Poetry is a disease
Words sit in your gut like rotten meat
You hold onto your stomach for dear life
'Cos it's full of knives
There's no choice but to stick your pen down your throat
And bring it all up

Yeah, poets can't tie knots
And they don't own a pistol

And all that venom just stifles and stinks

But you can close the book
And close your eyes
Ready to hate yourself tomorrow

There is a point in everyone's lives
Where they wake up screaming
To discover they haven't been sleeping
And then they go to sleep
And can't wake up

God's humor is a punchline
Of straight faced barbarians
In the shapes of a funnel cloud
That coughs up battle hymns
Like pieces of tuberculosis

Love is chemical reactions
That bounce off the walls of your brain
Like children playing pong
That will lose their virginity to each other
He died when she left

Women are works of art
That are made of the bruises of an apple
And the sweet parts are cut out
Like the passages in the Bible
That the priest won't read on Sundays

Who's afraid of Charlie Darwin?
Was on the sidewalk in chalk
And every pedestrian walked by
And walked into a war zone
While a mutt licked the words disappeared

I'd like to trace your fault lines
Further than the bruises that grace under your eyes
And to trace the epicenter to our star signs
Take my hand, let's run away, 'cos baby you were born to fly

And when you choke back the words you don't wanna admit
All I can think is maybe this is finally my time
To take my chances and ease my palms around your heart
And let it rest easy with an improvised lullaby

My timing is flawed, I have no sense of time
My words are so useless when distance cuts our ties
And when I see how the autumn moon is held by the sky
I can't help but hope that someday that's you and I

Should I move forward or hang back and play it cool?
And watch to see if your silhoutte comes over the horizon
Either way, I'm gonna play the fool
Either way, you've already won

So take my hand, let's run away, 'cos baby you were born to fly
I've never had wings, but I'll try to keep up if you don't mind

We are the fury and the greed and the filthy hearts of fishermen
Wrapped necks in their own line fed on by the fish with milk white eyes
We are the rotten apples plucked off the tree of the divine
We are the rotten apples plucked off the tree of the divine

Our father breathes diseases, our father breathes diseases through his fingers
Blows them out from his hands like hot ashes sticking to our eyes

We walk the paths wolves fear to pray but for what reason or a reason at all
Our love is in violence and our love is in pain and we love that we feel this way
We are the rotten apples plucked off the tree of the divine
We are the rotten apples plucked off the tree of the divine

Our mother breathes earthquakes, she breathes earthquakes from her lungs
And the earth will open us and swallow you whole, and it will and it will

There was a young boy sitting on a porch swing
Thinking about the nest of wasps nestled under the gutter
He had been attacked by the nest after venturing too close
And his legs and his arms were swollen like a mosquito pregnant with blood

He was thinking of war and he was thinking of his father
Who had gone to war and left without a trace of him

His grandmother was calling out his name but he did not hear
As he was lost in thought

His grandmother had lost her legs to diabetes
And now was rotting in this house, in her final years
She would call out to him for help and he often wouldn’t hear
And she would berate him with promises of nothing for him

She would sit and listen to an old clock radio
That only picked up religious broadcasts
And she would listen to the gospel being barked distorted
Through the tiny speakers that garbled the words

He began to watch the wasps from a safe distance
To pass the time or for distraction
After her disease took his grandmother
He did not eat for three days

Not that he was traumatized
But he didn’t know how to cook
And nobody had noticed
That she had died

While watching the wasps towards the end of the summer
In a dry day
He began to wander and wonder about her
And he turned on her radio

All he heard was static

We never found Rio after that party on the beach
We thought she just ran off with some rich man
Then two weeks later her body washed up on the shore
But to this day you can still see her footprints in the sand

Hey Rio, I miss your haggard heart
Like on the summer days when we tied that wolf's heart to a kite string
And drug it all through the dirt

We got wasted and danced, danced, danced to the radio
I held on so tight 'till your palms were raw
And through all that blood and sweat and smiles
We spent those summer days in vagabond bourgeois

