Would you show me how it's done?
How to play this stupid game
I'm stuck out here, outside the box
As the ocean breathes your name

My toes break through the sand
Kicking the rocks away
I don't know how it works
How to win this little game

The ocean speaks louder and louder
Nothing but your name
I throw myself in, hoping to learn
Maybe I will understand
That there isn't any game
Just to love from day to day

I've been trying too long and thinking too hard
When the answer was your name
As the ocean whispers your name

I don't know what this is
I don't know why it is

All I know is I love her
All I know is I hate her

I go around at day
Blindly following her away

But during the night
I see it's just that way

She tells me that she loves me
But I don't think that she knows

She's blindly tearing me
Tearing me apart

I wake up in the morning
And forget all that night knows

I blindly follow her at day
As she's blindly tearing me apart

Visions of the end swallow my mind
I see a man.
A man standing there.
Standing there with his hands in his pockets.
He’s talking to me. Speaking in my mind.
Crushing me with his words.
He’s stepping on the fingers that desperately hold on.
All I want is to know.
I fall into the nothingness
Everything becomes obvious.
I see how it began.
I see how it ends.
I see how I end, with only the birds as my friends.
They’re all gone.
I’m all alone with only the birds as my friends.
They all left me because I couldn’t stop knowing.
I’m ripped apart as the birds carry me away like bread crumbs in Central Park.
They bicker and fight as they fly.
Snatching me away from each other's beaks and claws.
I wonder if they know that I’ve died.
I wonder if they care that they’re the only ones left.

Counting sheep one, two, six at a time
Wishing I could sleep just to get away from time
Lying here yawning as the world flies by
I wonder if anyone knows that eventually they'll die
Resting in a search for some peace and quiet
I take a break from my television diet
What if the whole world came to a halt?
Would it learn anything new? Or would it just keep doing the same old thing?

Baby, don't trust you
You'll always let you down
I know from experience
I'm what I fear most

Take my word for it
You're the worst thing around
There's nothing worse for you than you

All my life, I've been breaking myself
Taking myself
Hating myself
I'm the only one to blame
Everything's the same
When the needle breaks into your vein

I wish it weren't so
My fear of myself
But I've always been my own worst enemy
I've left all the scars
And locked up in bars
Everything that I've ever felt

Down the street
With empty feet
They walk from A to B
Without even moving
Without even knowing
Not a care in the world
No plan to change the world
They don't even know they have a purpose and they don't know where to go

Down the road
With heavy load
They carry all the weight
Of everything they hate
They take off the glove
To feel that which they have lost
To feel that which they love when they don't even know what love is

Not even seeing the road marked salvation
They trudge through their lives without rhyme or reason
They pass through the seasons as they come around again
And they miss the sign they've been led to their whole life

Or is it easier
To go with the flow
Staying faceless in a faceless world
Alone and unknown
To follow your eyes
Because God's been outgrown
To put down the rose and fold the flag
Because it's just not your thing

Down the street
With empty feet
They make their way from A to B
With not even so much as a foot in the door…

Look at what you've done
You've gone and loved me
You've gone and given me hope
Do you really think I wanted this?
To be happy?

I didn't ask for this
I was happy
Perfectly content
Wallowing in my own **** and misery
I was glad to be alone
Happily morose and blissfully dead

I didn't ask for your love
I didn't ask for your help
All I ask is that you never ever stop

I can't really say that I know what this is
I'd be lying if I said I do
Not even three weeks and it's come to this
Happiness?
It's a word that I always scoffed at
My own little humbug
Oh, there's someone out there for you they all say
You just have to patient they tell me
Like hell
Twenty years of patience and nothing but failures and sorrows
But it's only been three weeks
Not even that, since I met her
I can still feel where she bit my lip only last night
The scratches she left in my back
The marks where she bit my shoulders
I can still hear her breathing in my ear
I don't even know what happened
Or how
Or when
But just when I'm about to throw in the towel
Give love a final ******* and walk out of the room
In she walks
Saying Darling do not cry, and I will sing a lullaby
Filling me with joy, like a shot to the heart
A blow to the chest
Knocking me on my back and pulling me back up
Because nothing can stop me now

I walk down these halls a hundred times a day
Just like I have for a hundred years
The walls are lined with wonderful pictures
Pictures of people I don't even know
I watch the tv and I sit in the chairs
I lay in the beds and I listen to the radio
But these things aren't mine
Some of them used to be but most never were
I throw the remote and smash the screen
I flip the chairs over and set the beds on fire
And they think they're the ones who are haunted…
I'm stuck in this world, stuck in this house
I can't die because I'm already dead
And can't move on because my legs are broken
And they think they're haunted…
No they're not haunted
I died like I was born
Without a face and without a name
No one really knew me
No one really cared
A short drop and a sudden stop
And I didn't either
Or so I thought…
Now I'm bound to walk these halls
To sit in the chairs surrounded by pictures that I'm not in
They don't know me
They don't care
They just want me to leave
But I can't
Oh, but how I wish I could
Sometimes I think Hell would be better than this
Sometimes I try to imagine it
Or maybe I could find my way into heaven
If I could convince God to have mercy
Mercy on my battered soul
Mercy would be nice…
Yeah…
And they think they're the ones who are haunted…

