In my paralysis, you were a shaking fit
Beneath eyelids that carved out my silhouette
The drug that's just impossible to quit
My golden string for my all in bet

I'm off the edge, for the fall of faith
God said "Kid, you gotta carry that weight"

And I feel it heavy in my breath
This is my trust in love and my sudden death
I have your name written across my lips
And its spilling out like a sinking ship

I'm jumping in, I'm trusting you
You said "Kid, that's the dumbest thing you could do"

Your face is a face
Your lips are like lips
When I look into your eyes I see pupils and corneas
My heart beats at approximately seventy beats per minute
When I'm around you it beats faster
Because you have amazing *******

I float like a ghost through the hallways of this house
Trying to pick up the words that fell from my mouth
I was too high and too drunk to know that you had walked out
But now my best friends are used up and I'm drinking my doubt

Tonight the angels of mercy owe me one
Ive been running this town Ive been running around too long
Thirsty as the desert sky and with water in my hands
I let it slip through my fingers swallowed in the sand

Nothing will ever be the same again
And I will kiss white roses into your mouth

It is snow on an empty highway heading towards somewhere you'll never go
It is noticing your shirt has holes from careless ashes
It is waiting
It is knowing there are six billion people in the world and the only one you want isn't there
It is knowing they never will be but hoping they will be
It is waking up in tears because you're scared of dying
It is when you scream at God even though you know he isn't listening
It is all that ever could have been

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

Ohio is for lovers
And I'm the jealous type
You'll be lucky
If you leave it alive

Wringing dead palms like wedding bells
No bouquet on an early grave

Winter came on December the 7th
Prayers from the penitentiary
I begged them to close the gates
Hoping that you would freeze

Ohio is for lovers
And I'm the jealous type
You'll be lucky
If you leave it alive

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

I picked you up
And set you back up in the sky
A fallen star
My love you've nearly lost all light
I picked you up
I put you underneath my wings
I held you close
And softly you began to sing

I took you home
Sat you down upon the pew
You slept like the dead
Could not take my eyes off of you
I should've known
I should've averted my gaze
Now I'm nearly blind
And I feel nearly twice my age

I fell in love with the setting sun
It fell too fast and I felt alone
But I still had my hope
I smiled at the big unknown
I was too stupid to know
How much God could prove me wrong
Fated lovers never last
I know, I know, I've known all along

I woke to the sound
Of your heart beating in my ears
I felt it deep
Wise, in love, beyond my years
Ignoring the sinking feeling
That this was pre-determined fated to fail
We're still those puppies in love
But now with knives jammed in our tails

Finding Heaven in a beautiful girl
Well that's the biggest ******* lie
Don't tell me I'm taking this too hard
Until you know what its like to want to die
I don't have to miss the way you taste
'Cos I got my lips wrapped around a gun
Fated lovers never last
I know, I know, I've known since I was very young

There was a time
When I had faith in only us
But I got so sick of you, celestial
I wanna watch you crumble into dust

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

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

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

If I used my heart to string up my guitar
I'd break it on my own because I play it too hard

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

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

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

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!

I never wanted to fall in love because I always thought I'd die young
I never wanted to sing for fear of being unsung
I never wanted to watch my parents get old, because I know.

The paint is always peeling off my house when I visit it in my dreams
Its wooden voice and cold bones are the ceiling beams
I blame myself for letting it fall apart, because I know.

There is a beautiful girl lying in my bed, mascara on my pillow
And here I am with my troubles, a soundtrack of an old television show
I take my mind off of her words, because I know.

That's already my story
I could have been a better son
We're scared just like everyone else

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

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

If we are victims of circumstance
We have been ***** by angels and shared beds with devils
But it's hard to stomach the food
That would let hunger evaporate
Like holy water

The population of Earth floated into Heaven
While I clung to my tree roots
And my flowers and my excess
"If I am fated to die here
Then I shall do so without regret"

There are atrocities
Of cynics and skeptics
Of broken hearts
But if love is not real
Than nothing is

The words of truth
That a woman can speak
Is an ambulance chaser
With a rose in its teeth
Biting down on the thorns

