You’ll be branded a fool,
A coward,
And a lier,
Same as I should,
Only I kept my tongue
Far enough away from my heart.

I wish I hadn’t had so many bad nights,
And I’m sorry you were there
To catch the stars and the tears,
But I’m glad you were, and I can never thank you enough
For keeping me sane when sanity was just a dream
And every day was a puzzle I was afraid
I couldn’t complete.

I often think back to the day, I brought you that place
With graffiti on the walls all failing to decay
And how in the summer’s ending heat I held your hand
And underneath arches I pulled you close and then

I, I kissed you right
Not like the time from the preceding night

But then came a new day, one further from our past
And you started to think about us, seeing this could last
I understand you were afraid, but fear is not to blame
When you held my heart so tightly then stomped it again and again

Three times, and never from a fight
Three times, sweetheart that’s not right

I’ve written a lot of love songs,
Poems,
But none more honest
Than saying
We tried
And failed,
And that’s all there is to us.

Small towns,
Are hidden gems,
Like the place of peace we go
In Leverett, for portraits
Of pretty girls who know nothing
Of buddhist beliefs,
Other than what their friends say
At dorm room parties.
And the mountains are small,
Lining the horizon we watched
As the sun set on them all
And we looked from the trash room
For the best view
Of the orangey hues
That reminded us we were closer
Than we thought after all.
But this school, and these people,
And the way they view the world
Sometimes clouds the hearts
Of the young people inside
-The cage of education we’ve created-
And I can’t help but feel
You were one of them,
And I just want you to see that.
We were never wrong.
Only the politics of the situation,
Singing Western Mass’ song,
“freedom, independence,
Social liberation
From the sense of responsibility,
Confrontation,
We are a free-love
And no-love nation.”