lately, we’ve been talking about the way things change
we’ve been building cities with our mouths only to blow them out
as if the future is a candle, with trails of smoke like lace,
just the murmur of secrets across the grass getting
softer softer softer
until they disappear, until everything disappears
everything disappears

lately, i’ve been think about the way things change
like seasons and lovers
i’ve been thinking about how
the only thing more permanent than forever is never,
and everybody thinks it’s going to be forever until it’s not
i’ve been thinking about whether it’s a good thing or not
because all the rock stars whose names
we were screaming at concerts are middle-aged parents now
and it’s weird, but i think it’s kind of cool too

times change and things change and that’s okay
you can’t be sixteen forever, and why the hell would you want to be?
being sixteen was kind of a ******* nightmare
growing up isn’t inherently bad,
and if you’re gonna be peter pan
then you’re gonna be lonelier than a lost boy

and maybe i’m the kind of person who expects
everything to fall apart, but life is equally destruction and rebirth
everything disappears, everything’s gonna be different
everything’s gonna be awesome
everything’s gonna be awful

think of it this way:
everything’s gonna be wonderful
just like everything’s gonna be terrible
that’s just the way it is
luck of the draw, life is a crapshoot
and sometimes your hand is ******, but you’ve still got to play it anyways
or you’re just gonna fold over like house of cards

think of it this way:
even in the darkest of nights the moon is always
hiding out somewhere in the sky
and the sun going to come up tomorrow
i couldn’t tell you why exactly because i didn’t pay any attention
in science class, i was too busying doodling in the margins of myself
and looking for stars,
but the sun’s gonna come up tomorrow
it always has, and the sun’s reliable like that
and i know that only thing that’s certain is that nothing is,
and i know i’ve got no proof, but i’ve got a hunch
that everything’s gonna work out
and i know “you’ll be okay” always sounds kind of hollow
but it does ring true

and we’re still young enough to be dumb
and we’re still young enough that we’ve got so many possibilities
it makes me ******* dizzy
and if you’re lucky enough to have
the world in the palm of your hand, don’t clench your fist;
don’t let it slip through your fingers
don’t let go
don’t let go

you were a mistake worth making

You can tell a lot about a person from the way they leave.

we think my great uncle eddie
was on the assembly line that built the atomic bomb.
my aunt mildred said he could never tell her
exactly where he was or what he was doing,
far away in the desert
back when he had to take trains to visit
back when manhattan was just place in new york,  
he could only tell her that he loved her.
we still don’t know for certain,
there are some stories that are taken to the grave.
but i wonder, i wonder if my aunt ever looked at his hands
and thought of the destruction
that could be so carefully hidden in his palms,
explosions under his fingernails,
the shells of burnt out cities in his fortune teller's lines
when he touched her delicately,
brushed her hair behind her ear.
but she probably didn’t;
most people only question what they want to question.
everyone thinks of what their hands have built.
not everyone stops to think of what their hands may have destroyed
in the process.