Hey Rio, I miss your tear-jerking yearning
Like the summer days when your voice echoed through the hallways
And tore down the walls I built around me
You tore down the walls I built around me

I pulled the sword from the stone
I struck you down and road you to the Earth
With a bow and a kiss I wiped the blood from your lips
And even you had to admit it was grandeur
And all the walls you built and empires you buried in the dust
They were meaningless once you found a derelict bannaret
And they flew the bright banners all over town for the wedding
Of the dragonslayer and the basilisk

We bought a house close to town
Right across from Judas Iscariot
We always bicker 'bout the branches of the oak trees
He said "They said time would heal all my wounds but yet
Mine keep splitting open like I'm the dragon against Saint George"
Advance our standards! Set upon our fears with old bitter hearts!
But I ended up hanging off of her every word until
All the life that I had in my lungs choked out

The flower girl is lying
Eastern Lilys through the halls of the morgue
Nero's drunk off wine and waving his bow like a sword
These days I can't remember much about Heaven
'Cept the smell of dead astronauts and gnashing fangs of fury
And a deeper understanding of honest ambivalence
Is there a God in this machine? Has he got his eye on me?
I've got some questions and I expect answers!

Mama, I just killed the only thing I've ever loved
"But each man kills the thing he loves"
I'm a killer with a kiss! I'm a coward with a sword!
Oh what reds does Hell hold for me!

We were primates swinging from the branches of skyscrapers
And our cooing come ons lost in translation
Sharing body heat to keep us warm inside old office buildings
Where the ghosts of typewriters flit about the ground floor
And we let our blood vessels ebb and flow
We became cynical at the thought of falling in love
Like hard tack candy caught in the teeth of giants
We're getting older but our mouths still tastes like strawberries

We'll build our home on a mountain of shopping carts
Our children will be the hum of the generator
And the occasional sunburst we get through the grimy window
Can be the laughter of a family board game
Unconscious of our own bodies, not knowing our own
Only the ebb and flow you, the sky, that falls
Upon the roar of I, the wild ocean
With our bodies building a sanctuary for the sparrows

Will you still love me when the bomb turns the cities to snowflakes?
The sky is on fire but at least I know you're warm

I keep hearing voices I know aren't real
But I listen in tuning into the A.M.
You try to force it but I'm preoccupied
And it's like ash stinging my eyes

I'm on all fours here
I'm not trying to be clever
I'm praying for faith with white knuckles
Wishing the electrician would **** the handle

Impaled all my dreams
On a white picket fence
Seventy two hours of no sleep

Choke down the pain
Chase it with empathy
And I stagger triumphant
Like a drunken colossus

I grab onto the cracks
Of what's left of my sanity
And pull the wool back over my eyes

I hear the last call of the train
And I'm burning alive

Playing kiss and tell with a broken speak n spell
Like a backward broken record, needle dug into my nerves
Slurring love into a verb, I'm drunk on your curves
I'm broken into black and white and you're a piano tuner

I play warped and out of key but together we make hushed harmonies
My goddess of the vinyl sky, the crack and pop of our bodies
I used to trace you as a chalk outline of my favorite hobby
But its the way your fingers play over the bubbles and hammers

There's a will to live and a way to die
But death is the only one who takes his time
A broken pocket watch, the look in your eye
Like you knew this was our last goodbye

And if I don't believe in God can I still pray
That that lonesome highway will bring you back someday

I knew a girl who wasn't afraid to die
She told me that as she closed her eyes
I know a trapeze artist who doesn't use a safety net
And he hasn't fallen yet

I'm drunk again on a Friday night
Screaming into florescent lights
Flat on my back on the bathroom tile
Dear God, its been awhile

But the path to the past is all broken glass
And I cut my feet open walking back
So I hailed a taxi like it was Jesus Christ
And I told the driver to disappear into the night

