I know pain
By it’s first names, intimately
The pain isn’t even the hard part
But the hole it leaves when I don’t feel it
Even though it’s always there
A phantom with no pain
Asinine, pointless
You learn to make pain feel
Get used to it, make it part of you
Made my pain an edge, an advantage
Kept it close like my enemies
Put it there for safe keeping
And it’s kept me safe, at least the feeling of it
But now I don’t need it anymore
Awkward, once you can’t turn it off
It's been concealed and carried for way too long
become a part of me
latched to my ribs
Right between my lungs
Becoming another pain within
Sticks to the skin and itches inside
Built it up for the bad days
Without them, I feel unwanted
No purpose, and that’s worse than… everything
Loneliness, heartache, pain, loss, hunger, all of it
If you don’t need me, do I need to stay?
I can’t help because I need it
Wiping my own tears
No game to win, no story to tell
Suppose to just… live with myself?
After everything I’ve become
So much life wasted
Used as a stepping stone
Wandering and wondering, for…
So many regrets I should regret
Too many regrets I should forget
Pain because it’s all gone
Good and bad, I can’t have it back
The past is my sickness
Regret its diagnosis
Now the future seems darker
And I fear I’ll be useless

A wind like razors in a blackened night
Walls of air, blades of light on feeble shadows
A taunting wind scars a hunter’s moon
a song of death and disease
Love like famine, streets filled with bodies
walls of bones like catacombs
Rains of ash burn on wet cheeks
The wind catcalls and the shadows vanish
The stained smell of sulfur and smoke
A midnight sunrise on the horizon
Warriors charge forth with glowing eyes
Teeth like fangs, looting their own tombs
Faces of gold melted to blanks
Traitors to their own names
Sold out and surrendered for a generation
Faithless and furried loveless and shamed
They march for a calling, they fall on deaf beliefs
For centuries they cried in the darkness, alone
Tear apart their clothes, their children are all dead!
Left to rot beneath the old and rich
Now only the rich are old, and the young bleed
The streets run black and blue with broken promises
Mother Nature turned savage with envy
Had to remind us *******
We cannot howl like wolves, roar like lions
We are weak and feeble, no claws or fur
Foolish insects without the shell
The true prey, the final ****

After my last breakup, I had this dream

Two goddesses, one dressed in white, the other in black,
The one in white, will call her goddess ebony
The one in black, she is Ivory, cause its my ******* dream
They’re both perfect, both way out of my league, if I ever had one
Standing over me, tempting me with their beauty
Neither is good or bad, both are equally dangerous
Their whispers make my ears tingle, their bodies make my head spin
No matter which I choose, it will be the wrong choice
Both will punish me regardless; tormenting me, torturing me
Loving every minute of it, savoring my awkward embarrassment
I want them both so bad, they’ll haunt my dreams for weeks
The only way this will end “well”, is if I don’t make a choice
Which instead will leave me lonely, abandoned
Is it that greedy to want to be happy?
I’m already happy, I say out loud to them
They smirk and giggle, leave me there feeling lost as a child
It was the right choice, I swear to myself
But no matter what I say, they respond the same
Laughing at the colosal **** up before them
How dare I dare to speak to them like I’m good enough
This poor, unfortunate, sad sack of bones without gold
So many beautiful women around me, makes me feel hideous
So I close my eyes, tight as they’ll go, but they never go away
They never disappear, always linger long enough to sting
I don’t have a voice, because I don’t believe in mine
I’m lost in translation, and I speak the same language
But I’m known for setting my standards low, so
The demons are always smarter than angels
I blame them, but I blame myself far more
But you’ll never see the light if you won’t step out of the darkness
You know me, I’ll surrender before I walk away
Now, it seems all I can remember are my dreams
Now you know why I never smile in my sleep

