When i was down and out
You were there for me

When i had no one to turn to
You were there for me

When i was afraid and fearful
You were there for me

When i needed someone most
You were there for me

When i needed a friend...*
*You were there for me

Old men fascinated by teen *****
and the hues harnessed by high school hips,
I ask you to look at something corrupted:
yourself, this town, this world.

The town's lumber supplier has died
and daughters fight over dollars.

Greasy haired women, wearing denim,
smoking menthols and bruised with cheap make-up,
stand on fractured sidewalks.

I walk, wearing a Native American-ized fleece,
the Chippewa crush their cigarettes
and blink like lizards at me
because I wear bastardization,
but wash it.

Half the town smokes,
and if you ask the pastor,
the whole town smokes
because everyone's going to hell.


All the girls read John Green
and flip the pages because it's a cheaper escape than a bus ticket.

Plato said that everything changes
and nothing stands still;
these people will suffer,
their bodies will break down,
and they will die --
but what never changes is their hope
in eventual death.

What cannot change is my hope
in something more.

I hated the smell, yet I inhaled it willingly.
It stuck to me like tar, yet I touched it voluntarily.
I'm the epitome of a beaten path.
I was once impenetrable, I was once  indestructible.
Now trapped in a paradox. An endless abyss of nothing.
I'm the epitome of a beaten path.
I couldn't find big enough words to make you love me.
I didn't know how to phrase what I feel, I'm not a human dictionary.
I'm the epitome of a beaten path.
You walked my beaten path, you said you'd heal the pain.
I should  have known you'd make it worse, not make it go away.
I'm the epitome of a beaten path.
You walk it every day.