i'll be the toxin
if you wear me on your skin
if you feel me in your veins i'm working
my way
into your heart
across your lungs
and take the blood from bone
let me be the toxin
and you'll never feel alone
but i'll leave you
barren
bony
cold
and dry
just the way i like it
just the way you died

We’ve accepted that we’re already dead.

Like the soldier
Like the victim
No, the veteran of love
(and subsequent heartbreak)
We’ve accepted we’re already dead
So we can keep on living.

I was broken.
No longer working
No longer dreaming
No longer wanting
Pushing away
The hands that tried to help me
The encounters that didn’t last broke me.
I was embattled.
In the trenches of my own existence.

Those we met
Under picture-perfect circumstances
When we thought utopia could be real
woefully disproved this theory.
Rude awakening to what agony feels like

And sleeping all day so we could self-medicate
all night.
Self-medicating with ***** and cigarettes
Not because we needed to but
For respite
For the moment
For a friend in the bottle
Or the lighter.

Life is war
Survival is the only option
Death, inevitable and imminent

We are the ones in the ring
We have lived here
We will die here.

There are those who are weak
Succumbing to the needles
The tap tap tap on veins
Or worse
Ordinariness
Boring as the 8x11’s
found in printers
All around the world.

I will not be ordinary.
Surrender is not an option.
Because I am a gladiator
I have adapted.
I’m still in the ring
But I will defend myself now.
They are the lions;
The king of their race
But I
I am a gladiator in a Gap V-Neck Tee shirt.
I will die with love in my heart,
Belief in my soul
My ashes will spell out the word Hope.

Nothing will break me ever again.

If Insanity's doing something again and again
expecting different results every time
then lock me up, dear, for I'm afraid that I've been
insane all along, trying to make you mine

but I see now where the mistake was hidden
I've simply been out of my mind

Take back your records
I'm moving out west
need to fill up this hole in my chest
Take back these pictures
you left in my head
in my bed
but no copies to hold in my hands
as my memory alters
the state of what was
and what is
but honestly, I'd rather forget
and my height fell
too short
now you make me feel small
all
i'm left with are stories to tell

Take back the skin that you left in my clothes
'cause I don't want nobody to know
Take back the song that you sang in your sleep
'cause I don't think
that you even know what it means
and your heart is a piston
I'm pulleys and weights
you're an engine
and
I'm easily moved by your hands
but I ran this machine
for you
my dearest friend
in the end
I'll be with you in dreams

Take back your records
I'm moving out west
I was wrong
I was you all along