I got home
and the rooms were all spinning
across the street
two bucks were sparring in my neighbor's yard
while a third stood by
it was three in the morning
so I walked closer
closer
closer
and we were eye to eye
the longest eye contact I've had in months
it was uncomfortable
he could have gored me
and I could have shot him
in theory
in theory
I'm sorry
so sorry

I’m not going to write a song
About my deep dark feelings
‘Cause I can’t sing
And I’m not going to write a poem
About the sun in summer
Or flowers in the spring
In fact, I hate the word “flower”
It is candy hearts for sheep
I like the word “fervor”
Like, I fervently wish to dig my fingernails into the flesh of your back while you **** me into a fever with a fervor like a rabid dog.
That’s a pretty good word
Not too ugly or sweet
I like to write about hurt
All sorts of things hurt
Like the glass that digs into the soles of my feet
Making me so angry when I walk the ten steps that lead me back to me
From the five that lead to who I want to be
It is a sedated state of suffering
All at the hands of anyone but me
And contrary to contemporary belief
This kind of broken really isn’t pretty
So I want to write a song about all the lovely things I’ve seen
How beautiful some of my days have been
If you were here I’d pay someone pretty to sing this song and
If we still talked I’d get up on stage and read this poem
I’d make you blush in the audience
While I told the whole bar about
The way you taste in the middle of summer
How I’ve always liked salty better than sweet
And how every night you looked me in my eyes the whole time you moved inside
I’d steal the clichés from all the love stories you’ve come to hate
Just to watch you cringe in your seat
But I’ve always liked ****** better than trite
And all I can ever seem make this god ****** pen write
Are words about fear and ******* and flesh
And how much they all hurt me

I live at the bottom of a lake
I am a fish
There are gills in my ears
‘Cause there are things my blood needs to hear
I have fins in my mouth and they propel me so far
The only way to stop is to bite down real hard
Sometimes I miss the air, even though I’ve never breathed
I drive around the lake bottom in my little moving machine
I call it a Notcar
I try to find my way to the other side
It’s blue out there or maybe grey

I died at the bottom of a lake today
I ran all out of imaginary air
I fell asleep at the wheel of my Notcar
And drove right into a telephone Notpole
My friends all gathered round my little fish-shaped grave and I learned something
They don’t tell you in books or movies,
That Dead speaks a different language than Alive
So I couldn’t understand a word my fishy friends said
It sounded like this:

I’d always hoped my death would have some meaning
Or that at least my life would
But mostly I just tried to understand things
Like all the different rooms in my brain and why underwater never smelled like rain
I loved a few boy fish, had some very fishy affairs
I loved my friends the most, they were such pretty colors
(Dead sees colors differently than Alive, so now they look like this:                                    )
The day I died was special like every other day which is to say
That it was not Notaverage
And I died in a pretty Notspecial way
And because I can’t hear Alivewords, or see Alivecolors
I’ll never be sure if I left any mark

I live at the bottom of a lake
Most days I think that I’m an alien
On Tuesdays I feel pretty human
The lake I live in died
It left behind little shells in the sand at the playground
And pretty rocks with ripples
It left rings on the mountains but not like rings inside trees
These rings mark a countdown to death, rather than a count out from birth

The lake is a ghost
It sings to me in my sleep, but I don’t speak Dead
At least not yet
And furthermore, I don’t speak lake
I speak a language called Notdeadnotlake
And so do all my friends
Sometimes I wonder why the ocean was so thirsty that it called my lake back home
And I wonder if I’m part of Something Bigger too,
Whether Something Bigger is feeling thirsty
I think I might be part of a big strange creature made out of all the things I sometimes feel like:
Lakesludge and matches and sunshine and fish with sharp little teeth
Notgoods and notbads and spiders and bats
Sadhappys and angryfucks
Starsparkles and earthworms and fairywings and dinosaur bones,
It has really big ears and stubby toes
And all it needs is some alien or Tuesdayhuman to feel complete
Or maybe it’s made of lakeghosts and fishghosts
And wants nothing to do with me

That sparkle,
that immeasurably forgiving joy and affection is gone,
but the sound of your voice is just familiar enough to make me remember it.

What we're doing here is necrophilia.
It's gross, but we're ******* something that's dead and we both know it.
I think we thought we could bring it back to life with our selfish demands,
but this coffin isn't as comforting as we'd hoped it would be.

We've never talked about the time between,
that period of time when we never talked.
We should have talked.
Without words, you had nowhere to be angry so you swallowed your truths and they turned into blame.

