
Put your hands on your head and your head in your lap.
You bled from your thighs and I kissed the back of your neck.
You cried in the bathtub while I tried to stop the bleeding.

I wish it wasn't you.
I wish I never saw you open  up your arms in front of me.
I wish I never even met you, or learned your name just so I could forget it.

I sank my heart.

Whats the matter with you,
little cloud,
heavy today
close to the earth
closer to us.

Closer to the same people
who will wax lyric about
violence
to the kids they're trying
to send to war.

Closer to the wolves.

Wherever you send the rain,
know it won't wash away
the sins of those
who believe in sin.

Drop your weight and
float somewhere
far from here.

Renewed faith in an empty system,
echoes on echoes.
There is nothing here.
The canvas itself has become
the most meaningful of arts.
Eaten by machines and purged
into a series of cross stitches,
screaming, "neon saints are real
and Jesus Christ is in the numbers".
God is in the question,
and both are a feature
of mankind's imagination.
We are alone here.
Information is nothing-
we have not created, no,
we have fathered a fiction.
We will abandon it shortly.

Showed up early for work.
An hour early.
Sitting in the Starbucks out the back door
sipping a tall blonde with room for cream.
No one calls me
whisperhide,
hammerfiend,
lineheart,
professor,
&
shitlord.

Dark. Dark dark circles under the eyes,
I imagine. I could look.
Stayed up with strangers. Stayed up alone.
Unhallucinating. Disengaged.
Sinking a woozy reality in place of solid illusion.
**** it stinks. Job's great, work *****.
At least the coffee doesn't taste like cigarettes,
today it taste like water.

******* in place of sleep. Feeling numb,
where numb is such a relief you'd swear,
you'd swear to your god and stars
you were happy.
At least grateful the head is quiet.
Not silent, but at least quiet.

Switched from TV on the Radio to Death Grips.
Wanna stir the ***? Really?
I'm afraid we're all cowards.
It goes it goes it goes it goes
it goes it goes it goes it goes
...

Lets not lie then;
you’re out there somewhere having a
fine & dandy time, a fish in shallow waters,
meanwhile I’m a shoe-in
for the biggest *******
this side of town and god and country.
And where the **** are you?
What the **** is your excuse?

I’m homeless without you and
I’m a degenerate when I’m with you,
and I’m ****** enough in this
sleepless state to see it’s not fair.
I can’t ******* swim out here…
You can fuss about me not being
next to you some nights, but
I don’t give a **** about
the *** we’re not having,
the touch you’re demanding,
so just shut down the charade.


And you don’t want to know
what’s * *wrong ** with me.


"I don’t give a ****.", yeah,
tattoo it on my lips and kiss them
till they bleed. Don’t care.
Maaaaaybe I’m too tired to think clearly,
but ******* right now I see so much
and it’s so petty and privileged and ******
and when you think you see the lines,
you can’t even see the light of day.
I’d know because it’s here right now.
I’d know because I lost the words to say,
but the lyric would be so ******* gritty.

Lalalala, lalalala, lalalala;

The weight is so **** heavy.

Lalalala, lalalala, lalala;

The escape is too passe.

Lalalalalalalala, and where
the **** are you?

Everyone else is drunk and I’m
a hallucinogenic and a landmine.

Flies in Cleveland bulk up in windows
just like flies in Buffalo. Like flies anywhere
I imagine, except maybe Kansas.
It's been a long time, hasn't it?
Are any of us sorry?
I wouldn't say it first.
That's why this isn't an open letter.
****, listen;
There's a lot of things in this book
that aren't going to make a whole
lot of sense to any of you, but
they're still here and I mean them.
Every single ******* word.
It's not that I hate everyone,
it's just, well... ****.
You bulk up in my windows.
It'll be a longer time till
the next moment we don't speak.

Maybe he pumped up on drugs,
but Cash never went to prison,
so what else is a lie when we
write songs that sound beautiful
and mean nothing?


Your loose clothing, strings
falling off your shoulders,
and dying plants.
Tight on the hips,
this room is full of garbage
&
I’m abandoning it in
a few weeks anyways.

I need someone to eat
all of my sins and make me
clean again, if only for
the weekend.