I've always wanted to fall in love with a satis
I'd set her high on a Trojan horse
And maybe the ranger ain't the death toll
He's off whistling a tune that sounds a little like silver bells

It's never my own words that I get caught up in
And like Brackett said it's the little things
But it's never come 'round right
But I'll be laced through your fingers in any time

I'm sizing up a rope and a steady beam
To put myself between the bullets of reality and dreams
Where the archer's pulling broadheads out of a scorpion's side
And the sheperd's purse smells just like a flatline

You used to hold your hands over your ears
So I whispered my devotion into your confusion
When I laid my head down on your *******
That's the first time I've ever heard my heart beat

And every time I look in backward angles
Your face bleeds into the corner of my eyes
And if worlds apart should be the death of Casanova
Then I'll go down with the ship whistling the color of your hair

I met a girl named Abigail
Who I spent with a couple of nights
She wore horse hair for her raincoat
And paper cuts for eyes
She was born in a manger
Beneath the donkey's bray
Then ran off with the sandman
That the inn had turned away

I met her in Nazareth
Weeping like a warring dove
Her sighs were angels dying
Her tears were Noah's flood
I never called her beautiful
I never gave her my name
For in the moment my lips had parted
My tongue had caught aflame

I became her Christmas ornament
Made of paper mache
But it'd been a cold Christmas
And she kept the cold at bay
She read the Bible to me
As I turned my blood into wine
Our idle hands locked in lust
Just sinners in our prime

She sewed me a crow
Her thumbs like Mistress Miller
But when the crow pulled out its filling
She became as tortured as a killer
The last thing about her I remember
Before that bird plucked out my sight
Was it before me with broken wings
And a crucifix cut in the dying light

When I took to my deathbed
She gave me a hymn from her harp
Her fingers moved like Lazarus
And her stories broke my heart
The notes were my gallows
The chords like a firing squad
But she waited with a smile
To deliver me to God

Safe inside my beehive
Picking cobwebs off the honeycomb
At the heart of this shipwreck

The devil keeps me lukewarm
Suckin' out the red sea
Then parting ways with bad dreams
By way of a submarine ark
Carried by the gust of shooting stars

Boney fingers on the steering wheel
Fingernails dug into the leather
If the sky preaches parades
We'll be in for nasty weather

Landfall calls for mongrels
On crippled horses
Salivating for a sister of mercy
Or any kind of company

Erase me, help me
Before he gets me
I've never seen his face
Just his mafioso posturing

Push me, pull me
Let the sirens scream
I'm too scared to sleep
In the jaws of the peripheral

It's one of those nights
Where the houses are leering
My nerves are buzzing like bees
I'm lost in this city
This ****-covered handshake
Cracks in the sidewalk catch my feet

Fall asleep with the sun's rays
A morphine drip like saliva
From the mouth of another sleepless night
My thoughts are so sentimental
Worthy of a landfill
Like broken toys, I try to cast them aside

But I think too much
So I drink too much
A bad habit I don't mind having
My guts are all *******
And the chill is endless
A dead match I keep striking

Something so pretty
In the midst of this city...
Go ahead and forget me
Forget that you met me

Fall asleep with the sun's rays
And waste away the days
'Till I can open my eyes
Without wanting to die

When I lay in sheets of satin
Upon a bed of thorns
The wind howls like a woman
Cradling her baby, still born

With ****** deep in my heart
And hate smothered in my fist
The rabid rain cuts like razor blades
On the edge of a five fingered kiss

And I held the company of angels
Sorrowed by the weight of their halos
If Heaven should burn, nobody'd know
'Till the ashes blow through Desolation Row

Inside these prison walls
I made good friends with the ghosts
But good friends don't last, and sick of death
Wrapped their chains around their throats

There's a storm in the East coming quickly
I can hear Satan's stomach growl
I was told to wait here for salvation
But my soul is emaciated now

The world is the taste of steel
Lips wrapped around a revolver
Despair to dust, and no collector
All your precious prayers no longer matter

