There’s streets, streets, streets, streets,
Endless streets ahead of me,
Black tar bleeding into cracks,
Stretching farther than eyes can see.
They go on without mercy,
without a name, without end,
Just more streets, streets, streets, streets,
No turning, no bend.

I walk ’til my soles are thin
like paper peeled from stone.
Feet dragging through the dirt,
‘cause no one walks alone.
There’s bottles smashed in gutters,
and faces in the rain,
All strangers to each other,
tied together by the same **** pain.

Keep walking, man. Just walk.
Don’t stop for the moon.
It’s a liar like the rest.
And dawn? It’s coming too soon.
A cigarette burns like hope,
and ashes fall like dreams,
On these streets, streets, streets, streets—
nothing’s ever what it seems.

There’s streets ahead and streets behind,
and neither way feels right.
But still you march, just march along,
in the dead and sleepless night.
Through alleys of the hopeless,
and avenues of pride,
It’s streets, streets, streets, streets,
and nowhere left to hide.

So walk, man, just keep walking.
That’s all that you can do.
Because streets don’t end,
they only stretch—
And somehow,
so do you.

he said:
“there’s a point where you stop
believing in miracles.”
he sat down,
pulled a flask from his jacket,
and took a long drink.

“but the funny thing is,” he said,
“you keep waiting for one anyway.
like some part of you
didn’t get the memo.”

i watched him stand up,
sway a little,
then walk out the door.
he left the flask behind.
it was empty.

the world hums like a bad refrigerator,
louder when you’re trying to sleep.
I sit in this rotting chair,
watching the ash from my cigarette
grow longer, thinner—
a ******* metaphor
I won’t write down
because metaphors are for fools
with something to prove.

the landlord’s upstairs
stomping out his bad marriage,
and the cat’s staring at me
like I’m supposed to fix it.
like I ever fixed a **** thing.
the whiskey’s out,
the bread’s moldy,
and there’s no mail
but bills that
have already lost their patience.

I knew a woman once,
beautiful in the way
that broken glass can be beautiful
when the light hits it just right.
we didn’t talk about love,
but the bed remembered us,
the walls learned our names.
she left
the same way the good ones always do—
quietly,
like the sound of a train
you only notice
after it’s gone.

the ash falls,
finally,
into the grave of the tray.
and I think,
hope is like a stray dog—
it keeps following you
no matter how many times
you kick it away.

they don’t wait for the grave.
they start digging
the moment you clock in.
a little deeper every day—
beneath the fluorescent lights,
beneath the bills piling up,
beneath the weight of everything
you were supposed to be
but never got around to.

they bury you early.
in offices,
in traffic jams,
in cheap apartments with walls
thin enough to hear your neighbors fighting.
in the same bar every Friday night,
where the jukebox keeps playing the same sad songs
and the bartender pours another round of regret.

they say,
“this is just life.”
and maybe they’re right—
maybe you’re supposed to carry
that invisible coffin on your back,
marching forward
like you don’t feel it getting heavier.

I knew a woman once.
she refused the shovel.
quit her job, sold her car,
got on a bus going anywhere.
people called her crazy.
but she sent me a postcard
from some small town by the ocean.
she said the air tasted like salt,
and she’d never felt more alive.

they bury you early.
unless you fight.
unless you throw the dirt back in their faces
and run like hell toward something,
anything,
that doesn’t feel like dying.

his hands are cigarettes,
burning slow across the keys.
he plays like he’s trying
to empty something out of himself,
something heavy,
something he doesn’t trust
to speak aloud.

the crowd doesn’t notice.
they drink their whiskey,
laugh at their own jokes,
and hum along like they
understand the chords.

but I watch him,
the way his fingers tremble
like they’re afraid
of what comes next.
he’s in love with the piano,
or maybe he’s just stuck with it,
like a bad marriage
that refuses to end.

the music is sharp
and it hurts in all the right places,
like stepping on broken glass
but still feeling alive.
I want to tell him:
you don’t have to play for them,
they’re not listening.
play for yourself.
play to make the ghosts shut up.

but I don’t say anything.
I just watch him finish his set,
pack up his misery,
and leave the room
quieter than he found it.

I caught myself in the mirror -
not really me,
just someone wearing my face.
they moved like a bad actor,
lines all wrong,
hands heavy,
feet borrowed.

I lit a cigarette,
watched the smoke curl
into the kind of shapes
I wish I could slip into.

I woke up again today.
the way a dog might wake up
to a kick.
not because I wanted to,
but because the hours don’t wait
and neither does the rent,
and no one cares
if you spend the morning drowning
in yesterday’s whiskey
and last year’s regrets.

the sun drips through the blinds,
thin and pale,
like it knows it’s wasting its light on me.
I light a cigarette,
watch the smoke twist,
and I wonder
how something so fragile
can disappear so easily—
then realize,
I’m not that different.

there’s a woman I loved once.
she had hair like wildfire
and eyes like a question I didn’t know how to answer.
she told me I was a storm
she wanted to walk into,
but she didn’t know
the rain never ends.
she packed her things on a Tuesday.
I tried to stop her,
but my hands were too heavy with all the things
I should’ve said when it mattered.

the world keeps moving forward,
dragging me behind it
like some forgotten wreckage.
I smile at strangers,
say I’m fine when they ask,
but every mirror I pass
whispers the truth:
you’re breaking
and no one even notices the sound.

some nights, I sit in the dark,
just to feel it wrap around me
like the arms I lost.
I drink until I forget,
and I drink until I remember.
it’s a cruel, stupid game,
but it’s the only one I’ve got left.

the thing no one tells you
about being alive
is that sometimes you’re not.
sometimes you’re just walking,
talking, breathing proof
of everything that’s gone wrong.

and when they ask me what I want,
what I need,
what I’m looking for,
I don’t have the words.
because what I want
is to go back,
and what I need
is for the pain to mean something.

but what I’m looking for—
God, what I’m looking for—
is the door out of this room.

and maybe,
just maybe,
someone who notices
I was even there
to close it.