I can feel it when you look at me,
I don't sparkle anymore.
Well, neither do you.

When we talk we say the least, yet every word has a barb.
Too jaded for affection we bob and weave through a minefield of unacknowledged truths.
Our words rot in our bellies while we sew each others mouths shut.
We never wanted this sort of intimacy.

We let the poison out with play, the kind that's done with knives.
So here we are, playing with knives in a minefield,
the only sound is our own hollow laughter.

Behind every "never mind" and "just kidding",
behind the scoreboard of our interactions and every slap of my *** are two shadows;
one covered in armor from breast to backbone,
and one purging a river of poison.

We're chasing a past we know we can't have back,
and the echoes of our old feelings make the silence so much louder than it was
when we didn't talk.

We were beautiful this summer, helplessly alive.
We had such good intentions but the silence and the miles and the fear have made this thing pale,
dead looking.

We try hard to be sorry.

Every kindness hurts because it tastes like the past,
so now instead we barter in bed.
Turns out *** without affection falls under Services Rendered,
but the shape of you so near to me makes me miss you more than I can bare and if you call me tonight, I'll probably answer.  

I guess sometimes the only way to make sure something's not still alive is to poke it with a stick a few times.

No, I haven't failed to recognize the correlation between working more and making rent
Between saving more and living less
And how if I suffer now then I won't suffer later, right?
Is that a guarantee?
And where do I sign up for the white picket protection from anything bad that could possibly happen to me?
Which broke down fool lead you to believe
That safe is interchangeable with happy
Or that valid is saved only for value
As in
Your car is decreasing in value with each mile and
Your right to drive is only valid if you've got the funds to back it up
So stay home
Save your miles and your luck
Because expense weighs more than experience
And if I'm not careful I'll turn out just like my mother
See you
Underestimate the value of words
You told me only dead writers get paid but
I'll never forget yours
I see them in the hard lines
That place on your face where I've heard some people keep smiles
And I'm sorry
I'm sorry you listened to whoever told you these things
If I could fix you, I would
I would make you deaf to the fear that you channel in through the ear and out through the mouth
But I can't so
Here's how I'll save you
You listened
I won't

Late one night between the streets
I met the man you don't want to meet
He had a smile and a backpack
Coming from nowhere with nowhere to go
At first I was afraid
There was no light in his eyes
But his voice was so hopeful
He was the loneliest man I'd ever met
They say we're all lonely here
That we all go out alone
And in the space between the words we know that death will ease our pain
But he was There, still thinking he was Here
He was looking for someone to take him home
Or some whiskey to warm his bones
He needed a touch to kickstart his heart
In the dark he told me I had a light that shone down the night
And smiled the saddest smile I'd ever seen
I wanted to give him everything
But you can't hold on to smoke
Or give gifts to the dust

In my dreams I break the teeth out of my own mouth and then pray to go back
Back to the way it was before I went and broke my own back
My mind is a bull and my skull is fine china
Someday I’ll break
Break my way out
Til then I shake with no medicine
No holes to let the light in
My brothers are busy pretending to be soldiers
They don’t know that there’s no war
Just an endless realm of night terrors
That somebody told them were borders
My body went outside today and everyone I met asked it how I felt
So I lit their hair on fire
And woke up tied to my bed with all my teeth still tied to my head
In the part of time that isn’t dream
I’m obsessed with being clean
I wash my bones with salt water
And try hard to believe in a god
But mostly I just get sad about my past
I want the lilacs back
I want it to be someone else's fault
These waking hours are made of mica
They are shiny but
The pieces are always peeling off
From beneath all the buildings on my street
It’s happening so slowly
So slowly that we’ll all be dead by the time we get wise
When I’m young again I’ll learn to speak
I’ll tell the sky what it’s like to be a soul stuck inside a head
And I’ll ask my future what it’s like to be dead
I’ll tell the sun about dreaming
I think it would be hard to be always awake
I’ll ask these new gods where all the old gods went
And could I maybe talk to one of them?
How did my people wind up worshiping clocks?
I’ll keep asking questions until time turns around
She’ll pull my hair and kick my shins
‘Cause that’s what sisters do
I’ll just be thankful that she noticed me at all
Someday I’ll get tired of asking so many questions
And I’ll quit having such tiresome dreams
I’ll lay down tasty
Flesh is food for hungry ground
Someday I’ll figure out how to be awake when I’m not asleep
I’ll tell myself all the secrets I’ve been trying to keep
But I’m really only good at speaking in my sleep