Sanctuary,
I will get to you someday
I will feel you in some way,
I can feel this, at least it's something,
They have the guts to scream but never know the words to say,
The ones who got in but couldn't wait to get away,
The girl from down the street who always smiled your way,
The euphoric atmosphere that your worst nightmares made clear as day,
I always knew it, I just never knew exactly what to say

This is a morning when I step into the streets and fall in love aimlessly, hoping to somehow, some way fix myself using someone else,
A morning that's too brisk to not wear a jacket, but too hot to not break into a sweat,
A morning where each drag of a cigarette hurts my throat, but takes my mind off of my upset stomach,
I'm spiraling, but I'm taking others down with me, even when I don't want to

I'm sorry,
I'm just tired,
I'm sorry,
I'm sorry

The leaves blowing up and down the road are almost as restless as my mind is when I try to wrap my head around why you left,
Maybe I can fill the void with someone else, and maybe when I stop talking to them for no real reason, they will go on to do the same,
I don't mean for this to happen, but I fear that it's inevitable,
I don't know how to fix myself,
It's like I'm trying to fix something that was never really broken to begin with,
I hope now you understand what it's like to deal with this

I'm not truly sorry, but I'm going to keep apologizing because nothing else that I could possibly say sounds better

I just never know exactly what to say

Everything is so bright but also bleak,
I just never know exactly what to say,
I want to get away from here,
I just never know exactly what to say,
Please,
I just never know exactly what to say,
Help,
I just never know exactly what to say,
Me

This hurts like hell, I just never know exactly what to say

I can feel the air beginning its chill
Fall is upon us while old man winter waits in the wings for his spotlight
Holy October
A year since I first kissed your cheek with a poem
Kerouac's October
Your nights remind me of my ghost
Ghost of my past love that comes in cigarette smoke
Cigarette smoke I watched on a back porch that wasn't mine
Smoke like memory that floats away in whisps
I spit the regrets out with saliva and turn my attention to better paths
October I will write you a song
More beautiful than a spiritual hymn
And more powerful than a folk ballad

I have dreams of living alone
In an old shack
Surrounded by the peaks of Montana mountains
I sit on a porch playing guitar and watch tall grass blowing in the wind
Everything is as beautiful as I know it can be
There is no pain here
Maybe that is my heaven and I have to wait
If that's the case I don't  mind
Maybe that's my idea of freedom
Freedom is a word that always eludes me
Freedom to me is never being held back
Freedom is good company
And sometimes freedom is silence

Oh October evening
I am 20 years old
My bones are young but my heart feels much older
Give me gentle Montana plains
Quiet Virginian forests
The waves hitting Carolina shores
October I hope you love me as I love you
It's been hard for me to love lately
But October you are anything but cruel
You understand
October I'm glad to see you again

Cold sweats and shower heads leak into the seams of our worst fears and dreads,
Momma didn't raise no fool,
I'll be good as dead when they finally show

Relapse,
Relapse,
Relapse

I can feel it again,
The existential dread,
Crawling through my bones, out of my skin and into my head

My best friend is my wall,
I drink to numb the feeling,
She don't love me, but she loves my mom

Tonight we are leaving and we are never coming back the same way

Relapse,
Relapse,
Relapse

I've got a feeling,
A feeling of the cold and hazy blue,
I can feel you, I can feel you,
I've been thinking too much of you

Relax,
Relax,
Relax

I'll keep hitting it, I'll keep taking it in, willingly,
Because you asked me to

Your love of the yellow rose,
My cuts and the yellow thorns,
I'm torn and you don't feel it,
It's okay, I would never ask you to

If I could go back, if I could change anything,
I'd change the way you looked at me,
Only heaven knows the way I look at you

I've been dragging the lake for my friends,
I'll never find any because they're all dead

Relapse,
Relax,
Recompose,
Rot,
Decompose

I've been thinking too much of you

Can you have decent political opinions and still be a bad person?
I'm asking for a friend
How much theory does it take to build up the courage to stand in a protest?
Does a bandana covering your face make you a coward or does it make you careful?
See my friend knows which side he stands on
But when he looks in the mirror there seems to be a different person on each side
The most direct action he takes is sitting alone reading Marx
He's never left the sidelines long enough to understand the front lines
Dignity and freedom are nothing more than dictionary definitions
Liberation is too hard to grasp
He wants to know if it's ok to be timid when the marchers pass him by
If it's ok to doubt his own strength  

My friend spends too much time driving around singing folk punk anarchist hymns
And not enough time living the lyrics
Deep down inside he is still afraid of what people will say about him
He hates that he can be so self centered
He usually doesn't wash his dishes
My friend talks about shedding chains when he never really had that many to start with
He asks if anarchists are allowed to watch shows about cops
He wants to know if anyone will ever truly see him as an ally