question is and always will be:
am i dead when my heart stops beating
or am i dead when everybody forgets about me?
do i matter because people tell me i do,
or do i matter because i say i do?
i think therefore i am, i over-think therefore i wish i wasn’t.
because existence is a tricky thing;
you don’t want to die but you’re too scared live.
and maybe it’s futile, and maybe it’s pointless
maybe i am struggling with
my gifts and curses, poems and verses,
looking for a meaning that just isn’t there.
and maybe it’s ironic,
how we waste our lives wanting to die
but just because you have
doesn’t mean you don’t ache for what you haven’t
and sometimes being grateful is hard
when you’re supposed to
and you know, this world, it’s rough all over
and everybody gets cut up at little.
nobody wants to grow old but nobody wants to die young.
i want to make a mark, but i know it’ll be forgotten.
and i don’t want my marks to be blemishes
and i don’t want my marks to be scars
and i don’t want my marks to be footprints on the beach
and maybe there’s no meaning,
and maybe there doesn’t need to be.
all i know is that most people don’t think that
the vastness of the universe is something
to tell bedtime stories to,
but i’d tuck myself in with the stars even after
they reminded me again how small i am in comparison.
so either i’m too stubborn or too smart to talk to god,
paint me anyway it fits
paint me any way the lighting hits
i am open for interpretation.
because you’re semi sweet and i’m completely bitter
you’ve got an altar i don’t know how to worship,
you’ve got faith in all kinds of things.
and i’m cynical, i’m altered,  
i’m ****** up in the best and worst ways.
i write poems just to keep my hands busy,
i write poems just to keep myself from writing eulogies.
and i know, what a ******’ contradiction
the dreamer who doesn’t believe in anything.
i am the only one inside my head,
so would it be classified as a tragedy
if my dreams bled out with me?
nobody knows me like i know myself
and if i die then a library full of words crammed
inside dies with me, and dying young
is only a shame if you had something to live for.
maybe i am the end and beginning of my own legacy.
i don’t know about our ghosts and past lives
lurking behind our eyes, i don’t know
if you’ve got somebody else’s smirk on your lips
or if i’m loving you out of a second-hand heart.
but i think, but i like to think
that while my bones may be borrowed,
matter not destroyed or created
just redecorated, that my soul’s not recycled.
but i’m not looking for a dictionary definition
sometimes we’ve got to stop and cut the ignition
before we crash like waves,
i’d rather going somewhere slow than going nowhere fast.
and it’s not like i’m a visionary,
it’s not like i’m even really much of a poet;
i’m just a ******* kid with a thesaurus
and too **** much to say.
and i’m trying to tell you a lot of things,
but i don’t know how to phrase anything.
so maybe we’re old souls
and maybe we’re brand new,
maybe i’m borrowed and maybe you’re blue.
and maybe it’s all random and maybe it’s all planned out,
and maybe fate is for suckers
and dreamers drowning naïvety
and maybe fate is all we have.
maybe we’re looking at the world through
totally different lenses
but maybe somehow we’re seeing
the same things.

like everything else,
you never see the collision
until you’re already crashing;
all the coins in your cup holders raining down
to be suspended like copper stars,
our hair floating around us like we’re underwater;
we are drowning in mid-air, we are just a car upside down,
headlong towards the water
rushing to a date with destiny we had wanted to cancel.
we are just an airplane shot out of the sunset,
blazing down like a comet.
and if you have only seconds left,  
have you lived a life you’re proud of?
would you change your regrets?
who are you thinking of as it all goes dark?  
who would you call to tell that you love them
two minutes from the carcass of a plane crash?
why don’t you call them now?
but see the thing is, most people don’t start living
until they’re afraid of dying.
we are creatures of comfort and comfort is in habit,
and until the car crashes
until the plane falls from the sky
until the bank is held up
until death’s staring us down,
just trying to see who blinks first,
most of us aren’t going change anything.  
we all know that the sun is going to expand
and swallow us whole,
but we won’t care until it’s singeing our eyebrows.
we like to talk about death
as if it’s not inevitable,
and we like to ignore the last page
until we’re on it.    
we are all the in between, we are all in transit,
we’re all nomads and lonely hearts and wanderers.
we’re all bandits, we’re all thieves in the night
illuminated by our emergency flashlights.
we’re all stars destined to be either
black holes or supernovas, imploding or exploding.
so maybe we’re all destined for destruction,
but i don’t care, it doesn’t matter.
not to me
because it’s all about the drive not the destination,
it’s all about the story not the ending.
and i don’t know if i believe in any god,
if i think he’d be the clockmaker or the caretaker,
and i don’t know if destiny damns us
or if we ***** our own selves over.
perhaps life, perhaps the end is predetermined
and we’re all stuck in our circuits,
we’re all mice in our own mazes.
but there’s something to be said for the middle, isn’t there?
the story doesn’t stop meaning anything
just because you know the ending.
and perhaps each of us is the director of our own existence,
and perhaps we are the chorus member of somebody else’s
and perhaps we’re just caught up in the details of it all.
what i’m trying say is,
we’re all a little ******* up
and we’re all a little messier than we let on
and we’re all just trying to figure it out.
because i have at least two existential crises a weekend,
i’m just trying to beat the world to the punch
i’m just trying to unravel the universe
before it unravels me.
i’m trying to unravel the universe with
my tongue like a cherry stem.
the hand we are dealt is not a choice
but the way we play it is
and i don’t know much about fate
but if you’d tell me, i’d being willing to listen.
i think too much about the past,  
and i can’t tell you about the future,
but on the off chance the fault is in ourselves
and not our stars, i just want you to know i love you.
if i don’t say it i’ll have no one
to blame but myself.