The origins of war
Lie in the cowboys and indians
That run around in the front yard
Always one too many pick up a gun
To wash their minds in cold blood

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

And if my heart became a graveyard
Your ghost will be here someday
The years you will have wasted are caving you in
And I'm doing my best stuck in the middle
Nothing to do but wait for your walls to collapse
And I hope to be buried there
In the middle of your fall
Cursed to sit by the phone and wait for you to call

I want you to say it even if its a lie
I want you to say the words you don't really mean
Then I will dance on the grave of someone
Who used to be me

And if my heart is a sinking ship
Your body will go down with it
The years you felt it and you'll feel it now
And I'm doing my best not to drown
I can't afford to think about it anymore
And I hope to be baptized here
In the belly of a whale
And darling, we'll have such a great tale to tell

I want you to mean it more than anything
I want you to mean it more than anything
I want you to mean it more than anything
I want to dance with you until the sun doesn't rise

The point of Haiku
Is to twist poetry's arms
And snap them like twigs

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

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 moon is hanging over my sleepy little town
I'm wide awake with whiskey on my brain
Daydreaming, daring to place myself with you
Do my best to kiss away all the pain
And you smile in your sleep and I'm turning over Autumn
The type of man I'd never thought I'd be
Its funny how the slightest sigh can take my breath away
Now the last thing I wanna do is leave
But its just a dream

Baby you're a story but you're hardly an open book
You're all the whispers in my ears
Of a language I've never ever heard
I hold the hopes the hopeless hold

Now I'm dancing around the questions that I'm too afraid to know
Instead of making eye contact I'm dancing poetry
I'm not ashamed at all to waste my thoughts on you
If your arms are open I'll come running, I'll come running

Just let me say what I want to say
I'm sick and tired of this dream
I swear to God my eyes are open now
The clumsy steps I try to take
Let me say what I need to say

And I'm back to my daydreams
Silent but god I wanna scream
Your name through these moonlit streets
But the night is ready to leave
And I toss and turn over to face
The empty space where I wish you would be

I hold the hopes the hopeless hold
I hold their hopes in high regard
I hold the hopes the hopeless hold
We drink to what we'll never ever know

Stars will frown and so will the moon
But they'll be as beautiful as you

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I pinned your poem upon my bedroom wall
I only read the words you scratched out
Because those are the only times you were honest with me
And the rest are empty shells of what you never meant to say

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

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

I am your undaunted drifter
Staring into your wild blonde yonder
Desperately searching for a closeness
Before you are lukewarm and hollow

There is solace in my heavy sighs
That expand only to breathe you in
If you asked me to give you my all
And I fall with white knuckles beaming

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

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?

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

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

Stones will roll like the second hands of time
And I know that you're leaving me behind
But just in case you look back to the past
I will carry a torch for you
So it won't seem so dark
And may inspire something long overdue

We're not in wonderland anymore and the sneer on his face
Is like wide open church doors and the glossolalia is harsh
And it echoes and it slides out the side of his mouth
In wretched and rotten force that molds his grinding teeth
Into a hum like an out of tune ***** and then he raises
The world to his lips and kisses it and blows it gently out
Where the dandelion seedlings end up falling like arrows
In the passing rain and each drop reminds me of
The fifty million people crushed between the ocean and the sky
Its all mine he mutters and his eyes ***** up coagulated hell
All over a dark suit that still has the remnants of a price tag

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

Come down to the harvest with the dancing dead
The skeletons from our closets will crack and break
When their hands hold each other
Past the party lights I'll show you what the party lights hide
The mesmerizing pattern the stars cut into the sky

Upon the water frozen over there are people I used to know
Carving figure eights but all I see is our names engraved
My lover, my artist please paint me upon your soul
You can rest your weary in the bags under my eyes
You can stay here past the party lights
You can stay here all night...

And when the sun rises, just know
When you decide to open your eyes
There'll be no more skeletons, my dear
Just you and I alive

This has happened before and it will happen again
A charlatan for affection
Becomes bankrupted and amazed
And meanders through dusk and dawn
Like a little lost boy

And his ambition and glory break
In harmony with the heart on his sleeve
Held together by bright longing
But he will wear one memory like a crown
For falling for the impossible

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

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.

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