Every night I take a moment to tell him not to be so afraid of taking the stand
That what he thinks will only go so far as what he does
My friend wants everyone to live in a better world and he wants to be a better person
I tell him that no one will hear you until you yell loud enough
I tell him that the there's no better place to stand than where he is
He knows better than to give up
He knows he is enough

It's early and bright out,
The sun swallowed me,
It ate me up and spit me out

Nowadays, all there is is remembering,
No more looking forward,
All there is is looking back,
The air is thin and it beats the air that I am standing on with a bat,
Her air is full of love and goodbyes,
There is no point in saying hellos

What about her?
Does she make you happy?
Her lips folded over yours and the smell of alcohol, a stench, dripping into every single one of your thoughts,
Intoxicating you until you cannot see straight,
Her hands, around your neck until you cannot breathe,
The smoke, filling your lungs until you cannot breathe

I cannot breathe, unless I am breathing her in,
I cannot see straight, unless I am seeing her,
All of this, everything, for her, never for me

It's not worth it,
It's not worth it,
It's not worth it

Beating my heart until it is broken,
Tripping on my shoe laces like they were never tied to begin with,
We were never tied to begin with, I promise

This will be hard, I promise,
You won't be able to stop the shaking, I promise,
I will never leave you, I promise,
Every promise I make, I will break, I promise

I cannot see you anymore, in other worlds, I cannot see straight anymore
I cannot breathe you in anymore, in other words, I cannot breathe anymore

Still, everything I do, I do it for you, even if I won't want to

I promise

My synapses are misfiring-
this weight more than gravity.
Depravity’s disastrous grasp,
the exit is not escape.

 Feel the world spinning,
churning on without.
remants, stationed
stagnant and static.

Buzzing in discomfort,
blistering heat
of combustible refuse
left only excuses.

Catatonic catastrophe,
blasphemous bile spews,
purposeless penitent sentiments,
drowning logic in mental mishap.

An exploding star,
Separating fuselage,
limbs detach from frame
Splintering out into space.

My name doesn't matter because none of you will remember it in 15 years anyway. I'm just a person who you've cracked you door ever so slightly open for and you let both me and the haunting breeze in.
It's good to see you again, we'll beside the many times I stare at your name on the top of my phone screen and the words "compose message" loom just below, like jaws read to swallow every syllable of you're title and digit of your number.
What the ****. I know I've written this message out a thousand times but the only key that felt right was backspace. No that can't be it, let me go back through all twenty six letters until I find something, anything that feels better than nothing at all, please, anything.
I texted God instead, I hadn't spoken with him in years but I needed to ask him if I used a 12 gauge shotgun slug like the ******* Apollo and used the lead to Carry every thought to heaven if my soul would follow it.
But he left me on read.
No no I'm fine I promise. It doesn't hurt to pretend to be strong and it defiantly doesn't drain the life from me that you pretend to care. I'm just a man, reading poems to himself in the bathroom mirror over and over again in the left over mist of a scalding shower he took to prepare himself for hell.
What if the boy who cried wolf was actually just crying to the wolf. They weren't calls for attention but screams that poured out over the edges of the forest on accident, and when the hunters arrived the boy was too afraid to tell them he saw the wolf when peering into the still, blue lake.
Too afraid to cry in front of the hunters, the wolf drug him into the forest and left his screams trapped under the braided rope. Still afraid of being weak, the boy faced himself and was found swinging from an oak, smiling.

I drive in circles because I don't want to go home
I trust in the strength of my phone's speakers as I listen to Ramshackle Glory
I drive past a house from long lost memories
What is my obsession with this suffering?
Why can't things move forward?
I romanticize living in my car
But then I remember most people who live in their cars don't have a choice
Does this make me a bad person?
Am I a bad person?
The next logical step after riding the rails is living in your car
Soon you'll find me an old grey beard anarchist living deep in the woods
A shotgun I never intend to fire pointed dutifully forward as I yell an the empty forest to get off my lawn
Surround myself with enough trees to hide from your ghost
I will surround myself with land and won't pay a dime because it probably won't be mine
But no ones gonna look for me where I'm going
I'm going to unionize the college campus
Seize the means of textbook production and go to bed hungry only when I want to
I will have coffee for breakfast
I will storm every Bastille left on earth
I will create a million Paris Communes
I won't go home
I promise I will never stop loving everyone I meet
I promise I will never stop fighting everything that wraps us in chains
I will die as old as I can get
I will hold on as tightly as humanly possible
And when I say I am free
I will always know what that means