I avoid the boys who worship Bukowski.

They're ones who see ***
As merely an act, a stage performance, a drug.
They use bitter words and drink bitter drinks
That they don't even enjoy.
They smoke cigarettes because they think they're James Dean.
They claim that they cannot escape their dead-end jobs and lives;
In reality, they don't want to. They relish in their misery.
After all, happy stories aren't worth writing about.
Nobody cares about your perfect life; they care about how you failed
Because it makes them feel better about their own despondency.

These boys live for the experience,
Their own Kerouac moments.
The writers obsessed with pain and suffering;
They don't even look for the beauty in beautiful things.
They're the ones who die by their own hands.
They close off their hearts to the love of women.
Women are objects. Women are things with holes
For speaking and for ***.

I am a woman with a heart and a mind and love to give,
And I shall be recognized as such.
In meeting a man the first question I ask is,
"Have you heard of Bukowski?"

lips stained with pomegranate juice,
i want to kiss every inch of you;
temporary tattoos to remind you of me.

I never thought that I would have my heart broken by a city.
It wasn't just the men and the music;
It was the eternal hope and subsequent disappointment.

I didn't go there with dreams in a guitar case.
My hands have always been too small to wrap around the neck anyway.
I went for the experience, with a notebook to my name.

The most incredible voices echo through the streets
Like wind through bare New England oaks;
It's haunting, comforting, met with silence.

I leaned over the edge of a balcony and thought,
How many people have jumped?
Because the thing is: you don't make it in Music City.
You try and try and try and try and then you go home.

I met a man on a street corner, a shy, sweet little thing.
Two months later he was back in Dublin, playing in pubs.
A raspy, long-haired rock-and-roll singer howled into the night,
And he didn't sing again for months.
Not until his vocal cords recovered.
Five Scotsmen took the breath away from a hundred people;
They went on "hiatus" a few weeks ago.
But there was such hope in their voices, in their smiles.
And it broke my heart.

I long for Nashvillian streets beneath my feet once more.
I want to feel the desire and passion in the air,
Circulating like cigarette smoke outside the smallest venues.
I risk my sanity by inviting the hopeful and the hopeless into my heart.
At least I'll get a poem or two out of it,
And maybe they'll get a song.

It frightens me that of the billions of people in this world,
You're the one who has complete control over me.
Words said in a moment of desperation,
Over in a second, without hesitation.
Oh God, what is happening to us?

We play hide-and-seek between the vines and the willows.
I can always find you, but part of you is missing.
Your mind slips away as you come closer.
I don't know who you are.
I've can't remember who I am.

We've changed more than I care to admit.
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder,
But that's not all of the story.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder
For something that never existed in the first place.

We were all just lost souls trying to see where we fit.
We were looking for a place to settle down,
A place to call home.

We pretended to love one another,
Rallied together against the boringness of the same old town.
With each passing day we had less to talk about.
We resented each other more the longer we were together.
We created drama out of nothing just to ease our psyches.

Half of them got drunk every weekend just to have a story on Monday,
Made **** jokes and then said **** culture doesn't exist.
A few started doing ****** in the woods;
It was cheap, it was easy,  it numbed the chronic loneliness.

I told my best friend that in six months I would never see him again.
He agreed.

We all said we'd get out when we got the chance.
Only a few of us did.

come back
come back
come back
prove to me that there is something here worth fighting for

i've lost count of the days without you
seasons change without you
we've all got something that we're fighting for
it was only ever you

I dreamt that I found you by the apple trees in my backyard.
That **** crow, pecking at your flesh.
I woke up and I cried.
I think it was then that I realised my heart no longer belongs to me.

I miss you.
I say it now and I'll say it tomorrow.
I'll repeat it every single day of my life,
And even when you're here or I'm there,
I won't stop missing you.

I walked down the street last Wednesday
And tried to imagine how your hand would feel clasped in mine.
I couldn't.

I'm afraid to sleep because I'm afraid to dream of you.
There is no difference between a dream or a nightmare;
They both make me long for you just the same.

Oh, what have you done to me?