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
I bid my faith in you farewell
So I will walk alone through the ice and the cold
Kept warm by the fires of Hell

One eye open
One eye close

My body is a ghost town built on pillars of salt
And I can chew my way out
Standing at the top of a broken staircase
Holding up my heart, derelict of
Trying to cradle it wildly
Running home to find it suffocated and squished

No one saw what I have for the world to see

And my feet leave the ground

Over the waterfall
Into the undertow

I open
I close

One eye conquering
One eye conquered

Once I dreamt I was a cross
A lonely cross, leaning on a hillside
Born from an olive tree

There came a march towards me
And a man's soul was woven onto me, and splinters
And I, a lonely cross, drenched in spit and sweat and blood

The body astray but the spirit stains
A lonely cross soaking in splinters spit sweat blood and rain

When I dry my roots will be cut
Will I return to where I came?

Do I have a soul?

Or am I just firewood not yet aflame?

I found God naked in a bathroom stall
Writing my epilogue by running his fingers
Through the dried tobacco spit on the wall
Embarrassed by his nakedness
And in an effort to save his grace
Drinking his last swell of coffee
And choking up the dregs
With a gesture fit for a trucker's romance
He wiped his nose with his hand
And offered a shake fit for a ticket taker

"Its nice to finally meet the man
That made me feel afraid to die"

My heart is a burning city
Held up by pillars of salt
No one's sure how it started
A cigarette astray?
Catherine O'Leary's heartbreak?

Job lives in a house on the hill
On the teetering outskirt of town
He visits twice a week
And carries a purple umbrella for the ashes

Can pity turn into love?
Can saying it make it real?
Are we doomed to dream of a lucid skyline stained orange?
Slaving over carting wheelbarrows full of gristle
Of the burning tower I used to be

My silhouette on the horizon
Is the hunchback of New England

She took the midnight train out of Neverland
Straight into the morning light
She kicked off her heels at the platform
Wearing the stains on her dress with pride

She said "You were just a little lost boy...
I never asked you to fall for me
And Jesus may have died for all your sins
But only Luke bothered to save the thief"

We made love in the dead of winter
I touched her like a rosary
When spring came she licked the fat off my ribs
Pieces of apple stuck in her teeth

She said "Dust I came from and dust I will go to
And I will go in vain
'Cos the only thing I gave back to God
Was Abel and Cain"

My dear, why are you so smitten with the idea
That the wax that sticks your bones together
Don't whither away with the wick

She disappeared after that party on the beach
I thought she just ran off with some rich man
But two weeks later her body washed up on the shore
And I can still see her footprints danced into the sand

The neighbors know me as a shadow under a porch light
That keeps them awake past 3 A.M.
But don't get the wrong idea, my friends
I only smoke to stop the shaking in my hands

But when I do it stings my eyes
But it numbs my tongue, keeps my mouth dry
So the words I want to say to you
Don't come spilling out and ruin me

My thoughts are scattered like ashes in the wind
That brings rain storm after rain storm

I kissed your lips for the last time tonight
And we both smiled silent goodbyes
Don't get me wrong, my dear
I only checked the rear view mirror
To see if you were watching me drive away

My thoughts were gathered like the fear in a handful of dust
I fought my way through bony fingers and got on my way

Often times late at night
I lie awake, alone
And shoot at an Albatross
That sits outside my window
With a finger pistol
It is silent and friendly
It writhes to amuse me

There is only the sound of bones
No heartbeat in my ears
No ripple of breath
Just the calm lap of water
As the Albatross shakes off a chill

I dreamed last night that I spoke with the Earth
And it said in my time of dying and in my fever dream
There were cyber punk priests and their god complexes
And congregations of honest men itching for trigger time
The carnivores from my childhood came with molten teeth
And my fever dream swept clean around the earth

Then she said I felt as you did often
Like a magnifying glass when the red ants took revenge

Hands on rope
Swaying frayed and free,
Palms torn and burnt

A reckless lover waiting for arms outstretched,
But free fall in bliss!

