I don’t need wayfarers to make me look cool
And you don’t need less of you to make a man drool
We’ve been lied to
By advertisements and executives
Best friends and the Internet
Eat well, be fit
Buy this, get rich
It’s hard enough to see the light
Why buy shades in the middle of the night?

We're all still teenagers writing about love
Like *** can save
Dropping coins into a fat, pink piggy bank
With a hole in the bottom

Merely a bad investment,
All your sense is rolling off the table
On to the ***** bedroom floor
Where you lend love in hopes of incurring interest

She oft praises the strokes of my pen
Yet when her image comes into mind
The words in my head run thin
And my ink runs prematurely dry

I have not written a thing worth mentioning
For the girl with the cute button nose
The hand clasped ‘round my pen begins fidgeting
As my mind remembers her toes

I stare blankly at pages of paper
When my mind’s eye conjures her smile
My cerebral wells start to taper
Though my love for her flows as the Nile

The beauty of her body is not justified in text
So I will spare you the reading: her beauty is best

The greatest thing about the Internet
Is that we’re all writing our own obituaries
So selfie posters, pose on
Blog enthusiasts, report and indulge
Instafoodie, snap before consumption
Because these are the things that will mark our lives
After we decay
Media has longevity
Circuits survive

Life happens when we're by ourselves
With no one to perform for
Or tell us everything will be alright
Or remind us we've ******* up
One too many times

It's then that we decide whether or not we like ourselves
My own contemplation knows no end

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”
And while that may be compelling to some
I would rather wait several years worth of days
Than go to bed with just anyone

Because my convictions transcend my flesh
As my unknown beloved now treads
So I can bear prolonged loneliness
While I lie in my twin sized bed

*** is much deeper than skin grazing skin
It’s the beauty of souls intertwined
Mr. Herrick, your message, received by most men
Makes broken people, hollow and blind

At risk of dying with innocence in tact
I will reject your assertion that virgins must act

Our lungs inflate and deflate, slowly
As my fingers idly trace the small of your back
With eyes and mouths shut
Our souls linger somewhere over our bodies

Your weight pressed against me contrasts sharply
With our ghostly counterparts
Intimately congealed
In a way our flesh fails to match

I am - by far - the most blemished of my brothers.

My reflection reminds me regularly

Though, I know, he lies.

I have heard your reflected half

Taunts the same tales as mine.

So someone is blowing smoke.

The Truth trumpets:

Men are mutually mangled -

But not worn worse

Only damaged differently

He dresses quickly
Though he knows not what for
With no where to be, he creeps

slowly across the linoleum floor
Dwelling despised; he drowns

In coffee always
Black
The bitter elixir stings his throat
Keeping him wired for reasons unknown

And as he looks through
The window's covered face

He sighs
What a terrible pleasure to be alive

It’s a lie, it’s a lie, that I turned out alright
On southbound highways leading into the depths of past mistakes
Feelings of insecurity getting in the way
And you tell yourself “it’s all going to be ok”
Is it all going to be ok?

I’ve already lost everything there is
To complain about,
Empty house, emptier mind
Floating, drifting, down a sonic tide
Where sound waves turn me gently on my side

Let gentle beauty surrender to vicious vice
Calling me down the mountain for the night
Where one turns into four and four to sixteen
I’ve been worshiping this **** calf for over two weeks

We are the pretender, our commonality being a levee of lies
Cracking against the aggressive weight of truth

Inconsistency remains in all but my flaws

It wouldn't be cliché
If It wasn't true

I feel alone
in crowded
rooms