It's a constant effort, this battle I'm in, fighting with myself…
I never thought I'd have to keep a check on myself… an ever-watchful eye on my hand that only want to grab.
To grab at the knife and to grab at my soul
"It's only one cut…" it says. "You like the pain; you'll enjoy it"
But I know I can't… I've already crawled out of the abyss once, and I'm not going back
Oh, please, Light, don't let me go back…

"But it's only one cut"

But I'm happy now, aren't I?
Why would I want to go back?
But even still, it's ever so tempting
To bleed again
But I know if I give in - even just one time - it'll all be over
I'll be back where I started
And I won't come back
I won't want to come back…
That's the sharpest blade of all… love of the prison you've locked yourself in

"But it's only one cut"

It fills you so strongly with emptiness, makes you whole in the worst way imaginable…
It's worse than death and there will be no coming back from it this time

I will not give in
I can't.
I won't drag myself back down.

"But it's only one cut"

I'm just a bird with a broken wing
I cannot fly, I cannot sleep
And from behind me the Raven creeps
Choking my heart out as it steeps
But the tiny sparrow comes to me
Carrying the light I dare not see
As a lover undeserving, I close my eyes and create a wall with the raven's lies
For I am not human, but monster, freak
And to any savior I dare not speak
For I'm a little bird that cannot fly, and has no hope left but to die
But again the sparrow returns to me
Carrying the light that I must see
Beckoning me to come and be
All it is that I can be

The size, do you see it?
That nefarious beast overwhelming
But suddenly the beast is overwhelmingly gone
It's absence, it confounds me to the very bitter end
I search and I search
Till my fingers fall away
Then inside of me, the final searching place
And there, as I peer inside, lurks the hideous beast intrinsic
Desecrating the make-shift temple of my unclean heart
But then, a fulminating voice from above:
Reach inside and pluck him out from your unclean heart
Snarling, the beast lands on the leaves, and cries out as he falls
Through the earth and through the fire as he is finally ruined

To France, Germany, Italy, Spain
I can't run away from life and its pain
I hit the trail, I hop the freight train
And so does my dearest, my lovely Jane
She died back in Abilene and was buried alone
And now I know, she's not the only one
She haunts me night, she haunts me day
My feet drag behind me, they beg me to stay
This sorrow has me by the ankles and is ripping me down
And I'm stuck at the bottom of the ocean, unable to drown
I travel the deserts, starving and thirsty
And the heat and sand are my only friends
I'll never see her again, yes, this I know
And so I'm doomed to this life of woe

I've been dead as long as I can tell
Though, I don't really know how
I wish I could do something to let you know
To tell you that I love you
But it's a hard sell
Being stuck in this cell

I know it sounds crazy
Being dead but well
I've got nowhere to go
Not without you
Oh, but it's just as well
That it cannot be and well

I cannot be here
For you

Oh! But how I wish I could!
I can only be here with you
But a lot of good that will do
Because all you know is I'm dead

But, oh
What memories have you held?
Of how my head was in a cloud
The places I wanted to go?
The people I wanted to meet?
The things I wanted to see?
The things I wanted to say.
Of my love for you.

But now I'm in my Hell
Unable to break out of this shell
Invisible to you
Only dead to you
With only a hope
A hope beyond hope
That you'll someday carry me away

If only I could leave…

The Sound of Winter

    It's an opaque sense of discouragement. Smelling the air where the flowers used to grow. Dead, quiet, cold, wet... it's wrong. The smell of the green, and the yellow, and pink. It's the exact scent of everything that winter is not. It sounds like a bird that use to be able to sing, throwing every emotion and thought to the wind, flying free and not caring who heard. Love, and joy, and the unbreakable resounding of purity and peace, but is now dead. Killed by the cold, the wet, the quiet. The song is over. And all is empty.
    
    But could there be something I'm missing? That flickering of hope? Inside by the fire? Oh, but that is a lovely sound. The only thing I can look forward to? Warmth by the fire? Sharing it with love? The closing of the silence and the death? That's the only sound worth hearing. Among the sounds of winter. The constant popping fills the air, giving texture to the comfort and warmth. The sound of Her voice, thickening the waves of the joy that I've found in it. I never want to let it go, but winter will end... and the fires will not be necessary. The sounds of Winter will fade and I will again be lost.

Waking up, I realize
I cannot see through my own eyes
I begin to panic as I try to find
A way to cope with my current bind
I do not know what caused this all
And I cry out "why?" as I trip and fall
I hear a voice inside my head
That empties my ears of all the lead
It teaches me to see with my heart
And my eyes once again learn to do their part

Throw out a book
Open to an ink-blotted page
Looks like a bird;
A butterfly;
A man with a screwdriver fixing a hole where the rain gets in.
Where will it go?
Red carpet rolling out of a scaly green mouth. The chameleon steals it away and slips away to his tree to find it cut down by an axe with a man.
Where will it go?
A white feather is all that remains as the scales are swept away by an agent of the wind.
Where does it all go?
To the ground?
To the sky?
Greed has come and gone; taking with him all that is left.