It's happening again
Wires slice my fingertips
And strangle my brain
*** refills my empty veins

You were in Ireland
When I first saw your hologram
On the back porch
In Belmont Circle

Well, I'm back to standing in fires
And busting open my knees
Drinking until the world goes black
And all I see are your nimble nails working the guitar

Oh, why do we place ourselves
So deep into the ribcages of
The only boys that can't love anyone
But ghosts

Pine Needle Spine Man
You housed our hollow heads.
Filled the vacancies
With ink and shouts and Magnetic Zeros.
It was the age of kissing wrists
and secret smoke.
Pulsing plastic bottle poison
Wrote Om Nashi Me on my neck,
So we never had to check
If anyone was still breathing,
Because of how hard our blistered hearts were beating,
And our songs raged, wreathing.
Some nights beneath the blades,
we claim we can’t recall
But fossils were burned into our shoulders,
and I know we felt them all.

Pine Needle Spine Man
We strung you up with lights
The fistful of blonde hair
Had those ****** knuckle fights
With the dead letter secrets
In the ribbon spit trunk,
Dipped our hands in *** and balsam
We sunk into the drunk.
Blast beats, we’d
Retreat.
It was a world gyrating in slow motion.
Dancing on the mulch beds,
We hovered high on reckless rebellion.
Our feet rejected the floor,
But ghosts were moving into our cores.
It was all golden rod and the 4-H stone,
Sarah Jones and the radio wars.

When they cut you down,
We washed your hair with wine.
Found our cigarettes hidden
In the notches of your spine,
And drank what was left
Of the Rabid Bits of Time.

I found cigarettes hidden in the notches of your spine

I am terrified of the flashbacks
So vivid and green
On our foreign ghost's porch
In the park
We were scrawled out on the same page
Holding hands on the track past midnight
We spoke of velvet in the basement office
And I kissed your neck

I am stuck in an infinite loop
Memories of nights spent in the boiler room, beneath the string light tree, on the carpet in the mountain -
Anywhere but here

Somehow in the last moments of this January
We ended up in the same bed

Shortwinded bliss
That's all this ever is
Riding on highs
And hair dyes
The time machine resides corrupt in the pantry
Hysterical light passes through my skull
I am not awake

I can pretend to have fallen numb to my burning chest
My gypsy words (and my taroc pack & my taroc pack)
Flames in the woods - that's all it comes down to
This is tragedy in its truest form

Rub my eyes to smear the tar
My professor teaches careful writing
I will go to my grave defending the fact that writing is reckless
And I don't care to surround myself with those lacking a rebel call

I lost my mind in Tennessee
Too drunk to even sing

If sleep is rehearsal for death -
These songs are the soundtrack of our demise

I still have the scars on my ankle
From the day we got drunk in school

I have a few nights burned in my brain
I have some type of mind
That returns to a mountain girl
I make peace with bodies thought otherwise to be dead
I make no apologies for laughter in churches
And my throat was raw on the first day of spring

I miss flying high in that aeroplane
Where guitar strings did anything but strangle our hearts
I left the state
Just to play our soundtrack to a room full of strangers