We could haveve watched the giants fall
But we had no stones to throw
Yesterday was for the young
Today we buried them as the old
I miss your wild eyes
And the way you kissed me like Judas
This feels like a fever dream
And I'm struggling to live through it

Your psychobabble at 3 A.M. on a lonely night
A year after my best friend died
Helped me more than any therapist
Or any drug ever did

Now I'm tongue tied
My tongue is like loose shoelaces
And I'm tripping over every word
That comes pouring out like a cheap bottle of wine
That keeps us awake long enough to realize
That something between us is still screaming for life

And those times when you drink enough to kiss me
My heart beats so fast that I start to pray it won't explode

And I envy every boyfriend
That's got to lie awake with you at night
While you were writhing in pain from your sickness
That I wish I could blow away like dandelion seeds

And I realize
That I plan ahead like a game of shogi
And I haven't even asked you to join me
In trying to polish off a bottle of this cheap wine
That's kept me awake for four days and four nights
So afraid that something between us has died

And those times when I don't hear your voice
I reach out and imagine that I'm shaking hands with a phantom
Of the craziest little thing...
But to me it's everything

Remember when we thought we could burn the world down?
And now we can’t even manage a spark
We aren’t bored with passion or refused it
We just never knew it
And we’ve all become compliant
Being stale gasoline in gallon drums

We could be virgins or saints but we’re liars
And we wouldn’t have it any other way
Are lilac fields are wilted
And covered in swarms of honey bees
And we walk hand in hand through the hives
And come out swinging

Putting our trust into mapmakers who’ve never seen the world
Their limbs have all been broken
Now treading water with their hearts
This could be the most meaningful turn of the world
And you’d never ever know it
Until it came like a tidal wave crashing through your front door

We’ve been screaming at the sky until our throats are raw
And all we hear back is silence, not even an echo
I swear to God I haven’t felt like myself in so long
‘Cos all that’s left of me is confusion
We’re all mad here in this wasteland
With our dead cowboys and our dead spacemen

Forever Peter Pan in a business suit
Forever Peter Pan when my spine has doubled over
Forever Peter Pan on a morphine drip
And forever Peter Pan in a casket
And all that’s left of a name
Is what’s chiseled on your gravestone

I feel hollow in the city
I feel alone in the country
But in bed by cars or by bugs
My imagination gets the best of me

I stare into the setting sun
Hoping the light will fill me up

I feel like an ant
I feel like a headless horseman
Friends buried in the dust
Of what time kicked up between us

I stare into the rising sun
One more day and then I'm gone

The sun is drowning in the horizon
Flailing its brittle breaking rays
The Oakridge girls sweat in the factory
Sisters of Mercy in a hospital 10,000 miles away

Chasing down a wailing ambulance
Inside, a patient who swears he's still alive
His eyes are crying milk white protein
The Priest and Doctor insist to him he die

And I've become so lonesome
Now that the Oakridge girls are gone
The dusk is blood red in the East
But a celebration is started with the dawn

Nothing, no nothing ever changes
Quick and clean if you are blind
Charlene will turn your heart to stone
But the Oakridge girls are always kind

It is the dog door and the picket fence.
It is the malicious world destroyed in you.
And your name is writ in dust
Spelled out in coils of your sloshing yellow belly

Eve smiles at you from the kitchen table
Pieces of fruit are stuck in her teeth.
A river of spittle pauses on her chin
And drips down onto her warm breast.

It is the kind of happiness
The dog door happiness
That inspired the snake to eat its own tail.