if you listen to album enough on repeat,
you can almost hear in the intro to the next song
in the last notes of the one still playing.
if you talk long enough, i can almost hear how the disjointed points
you’re making flow together in the same way
with their stitches still showing,
you were never much good at sewing.
you’ve got a mouth like a rock ballad, sweet in your bitterness.
crooked chords that still sound good with the way you smile.
you’re a record-breaker and i’d never skip a single song.
i’ve a got a list tucked in your pocket of songs that make me cry,
you are at the bottom of my list and the top of my lungs
you were like good music;
your notes didn’t always sound right
but you always made me feel something.
a number two pencil drumming,
tapping out at the opening to some love song on your desk
like the steady beep of a heart monitor,
proving that you’re alive with every hit you make.
you never stop moving.
once you told me that you kind of think
if you sit still too long you’ll never manage to get up again
like an old, out-of-date computer
that might never turn back on if you switch it off.
an object in motion tends to stay in motion
and an object at rest tends to stay in rest,
and sometimes if you get into to bed you never get back out.
procrastinate your way out of your problems
and into to bigger ones.
sometimes to get your life together, you’ve got to take it apart.
a butcher with a butter knife, a knight with a wooden sword.
i’m scared of taking apart things i don’t know how to put back together,
and i’m **** at reading instructions.
because i guess sometimes when i write you poems
they're more about me than they're about you.
i don’t have cold feet, just cold toes, and sometimes i think
if i paint my toenails ruby red then my feet might magically take me home
to the house i never wanted to be in when actually i lived there.
life’s funny like that.
you never want what you have until it’s framed in your rearview mirror.
so i snuck out my bedroom window and i fell through the roof,
and when peter pan told me to fly, i just fell.
the sky was too polluted to find the second star to the right.
i guess i just didn’t believe hard enough.
and if believers never die then maybe cynics never live.
it makes sense i guess,
you were born out of a coffin, you were born in an abortion clinic.
even you can see the irony,
but i think you just were too stubborn not to exist.
you were a mess way before you ever learned how to clean yourself up.
birthmarks on your ribcage, consolidated rage
i memorized every piece of that you let me.
you told me that you’re not a shield, you’re just a bullet.
you’ve been a long-standing fistfight with meaning
ever since you were old enough to throw a right hook
and get your tongue tangled up in the chorus.
past your prime and still throwing punches,
i guess i respect the tenacity and pity the lack of self-awareness
at the same time.
you never knew when to bow out of the ring.
you never knew when to give up.
you never knew which fights were losing ones.
and you say “i’m no good” and it just makes me wanna get to closer
to find out for myself
and you say “leave while you still can” and it just makes me wanna stay
to prove you wrong.
guess i’m a glutton for punishment, i’m misery’s permanent tenant.
the only one dumb enough to leave behind roots in the riverbed
and expect them not to get washed away.
now you’re always on my mind,
i keep seeing cars like yours drive past my window.
you were lanky and you hated ******* that word when i said it,
laughing into your mouth
but you were all limbs, and now i’m missing you like one.
i go searching for addresses to buildings
i know that are probably still abandoned just see
if any part of you still lives there.
the neighbors tell me it’s haunted,
little kids cross on the other side of the street to avoid the chill.
but i’m stubborn, and i’m not afraid of the ghosts.
a foreclosure sign is still in an overgrown front yard.
a mailbox with the flag still up.
furniture all covered up in blank sheets like the paper.
it was all over before it started, you moved out before
you even unpacked all of your boxes.
i think you left some behind.