Tick. Tick. Tick.

We're moving, so much faster.
Push the stop, let us off,
condescend if you must. Go, scoff.
We're moving toward disaster.

This wasn't the plan, not the one I made.
I wasn't looking for love...
I'm so ******* sick of...
This is so little, this is so done. So staid.

Faster now. Faster.
Tick. Tick. Tick.

I don't want to see the finish line.
I want life, sweet and long.
This feels right, and that's so wrong.
It's okay. It's just *******... It's fine.

                         But speak soft words against the moonlight.
                         Because it's dark as pitch, and I'm your knight.
                         But when it falls, as it must, as it will, as it always does
                         And, sweet pea, I can see the end, but I can't save you because...

Tick. Tick. Tick.

These are the hours of my life.
Watch as they fly away, gone is the day,
when I held you and watch us sway.
Ring upon your finger. My little wife.

Tick. Tick. Tick.
Faster, ever faster.

And now, around the next bend,
Where our children will play,
and laugh away the lazy day,
Tell me you can't see the end.

From every drop
springs just a little more.
An urgent pounding
against the bedroom door.
Because it's out with
the pilot light,
it's in with the
same old fight,
and it's back to work,
the same old way.
Every ******* day.

You say you believe
that love is the answer.
I don't know,
but hate is a cancer.
And it's miles and miles
to beat my retreat.
Some days it's  ******* the sound
of my own heartbeat.

I'm not another hack,
building out but holding back.
I live in the here in now, or so I say,
until the noise starts.
Rent's late.
Time to pay.
Every ******* day.

I would love, you must believe me,
to see peace.
I would love to lay my head down
and finally get sleep.
But there's work to be done,
there's hours and hours,
and so little ******* sun.
But if you stay with me,
hold hands and live with chance,
I might feel like I can be free.

But the knocking never goes.
We're not some dead beats,
though heaven only knows.
I'm spent from all my mediocre feats.
I can't find my bed and lay,
because the noise doesn't go away.
Every ******* day.

Pages float from the empty window
to the busy city streets.
Pages of our diary, the one we kept
so the ******* world wouldn't see.

But wipe your tears, smile with your whole soul.
You see, it's the freedom of the act
that we have to cherish, that we have to embrace.
Look past the shame of our secret story,
and find the beauty we've now shared.

You see, it's our lives on display for those people.
It's our words and our days and our ways,
and it's out there, and it touches people.
We have made the world aware of our lives,
and in so doing, they have found a part of
who they are, who they wish they could be.

In every person, holding one of those pages,
there is a little bit of you, a little bit of me.
There's so much beauty in that, can't you see?

You wanted the truth behind the lies.
You wanted to see the forest from the tree.
but you never actually wanted to see,
You never actually wanted to open your eyes,

Find the fire from within me?
You want to seek me out in burnt out husks.
You want to make blood packs and secret trusts.
But you lack the vision to simply be.

So here, in the now and then, we find the key.
We send the message to a hidden place,
deep within us, just behind the face.
And finally, our arms spread out, we are free.

Mutter your words
across these invisible channels.
Tell me, spare no detail,
the ways in which you have missed me.

Tonight I am selfish,
because you are here with me.
Tonight I am complete.

Reign it in, lest you scare them all away.

Kept in chambers, buried so deep within
that they can be seen from the sky,
I spy you treading the ground of my
empty grave.

Steal my youth, if you believe yourself
my better.
But be warned that even freedom cannot keep me.

Get it together, or it will all fall apart.

Keypads and sorcery, and all points between.
Feel free to use me, as you might a tissue.
I am one among many, and always have been.
I am far from unique, factory issue.

But who can say, at four a.m.,
that they are fine and well?
Life is various bedlam faithless wonder and mayhem.
Patiently waiting to ring the bell.

Step back and breath. Don't let it fall.

Because you wake beside me in our shared bed.
Because you love me with blue eyes.
Because you promise me with sweet lies.
Because you are my living heart and head.

And in a moment, when all of this is done,
when you lay your head against my chest,
when our souls plead for sweetest rest,
will it matter which of us has won?

Alone, you are but two.
Caged by bitter words,
and a history shared
with so precious few.

Together, you find yourselves one.
Free from bonds that chain you down.
Etched large against the bluest sky.
Your song sung full flush in the sun.

Each fractured piece of your hearts,
keep so high out of reach
in little boxes on tall shelves.
Chained like drowning to your arts.

When, on park benches and this cold street,
with the flicker of the reckless
and the knowledge of the very bold,
you find, now and always, your hands meet.

In the face of this wall we stand and laugh.
Not because it's funny,
anything but at times,
but because we just don't
know what else to do.

Had you stayed,
beyond your time
here and there,
there would have been so
much more for you to see.

I recall that the news broke,
and it rained.
Did it ever rain.
It rained as if in response.
I embraced a man in the street
and we felt something for someone
that wasn't ourselves for the first
time in our short lives.

Because you didn't stay,
we can't reflect on the power
of those odd days.
How they shaped us in ways
that we couldn't have predicted.
But you didn't stay,
so it fails, not falls,
on deaf ears.