Can you **** me before you go?
I can't spend another night alone after knowing you so well
And I'm staring at the ceiling listening to you breathe
I've still got a lot of goodbying to do but I can put 'em off
As long as it takes
Put my faith back in love

So what do they get by sitting on fences?
Your feet will never touch the ground
You can't walk
You can't run
You can't sleep in the sun
You can't dance until the sun goes down

Dreams are something you have to steal and drag them into life
I dreamed of Jackie O and I dreamed with her two weeks
We were cold and we were starving so I left in the morning
And she said "Once you leave you won't come back."
She carried a bottle whiskey.  She was neat and she was dizzy.
We spiraled out

Then I dreamed of a girl from Ohio
Who was a trail of excuses that circled around and around her neck
An off-brand noose

I learned the hard way to hold on tightly and let the wind carry you away like a seed
You gotta leave quick so you can be the first flower of the season
And you'll pick it without knowing it's the first for a reason
And nobody will ever see us again

Your eyes are the ocean switching colors
Trapped inside this lazy eyed summer
Driving through the streets of small town rumors
And they had the nerve to call us the late bloomers

So we may have fell behind
But we never were lost we just like taking our time
But drinking doesn't do enough to unwind
Screaming vengeance in the burbs of a broken mind

So when you're sick of the city and the neon seems too bright
We'll head down to the country run away into the night
But I always thought that stars looked more like
Cigarette burns on the skin of the sky
Than sleeping satellites

They say you're the kind of girl to treat like an exit wound
******* all the sugar off your silver spoon
Let me show you I'm a black sheep, let me show you to my room

So when you're sick of the city and the neon seems too bright
We'll head down to the country run away into the night
But I always thought that stars looked more like
Cigarette burns on the skin of the sky
Than guiding fatalistic lights

The scene is an old boathouse on some forgotten lake
A sleepy memory that reminds me of my great mistake
My inspiration for self hatred and obsession with cause and effect
But I ain't smart enough to figure it out, at least not yet

My biggest fear was never dying alone, I wouldn't mind that at all
But hating the company that has to watch me when I fall
'Cos there ain't no way in Hell I'm gonna end up in Heaven
Maybe I never had a spirit and I am not my Father's son

When I finally break in two and they strap each piece into a chair
They will curse my wretched name they will cut off all my hair
My last words to my one and only a girl from way down South
We'll meet again my love I'll see you in the Devil's mouth

Maybe you could be my Maria
But maybe my Maria is all you'll ever be
Am I alive or is this just a vivid dream?
Or am I just making up stories?

If I grew wings I'd stay out of the air
'Cuz I've knocked on Heaven's door but nobody seems to be there

Sleepwalker, I've been chasing you for days
Its been 'round twenty two years since I've seen your face
I want to dance with a question, I'm through with talking straight
Sleepwalker, I want to change your name

All the highway signs are painted with your name
Oh, the way you love me could be just a car up in flames
But as white as my knuckles get
I'm pushing down, I'm flooring it

And the streets howl of lost love caution underneath my wheels
But these cold streets couldn't ever understand what I feel

Sleepwalker, you're no dead end avenue
A morphine dream from a concrete point of view
I follow the chalk outline of a kiss to your castle in the air
My salvation found in the tangles of your hair

Oh, I've been chasing you for days
Sleepwalker, are you finally awake?

I found you underneath the moonlight
When the lights blacked out a quarter past one
And while everyone was bummed out it was ending
You were still dancing to a song all your own

The light it turned your skin into purple
And it hid your face like a wedding veil
I watched you twirl all around me
And in the sunrise you slowly disappeared

While I was waiting out on the balcony
I heard you cry up from the ground
So I left you three blue roses
So if you ever come back you'll know I'm hangin' around

I wrote this to remind me
For the time when I get old and gray
And if my memory starts fading
This way I know you'll never fade

I found my way through postcards to a dead end avenue
It reminded me why I left this place and I knew just what to do
So I jumped inside a space suit and sank into your soul
Now it's hard to hold a smile when it's always so ******* cold

I came across a crucifixion and my teeth started to fall out
I tried to ask for forgiveness but I was too late 'cos what I said was mumbled out
And my nerves started crawling like worms out of my mouth
Those coffee colored cowards curled into musical rounds

And tell me if you've heard this one...where the three blind mice eat other?
And the thirteenth fairy was Jack Kevorkian and did that sleeping girl a favor
Then in the courtyard I found Jesus hooked up to a morphine drip
I asked him about the human race he said "I couldn't give a ****"

