one exchange

Words lie
the truth is in your eyes
but I'm bored with this game
You can pass on into the night
I will remain here
to fondle your memory
Just add a pretty girl
and a plot is instantly generated
who cares if it is fragile
Fantasies are always precarious
blown about by desire and frustration
The old rule holds true
once there is contact
she loses her hold on you
One exchange
and you search for another
blank slate
the emptier the eyes, the better
I've built armies of them
who was the first?
she was just a prototype
I make them perfectly now
until they speak, that is
Then I break
and release them
The process begins again
my sickness coughs to life
the old inflammation surfaces
borne about by my weakest parts.

a drug I can feel

Your eyes tell me everything
one look and I have no questions
Is it better to simmer
in this pot of certainty
or to burn to the bones
in the white hot flames of lust and confusion?
I need a drug I can feel
not just to get along
I need the party
I need the pill
Let my throat turn raw
let my fingers burn into you
let me wrap my bored synapses
around every inch of you
Go ahead
walk away
I will have you anyway
you won't know it
though you may feel it
when you ask yourself
if you're really alone
when the night feels heavy
when the rain comes down
You know I'm out there
waiting for you
for the injection
the jumpstart
for your chemicals
the inoculation to keep me human another day.

the antidote

You've stuck to my bones
and I don't really know
how I can walk away
You've spoken peace
into my stormiest nights
slipped me the antidote
when I wasn't looking
I'm just a man--
a man with a death wish
but you make me
want to live again
I see in your eyes the torment
I have wrought
My punk rock heroes
are fading fast
my flesh is weaker every day
the books I read speak the truth
and I fear they are sick of me
The rain is treacherous
the night is a feeding frenzy
of fear and loathing
I wake leaner and meaner
Every day I come away
with less and less
Where is the rest in this cycle?
I feel it only
when my hands touch your skin
in your reaction
in your breath
in your whimpering, sweating struggle
I know you must feel me
drifting, wounded
unable to right myself
unable to relay to you
how precarious things have become
If not for you
there would be nothing left of me.

blood and smoke and noise

Here we go again
on this grave robber tour
numberless nights I have ridden
with your howling madness
This train is my life
and it roars with a violence,
threatens to jump the tracks
The night reveals it
all blood and smoke and noise
Desperate are we
who straddle it
we have no other home
Here it is again
that same old song
faster this time
so fast,
you can't keep up
The noise, the violence,
the rhetoric you once shunned
has become a partner
You defend it
because you have to
you have nowhere else to go
Up there in the crowd, all of you
I hope you will always be begging
for an explanation
I hope you never know
what all of these words mean
I'm just another filthy fool of a man
wandering the outskirts of your town.

judging a book

You've got that rock and roll
on your lips
the deep blue sea
in your eyes
a fire like the end of the world
in your loins
You are a riot
deadly in disguise
you are war planes
and satellite chatter
blankets of incendiary bombs
voices in unison screaming--
no one can stop me
Your sex rides on the fattest tires
your engine craves the coldest air
and a brave soul
to mash the accelerator
All noise, all show
girls like you are happiest
when there's a crowd
When no one's looking
you forget who you are
Intoxicated by the sound
by the rage under your taut skin
the simple stare in wonder
they imagine the world in your eyes
they can't begin to ponder
what you're like
between the covers
We will all give you meaning
like a blank bathroom stall
everyone will know you
in their own way
How many men
have sat behind the wheel
gripped the shifter
grinned in awe?
Have they seen your weak,
your vulnerable bits?
Have they seen the breakdowns
the fits, the spasms
the parts that never fit
the parts you threw away?
Every triumph has a price
I wonder how much did you pay
girls like you
aren't built every day.

grins for faces

The cold is back
and it's good to see
that nothing ever changes
If you live a thousand years
you will still fight the same battles
run the same races
love the same woman
break your back in the hot sun
right up til the end
How many times
can you come back for more
how many times
can you bore into life
and find nothing there
It is written
and so it will always be
the same criminals
have the same things to say
as they wait
on their bitter crosses
Were you expecting something new
to sear your retinas today?
were you waiting all this time
for the real party to start?
Looking out these windows
has become a pointless exercise
you know what's coming
your seasons have already changed
Still, you wonder why
some leaves just won't fall
you wonder how they can resist
the inevitable onslaught to come
Maybe they don't believe
in the end of their world
or maybe they just couldn't let go
I like to think of them as fighting
never giving up hope
waiting, like me
with bated breath
for another sunny day
Maybe they froze there
with expletives still on their tongues
grins for faces
fists full of hate.

stand with me

These words I have
are the only thing I control
maybe now you realize
the reason for my tight grasp
maybe now you see
why my anxiety multiplies every night
I need you to hear me
and this is the only way
It is a weak and cowardly act,
this convenient conveyance
Do you think less of me now?
Here, I build myself up
here, I tear myself down
this exercise, this discipline--
it is my only explanation
Maybe now you see the reason
for the vagueness
I name myself as the only guilty party
all others just play on my stage
There is no reason
to involve the innocent and unsuspecting
Where will this end?
it ends with me
As long as I persist
there will be these cryptic scrawlings
laying in my wake
I keep promising myself
no more hard luck stories
no more plagiarized lyrics
no more fucking songs about girls
but I never was good
at keeping promises
They say write what you know
I hope someday
these pages won't drip with misery
and that someday
they'll be seen for what they are--
simple words from a simple man
What lies beneath my skin
what pulses in my veins
what causes the blackouts
the electrical storms in my brain?
This regimen will uncover it
there is a way to know
and I will find it
I own these words
they are mine
In a world of parasitic treachery
this is all I have
Maybe now you understand
the reason for my tight grasp
maybe now you believe
that I'm telling the truth
So many things are stacked against me
will you stand with me?

the most polite of strangers

It is a classic quandary
right or wrong
Those who say that neither exist
are only fooling themselves
I learned young
that the wrong way brought more laughs,
more tears, and still more
temptation
Endless nights I have
contemplated you
endlessly I have sought you,
begged you to reappear
How many people can say
they are electrified
when you are near
How many ways have I devilishly
devised my attack
my plans grow ever bolder
I've crossed off pencil with pen,
and pen with my blood
Where will this disaster end?
I hope to never see that day
your eyes grow bigger,
your lips fuller
your excitement more spasmodic
with each imagining
We are perfect this way,
wrapped in blissful misery
suffocating in our cellophane
acknowledging each other
like the most polite of strangers.