There are bottles on the floor but it's best to drink
with low center of gravity right now and
what's lower than the floor?
And it might be floor level
but it levels the playing field and I feel
like I can rush the players and
play right into the hands of my angry god.
My angry god has dreadlocks and smokes;
Don't ask me if it's ****--he's never shared.
My angry god wears button-down shirts,
the Hawaiian kind.
He drapes the shirts over his bony, lanky body
My angry god forgives me for the things I
don't remember doing, and laughs at the things
I do.
My angry god picks up the floor bottles and
tells me I can turn them into glasses
"recycle, reuse," he tells me
And I tell him the cycle of use repeats
and my feet shuffle close to him, wanting
to pat his shoulders but he's shouldered
my responsibilities and I can't add weight
so wait--
My angry god's hands are smudged with
dirt and ink and oil
like the prodigal poet, the blue collar lyricist
and he tells me not to worry
He tells me it doesn't matter
He tells me he's proud of me
And I don't have to prove myself to him
My angry god grabs my bottles and he
levels them
Emptying the playing field
"Sleep easy," he says
He tucks me in.

They bought up the bands first.
Every half-bit guitarist with some ripped
denim clothing jumped at the chance
to have more than bus fare to the next gig.

They bought up the bands and they
turned them into Spam.
Canned meat that is meant never to expire,
meant to be shipped to islands all over the world,
large and small.

Packaged, processed, made of who knows what.
It says what on the can, on the band, sure.
After all, who’s ever met a label that couldn’t be
doctored or fudged or a flat-out lie?

They bought up the music and the music flowed,
heavy with propaganda pollutants,
and we all changed our minds.

Our minds were worn as riverbeds are worn
as the music flowed through like a river flows through.
And the smokes we smoked were the smokes they smoked,
industry-purchased, paper-wrapped cancers.
And the shares went higher and the music played louder
and the bad that was turned worse
until everything turned from flowing to forcing
and the music was the ocean, large and terrible and murderous,
with things deeper and darker lurking beneath.

They bought up the bands and the music
and they wiggled their music-wedge into
the doorway of the tube, the telly, the tv, the idiot box.
After all, what’s so big a leap that the ocean of
the machine that is industry-music can’t manage?

They bought up the music, they converted us.
They bought up the television, they led us by the nose
like  ducklings, like lemmings.
They made us believe in art, believe in something
with lead-based paint covering the ***-metal caricature
of something that had been, long long ago,
but which never was, not truly.

Politics is pervasive, and politics pushes through.
The biggest stack pushes the players around,
makes the little guy fold even if he’s got a royal flush.
Because the biggest stack bought the half-bit guitarists
and the music and the television and all of us, bit by bit.

The biggest stacks have been buying us, every one.
And each of us has chosen sides, multiple sides,
because we don’t know what we’re fighting for,
but we know we’re fighting and we know we’re being bought.
It’s a difficult war we’re all fighting, alone and together.
A difficult series of seemingly pointless battles,
and we’re being bought and sold all the while.

But isn’t it nice to be wanted.

And it's just, the more I pull away the more it seems elastic dreams of snapping back
I've lived on razor's edges long enough to know a cut that's coming
And the cut that's coming I've stopped before but it wants more, it want the string
These things come with a price that's paid by the ones that lay me down
The waters are deep below but I just might go swimming
The waters are deep below but you want to follow
me and I can't let you
I can't imagine losing you even if the losing is done after I've lost
And maybe it'll always be this way night and day making two endless cycles of battles until I'm not sure if I'm waking from sleep or sleeping to avoid the waking nightmare of the thing I want to do
Now with growing concern I realize too late that it is fate that all I've done is draw out my final breath for a few more years and no one hears the voice in my head that convinces me it might be fun to be
Dead dreams grow like weeds in my rib cage sores and I pull them out and leave them on the window sills because talk and pills seem endlessly to be the answer
but I know the answer is just a delay of the inevitable and that's okay
so long as it means I make it another day
So long as I get to keep you, and I suppose, so long as you get to keep me

Cookie-cutter classics are what I'm listening to
Songs like these just always seem to make me think of you:
Same as others, yet still popular; you leave me feeling blue
Wishing for a cookie-cutter to make me the same as you

It’s been half-past Forgetting You
And this broken watch goes ticking
A time bomb of its own and now
I’m drinking by myself
I’m drinking by myself

For [x] years now I’ve gotten on
Moving forward like you’re doing
A conveyor belt of feelings
I’m thinking to myself

I’m thinking that
     As we get old and moldy
     Will the rocks remember us?
     Or will they roll forgetting
     That these naked apes once        
      loved?

A quarter ‘til Find Someone New
And this half-wound watch needs fixing
Keeping time all by its lonesome
I’m thinking to myself

I’m thinking that
     As time turns like a turret
     Will it cast its gaze on me?
     Am I small as god is small
     Ubiquitous, forsaken?

Can’t you see? (I’m brand new)
Can’t you see? (I’m reformed)
Can’t you see?
Can’t you see?

I’m thinking that
     As I grow old and ugly
     Will this rock still be my friend?
     Dust and ash and rib I am
     But who will remember that?

I’m thinking that
     As time becomes my comrade
     Will we fight a wicked fight?
     Or will we become traitors
     And destroy ourselves once more?

And it’s half-past Forgetting You
It’s a quarter ‘til Find Someone New
This broken watch keeps ticking on
But I, I have turned off.

Yo lowkey; I ain't ate ****
And I'm blacking out a little bit
The whiskey 'n' ale is making me dizzy
And my brain and my hair both are all frizzy
Got dollars in my pocket, my phone is dead
Sunglasses and an envelope; lotto blinks red
And I'm writing on a napkin, blank screens abound
While the stories coming out go 'round and 'round

The first time I saw you cry was about him
And it was in your month so it wasn't fair
It was about how he had pressed pause
Played with words and women
Like he was running through so many flowers
Just running through flowers; he'd be back soon.

The first time I saw you cry I held you in my arms
I was wearing a shirt of acting
Acting the part of a father
And fathering a mind full of doubts and fears
I told you to hit stop on the paused player.

The first time I held you in my arms, I didn't know what to do
Patting or stroking or still
I still don't know what to do with them
But I tried to say the things I didn't know how
How you needed so much better
Better find yourself a true love.

The first time I made you cry, I said 'I love you'
The first time you cried because of something I said
Good goodbye tears, happy and sad
Like the world was ending, and ours was, a little
You left with him
We lost each other
You lost yourself
I found me

The last time I made you cry, you said "I'm sorry"
But it was because I made you think about him
And it was in your house so it wasn't fair
I made you think of infidelity and the fear
Of losing Someone you love to Someone you love
I was the second Someone making you think of that first someone
Of not-too-many years ago

The last time I made you cry, you comforted me
I threw up in your toilet and you said "I'm sorry"
I gave you nothing but unprocessed ****
Rejected goodness and nourishment
I gave you memories of bad people
And bad thoughts of good people
I gave you strife
And you said "I'm sorry"