So I walked into the jungle that was tangled like your hair
I've been down to this dead end before and I really couldn't care
That I was walking back through postcards that were naked in my dreams
We're just like fish without fins trying to swim up a dried up stream

I marked you as a fool
When you fell onto the sand bursting
With an unreal sense of euphoria
When you could still see the silhoutte of your name
After the tide collapsed into itself
It left you smitten with the idea
That the wax that sticks you all together
Doesn't wither with the wick

So I collapsed into myself
By candlelight and canned heat
Drew up and insubstantial
You treasure the primordial gold
I melt it to fit my posture
I am the sound of a dying constellation
A sound that no one will ever hear
And I marked you as a fool

These walls are paper thin
And I'm the kid trying to draw on them
But I keep tearing them down
So embarrased that I decided to skip town
******* my crayons in a grocery bag
On a stick thrown over my back
I left when my mother was at work
I figured when she came home she went berzerk
But I was long gone and three blocks older
Never even looked over my shoulder
Humming anthems for my tortured ambition
Five years old and no restrictions
Until the winter came and I was exposed
Naked metaphorically from head to toe
Written off by God and left for dead
I started questioning the type of life I led
So I returned to my home with my tail tucked in
But it was abandoned long ago when the snow rolled in
I sat and looked around and saw the walls were still intact
Pulled my crayons out of the bag, most were old and cracked
I started purposely pushing as hard as I could
Turning scribbles into holes in everything I understood
Soon enough that place was shredded, tatters carried away by the breeze
And I looked upon my masterpiece

You had it comin' kid
You were already pushin' your luck
Your fatal flaw was thinkin' two broken hearts
Could patch each other up
But if anyone was born to run it's you
I guess with you I was born to lose
'Cos any time I gained any ground
The bottoms fell outta my shoes

A bunch of us boys got together
To watch the dreams of the girls float down the river
It shone like Gold like Midas was drowning
And when the rain started it just kept on coming
No shelter, no rain coast
Shipwrecked, not one of us could float
We were all star crossed lovers
Tortured by the thought of losin' one another

I miss our drunken weekends
When our feelings leaked through our teeth
Our tongues used to be tied together
Now we don't even speak
So I'll just wrestle down this whiskey
Until I can't feel it bite
Then stride home like a colossus
In the dying dead of night

We got a bunch of the guys together
And reminisced about the girls we left by the river
But nobody said nothin'
And the rain beat on the windows, it kept on comin'
Yeah we think too much
So we drink too much
We're all star crossed kids
Lookin' for a way outta this

******* these cold nights under the street lights
Where the houses loom under the bruise of the moon

A bunch of us boys got together
To watch the dreams of the girls float down the river
It shone like Gold like Midas was drowning
And when the rain started it just kept on coming
No shelter, no rain coast
Shipwrecked, not one of us could float
We were all star crossed lovers
Tortured by the thought of losin' one another

So maybe fated lovers never last
I know I shoulda known all along.

In and out and in and out

He talks like a dead radio
The years are skin and bone
The chalk outline beat faster
Than the blades of the helicopters

But in and out and in and out
Taking in the ****
Suffocating the starfish
No exit from this route

The twilight folk are breathing
In and out and in and out

I discovered on the spiderweb
When the noon sun kicked me out of bed
Let Winter beat back Spring
So the bees and spiders stay asleep

Nobody's gonna talk me out of this
But I wish they'd try
Push the pills into my mouth
Only waking up surprised

I'd rather be sleeping next to you
With my cracked lips painted blue
In and out and in and out
Taking in the ****
It's better not to live through this

In and out and in and out
The cradle is rocking endlessly
Till the babe inside gets dizzy
In and out and in and out

This bottle of ***** is all too well abused
It makes my existence feel like an excuse
Well maybe somebody else could put it to some use
'Cos the circle of life feels just like a noose

