Do you remember when you were a kid?
You laughed at the simplest thing
Now you don’t even try to find things to make you happy
You just avoiding something that will hurt you
And that’s good enough

Atlantic thoughts of fish, schools on schools
what could be better than this, living with no rules
dog days, your cute face, fresh fade, cityscapes
romantic thoughts again, texts on texts
what could be better than this, living the loveliest
warm nights, green lights, divine touch, just rough enough
just how I like

Sitting in  my alleyway
I watch people every day
They see me in my cardboard box
I hear the things they say

It used to bother me, but now
I just let them look and pass
I used to beg for their spare change
But, now I do not ask

I think that as they pass on by
It's my situation that they see
Homeless, living in the cold
They're not seeing me

Some stop, and stare in silence
They don't have the words to say
they see just what they want
While others turn away

Some who pass, they cross the road
On to the other side
They'd rather think I don't exist
Although it's here that I reside

I think that as they pass on by
It's my situation that they see
Homeless, living in the cold
They're not seeing me

If you ask, I'll answer
I'm a man, I have a voice
Although I'm in this alley
I am here by my own choice

Alternatives are out there
But they are not for me
Remember, it's my situation
Not the man I am you see

I wish to not feel the aftershocks of the war occurring inside,
To not make one move that crushes my whole day
under the weight that tears my joints apart.

And yet,

Doctors smile and tell me nothing is wrong
Doctors smile and state that my pain tolerance is just too low
Doctors smile and run the same **** tests
that produce the same **** results
They smile while I rip my hair from my scalp.

The days bleed into one as the clouds covering my brain
chain me to the bed and make raindrops fall from my eyes,
Friends start to believe that I just don't care when I leave their messages covered in dust,
dying in a graveyard called my will to live.

I want to be there for them,
my soul needs to be present with them,
but when you have to box a heavy weight champion inside your own veins just to be able to take a single step,
you got nothing left to give to anyone else.

I'm stumbling through this performance titled life
not even knowing the identity to the puppet master pulling the strings,
fighting an invisible battle against a nameless warrior
and somehow meant to smile and bear it.

Before that August--

(strange month                                        echo)--

bloomed in the east
sunrise bomb                                           sunset dawn

you sometimes
                                                                   rose
(unbidden)

to the surface
of my mind.

These were some of my triggers:

Calgary                                                     (always Calgary)
me too
Christmastime.

And all the times                                     you attempted
to reach out to me

(sucker punch                                          sleep ****).

And then that August--

(good mornin'                                         bombshell)

the news--
for shame.

For I had fallen for the lie
(while you talked all the while
                                                                 in your human voice).

So you like 'em young.
So you like it rough.

August sun                                            beat me down.

It took this glaring
of a light

to show me
the darkest                                             of men's natures--

and that I knew them
intimately.