The caterpillar crawls
Leaves its broken shell behind
Slowly but assuredly
It finds some food and hides

Away in a manger
No crib for a bed
The hungry young larva
Sits still and plays dead

Like a caterpillar or a tadpole
Who’s gone before the big break
Never ever knowing anything
They live like small machines

Potential is irrelevant
The second you die
What isn’t is no different
Then what could have been

Seeing stars from in my bed
Repeating words inside my head
I seem to be forgetting things
The day before’s a mystery

All I have to know she’s there
Is an indentation of where she said her prayers
And why she left I’ll never know
And at her return I’ll know only to love her so

Light my past on fire
Throw it all in the pit
Like the one in my stomach
It’s pleading to be lit

You could pawn it off
But that won’t make it go away
You could throw it out
But it’ll be there the next day
To pull it out again

Dust it off
Wipe away the gunk
Put it back on the shelf
Stare at the piles of junk
Burn it all for good

Space cadet
Commander’s gone
Captain logs
“Another’s lost”

Wish we could erase
Our history
Why can I not trace
Your misery

With soap in your eyes
It stings
You cop a disguise
But still sing

Foaming at the mouth
In a park on the moon
Running at pigeons
They’re leaving so soon

Wish we could erase
Our past
Why such a distaste
In life lived at half-mast

A foamy beverage soothes you
While momentary loss consumes you
There’s nothing left
Nothing to do

The idea of being too far gone
Never able to return
Return to what? I don’t know
A blissful ignorance cannot be the only way to go

What are my actions but knee-**** reactions to the outside world?
What’s in the mirror is the face of something I don’t know
For nothing settles long enough for anything but fear to show

I lost myself in trying to find others
I lost my mind in trying to make sense of life
And now time is my best friend
Until the day I look back and realize that time was the one who sunk the knife in

Wasting away
One loss at a time
It’s been a long time since I could remember why I can’t just die

And I won’t so I can’t just yet
I’ll just have to wait it out
Either way, I don’t know if I’d be able to look back and not feel vandalized

The hand that was dealt to me
Is all that I’ve known
I play by the rules and I get no return
Stop putting your dominant left-hand out to be shaken
And at least pretend to look the person in the eyes

I go through the motions
And I learned to care what is normal
In hopes that someone would throw me a bone

All my life I’ve been doing an impression
Of what I thought I’d be like if I fit in
And now whenever someone says to, “just be yourself”
All I can think of is that false version of me
And that the impression I do isn’t even normal
For people still see me as weak

I’m walking on eggshells
Looking like a chicken with it’s head cut off
And then I wonder why I’m avoided

Like a blind man to his wife
All he can do is pray she’s by our side
And in this way I believe in Christ
And bear my cross in life

Her sightless spouse believes she’s beautiful
And as marvelous as the sun
And in this way I believe in God
And await his judgement call

And the unseeing groom believes she’s innocent
As gracious and pure as a dove
And in this way I believe in the Ghost
Which guides us from above

The husband doesn’t know what she sees in him
Yet there she is, to tuck him in
And in this way I believe that I
Can be made worthy of that place in the sky

And like the all-seeing bride who sits by his side
And wipes the tears off from his eyes
Yet unbeknownst to him
When he cries she cries

Like Jesus wept for Lazarus
And Mary wept when Jesus left
But he came back with open arms

And he’ll come again
When all’s been said
In the fullness of our time