I've always wondered how Atlas felt
And if he was ******* with the hand he was dealt
And I quote from the walls of this flesh colored cell
We're all born and we all die and neither leaves a very nice smell

I feel like an ocean churning in the gut
Of a low life, homeless, ****** eyed drunk
Lyin' on his back after Atlas shrugged
Off the weight of the world like it was all junk

This little heart of mine is eating me alive
This little light of mine is burning me alive

I have a closet full of spiral notebooks that contradict each other
Each one a piece of me that I don't want to remember
The chicken scratch of sleepless nights and unstable letters
And I have no intention of pulling them all together

My pencils are in fragments and my pens have all bled out
So I paint pictures with my self destruction and my self doubt
And while my star has burned bright but now its nearly burnt out
There's a fire in the attic and I'm spaced out on the couch

The black sheep is back in town and missed none of you at all
Accepted on himself all the cracks in that cell wall
His words sit collecting dust in a blackbird's drawl
Eyes wide open with a smile 'till the white horizon falls

Like the river shapes the stone
Like the sea kisses the sky
Like the ocean swells with pride
Like you left me on my own

Like the rain that lasts all day
Like the sky kisses the sea
Like the sun melts my wings
Like the words we couldn't say

Like the ground I'll be buried in
Like the whole world reduced
Like the mud on my old boots
Like I'll never see you again

Like the world that I'll watch burn
Like the world reduced to remains
Like the fire still ablaze
Like your love for which I yearn

I held a heart under the water
Past the glare of lights from the shore
In the harbor I let it slip through my hands
And fall into oblivion

We keep all of our secrets
At the tips of our fingers
When our nerves are on fire
They burn like pyres

All the clay and the ribs
I cast them into the sea
The ripples break like a fever
Upon a ******'s skin

I cry out into the darkness
To **** the silence of the waves
So I sink into the shallows
To wait out the ides of the day

To watch their faces change
From horror to still frame
The eggman never had the guts
But I am the Walrus
And I ate all the baby seals

Who are you?
She asked with a flirting smile
And I said I am your ghost
I am all you want to forget
And I won't let you do that

An observer is anyone
That can watch frogs
In their natural habitat
But the greatest poets picked them
Out of the water and squeezed

Someone once said to me
Pain is reality
But reality is not just pain
Because if it is
We'd all be full of shotgun holes

Insomnia is just loneliness
Reaching out across the room
To hold any ghosts that might be lingering
And the ever extending arm
Never gets closer to anything

This is a chance
To turn our zeroes into ones
And gather up our teenage years
And burn them

While the milk eyed chandelier has cut the bean stalk
And you tumble into shattered glass stained with self-doubt
There is a persistent and soft haze
That I will breathe into you

Somewhere in between the distorted coloring
Of your masochistic schism beauty awakens
And the flame that peels off of my affection
Will embrace you between the never and the now

The hands of Mark David Chapman were set aside in seperate barrells
And the backbreakers carried them into the bomb shelter
The sky was raining black acid from a blue moon
Blackbirds picking at the festered wound of a ghost town

The children were dressed up as chinese dragons
And moved through a black hole made of pick up sticks
The domes of their heads were covered in sweat
Eyes wide as headlights in the haze

There was an old man who sat leaning against the barrells
Playing with an old kaleidoscope
Newspapers littered the floor with all the same story
Peace was coming

It weighs heavy on you
Even when you've never spoken before
And when they pass through the distance
Like a radiowave, or a stormcloud
And to see how many rivers snake to their final shake
That drips off like morning dew in the middle of the night

Would I be missed that much?

Rumor has it Joan of Arc used to play guitar
That she sang songs similar to me
So what's that say to you about my masculinity?
I'm a parody of who I used to be

I never pay no mind to shooting stars
Wishes just remind me that I'm missing out
So what's that say to you about my dreams?
Their edges burned and tattered at the seams

They've always said you gotta know yourself
But the only thing I know about myself is
That I don't know myself at all