Almost three in the afternoon, and I’m barely on my second cigarette
That’s the best I’ve been all year, and it hasn’t been easy
The days feel like a forever, just as the months sift through my fingers
Started reopening old wounds, reliving the post trauma of past disorders
Me and sobriety tag teamed against my addictions is never a fair fight, not for us
So to fight the night, I play the war cries of my past life
But it also triggers a tornado of flashbacks that may prove harder to escape
Just so happens, the storm drops me into the wasteland following High School
This post puberty, postmortem gutter i had trapped myself in
A time of mutual disruption and inspiration, which often go hand in hand
I found myself wandering the wilderness with a rabid wolf pack from the suburbs
This crew was crazy… and not in the “seen too many movies” crazy
We’re talking smoking crack in an Indiana cornfield at three in the afternoon crazy
Leading rebellions in a midnight diner, flipping tables and calling everyone a Communist
Getting beat down and thrown out of a ******* for sticking a finger into a stripper’s -
LISTEN, crazy ****, okay?
They were Lost Boys, Wild Boys, Rockstars, Freedom Fighters
Allow me to set the stage for most nights down this rabbit hole
A run down foreclosure filled with delinquents and refugees
The basement is ten decibels too loud and ten degrees too hot
The entire shell of the home pulses from the energy beneath it
We enter through a side door, and everyone nods us in
Down the stairwell, all you can see is a blood red fog striped by laser beams
It looks alive with its own toxic attitude
It beckons us further down, with an evil laugh and an angry drum
We crowd into a VIP room just off the basement dance floor
Several lines of happy powder cut by a razor peak across a Green Day album
The room stinks of smoke, sweat and stress… but don’t judge us for our lifestyle
If you’ve never altered your state of mind, how the **** do you know you’re in the right one?
As I smile at that rebellious thought, a blue haired temptress catches my eyes, and smiles
She makes room for me on the couch, and we trade names
She was dripping in *** appeal beneath her studded leather jacket, and beneath that… her true beauty
Her mind was a well crafted musical instrument, of which she played only for the Devil
Maybe that’s how she was raised, maybe that’s just how she got attention
Trust that I know what love is, better than most who have claimed the title
But sometimes, it’s the absolute last thing that you need or want
So I countered with my own Satan’s fiddle
It we’re speaking maturity, I was nowhere near the age of consent
She said I had some point of view issues, and I said,
“You mean how my view keeps pointing me in the wrong direction?”
“******* little boy, careless of the crimes to come?”
Sensing a dead end, I looked for my crew, but they were nowhere in sight
Yep, those are my friends, my kin, the ones who abandoned me
We made out for a while before she stopped me with sad eyes and a pearly grin
“Sorry darlin, but there’s just something twisted about you...”
She would die from ****** a week after telling me that, and it hit the tribe hard
I kept that dagger she pierced me with close to my chest long after that
Next time I saw the leader of our pack, he was far from the warrior he once was
Less than a shadow, barely a voice, with a needle in his arm
I left his house after only an hour, and cried for an hour after that
I sat in my car, in a Chicago December, freezing my nuts off
Because I forgot to turn the car on, because I was too busy mourning the loss
of so many visionaries, so many poets
These beautiful individuals who inspired me, they were dead… gone forever.

After that, I pulled the headphones off, and lit another cigarette to ease my mind.

“To be 21 and wild again
To be hopeful, and feral
And bright and wild eyed again…
To feel the passion of youth, the spring of energy,
To feel untouchable, to feel in front of the line
With the whole world in front of you again
Oh, to be 21 and alive again, to be free again…”
Except, we weren’t
Remember those days, and the games we’d play?
Life was so simple, we felt so brave
How quickly it passed us by, how cute when we tried to hold on tight
Then you proposed the crime of the ages
“Let’s just not grow up?”
Her bold rebellious attitude was just the tip of the iceberg that sunk me
Her curly brown hair made her look much younger, like me
It bounced around her face, made her look innocent
She had a button nose, with a dimple on either side
Her blue eyes radiant with life
Her girlish charm held back a monster worse than mine
She’s pretty ****** up, and there’s a lot of reasons why
Of course I saw that as a bonus, to find someone as dangerous as me
The fact that you liked my music steadily turned me on
But it quickly got dangerous
Soon I was in over my head
Oh you evil taunting cupid and your poisonous arrows…
If a full moon and an Indian Summer had a baby,
They would name it YOU
And I fell hard, head first and almost broke my arms
Just a drop of happiness, and I’d fight the world for you
We wanted it, not for them, but for us, for the rest of our lives
Every time we got back together, we thought it was forever, so we never asked why
We were both lonely, I took refuge inside of you
We were both very broken
It wasn’t that we mended each other,
It was more like our broken pieces fit really well together
But we never got better, we loved the broken versions too much
We cherished our tragedies, relished in our dramedies
I just wasn’t ready to handle such a fight
You just weren’t mature enough to understand the message

She’s already a distant memory, already too far gone
Only trophies and bruises remain
Her lipstick still stains the glass
I keep it as a trophy in the back of the cupboard
Less as a memory, more like a hunting trophy
Lesson learned, now I know better
I write that line to make you think I’m not into you
But really I couldn’t stop thinking about every bit of you
And how I know it’s not fate or misguided
I wanted to run away with you, pleaded with you
“All I know is somewhere beyond those tracks is where you and I live on,
The music is our train ride the hell out of here…”
I’m clear headed now
And the next time you feel the need to call me after 3, don’t
And don’t you call me “honey”, “dear”, or “darling” again
They’ve all been retired and overplayed
They leave me with a sour after break deep inside
Tell me again how this is best for both of us
How you did this for my sake, not just yours
And that I’m better off without you
Now the darkness has become my friend,
And you want me to keep you safe?
Fear not, for I would never let them hurt you
But we will never share the moonlight again
Now, you’re too weak for me, and I got plans to be
I’ve got a world to meet, now it’s you’re turn to watch
You did a bang up job making me feel welcome
Now I’ve got dibs on the good bye
I’ll wear the scars for you, they look better on me any way
We may have outgrown the lyrics, but not the meaning
The songs still haunt me, still mean so much to me
I fear they’ll follow me to my grave
Bury me beneath the tree where we first met,
At least my bones will rest young and happy
Love can really ******* up, you know
Here’s to hoping your arms are open, when I finally fall