such innocent blood

Darkness is as darkness does
I breathe the darkness in
and taste the last memory of you
There's no light on in your window
and your shitty car
is nowhere to be found
your street is empty
my vagabond spirit
paces on your moon-drenched porch
I am frantic and jealous
watching myself
as if from a distance
My hands are brutish and mean
my breath comes in spurts
I search for a corridor
which does not exist

Where the fuck are you?
why are you drowning me in your wake?
why are the rules
always so unfairly stacked against me?
The night is a force
the moon is strength
ideas are strong
but they will bend
to the rage in my blood
the beast behind my eyes
and to the hollow feeling of loss
that makes me crave
such innocent blood.

deconstructing the fall

A cold wind is blowing
all hallows is coming
I've seen you staring
out your bedroom window at night
What are you looking for?
If I take you out
of the equation
then there's nothing else but work
If I take myself out
then the answer is much happier
I can't control my own anxieties
so I strangle loose ends
and endless variables
We all work for mathematics
not the other way around
You don't work for me
you work for your own feral genes

Brittle leaves are knocking on your door
the tired sun
is turning a cold shoulder on me
and nothing will bring us together
I used to waste my breath
now I bide my time
I used to know the answers
now I know better
I'm not afraid of the darkness
not afraid of what the wind brings
I am afraid of boredom
and I'm definitely afraid of you
If I run
you run faster
If I sleep
you riddle my dreams
If I cough
you are the blood I taste,
the pneumonia I never got over

There is a wild scent
in the air tonight
there is a belligerence
in my nostrils tonight
I've grown
but I haven't grown up
I've been stunted and contorted
like many trees I've seen
I wish I had stayed
down by the river
wish I had never
climbed those banks
It was perfect--
the sun, the water
the little girl named Amy
What force drove me on?
What voice called me out?
Why did anything have to change?
I have a luddite soul
and I hate what we've become
People form, people rearrange
the pestilence inside stays the same
If you breathe on me
I will breathe on you
Your sins are my sins
we pass them around
and feign innocence
like we always do.

cringing in the backseat

You make me feel
like I'm falling
off the edge of the world
stable ground is a slippery slope
All I really know
is that you're laughing at me
Girls like you are open invitations
thinly veiled temptations
walking mockery
What you want
and what you need
are two different things
I'm sure I can't give you either
only in the darkness that hides me
can I really feel you
Do you know
my fingerprints are all over your car?
I inhale the pheromones
under your window
and imagine you curled in sleep
or my favorite--
sweaty and tortured
by lustful fantasies
There is no way to make you
feel small like I do
so I have to imagine you that way
imagine you broken like me
I will leave a mark
you will know I'm watching you
The crow on your shitty car
that's me
the claustrophobic feeling when you're alone
that's me
when you look in the mirror
and swear that something shrank behind you
that's me too
I'm there in the boredom of your bedroom
and cringing in the backseat
when you drive so fast
My cold hands and my numb neurons
feel for your warmth in the rain
I find you colder every time
Am I the most undaunted dopamine fiend?
I never find what I'm looking for
but that knowledge is easier
than shaking this sickness.

a small light

Don't talk to me
about keeping my cool
and never letting
anything through
Don't talk to me
about rising above
I've stared the devil in the face
spit in his eye
talked myself down
from so many ledges
kept a small light burning
because darkness cannot prevail
I have stories
even I don't understand
Fables and hopeless dreams
raised this latch-key kid
You can't blame me
for turning out strange
Your shape would be contorted
tortured and broken
if you were extruded and manhandled
by the same experiences
Hope is what keeps you sane
but waiting wears you down
Hope is tender
when you hold it in your hand
but it's bitter
when it slips though your fingers
There is a girl who reminds me
that we are just
a chaotic arrangement of atoms
Her eyes have the hope I need
but they also ask questions like

How did you get so lean?
How did you get so mean?
How do your wounds
get so clean?
Do you lick them every day?
What happens when the pain subsides
and you're left with nothing to feel?
You need something to fight
I get it
but what happens
when the war is over?

So many questions
but my lungs are burning
I'm out of breath
The day-to-day is extracting
what's left of me
So go on and steal my lyrics
you think you can handle it
go ahead and face the music
This is my voice
these are my days
I burn myself here
because I won't take this pain with me.

make out playlist 01

01 depeche mode - rush

02 kill hannah - lips like morphine
03 legion of doom - bite to break the skin (senses fail)
04 depeche mode - behind the wheel (remix)
05 legion of doom - one love (aiden)
06 when in rome - the promise
07 police - every breath you take
08 depeche mode - i want you now (dyslexic integration)
09 senses fail - buried a lie
10 sparta - breaking the broken
11 sugarcult - i melt with you
12 sponge - plowed
13 trever keith - half asleep
14 reggie and the full effect - take me home please
15 i am x - after every party i die

trace the scars

This place is so familiar
I think I died here before
Is that my clotted viscera?
wild flailings sprayed on the walls?
are those my prints?
blood and spit dried on the floor?
What a desperate scene
I remember how it played out
how my hope was strangled
my trust was stabbed
my arms were bound
and then the real torture began
This is no place to die
I refuse to let it happen
This is a momentary discomfort
a necessary step in the wrong direction
I know why
I keep coming back
It is a fruitless and sadistic experience
Everything I have has been drained
every imagination has been assaulted
I wrote you letters
asking for help
asking for reinforcements and evacuation plans
but I never heard back

When I look in the mirror
my eyes are kicking and screaming
When I look at my hands
I like to trace the scars
and wonder what they've taught me
This is my last letter to you
but you won't know
I will hide it like shame
and when I sleep
I will imagine a distant reality
where a breath is savored
and not labored
where our eyes meet
and nothing is misunderstood
where the rain falls on time
where the power in our fists
isn't cruel, isn't spiteful
and the cold can't penetrate our souls
The perverseness here
I cannot accept
I will wait
for another place, another time
to come alive.

no hero

Is our hero inebriated?
drunk on hard work and misery?
The sound of a piano
is tinkling away
like the end of a movie
That's me, I suppose
because I have nothing
left to give
Here I am with the light on
late at night
It used to be David Letterman,
Conan O'Brien and infomercials
hawking exercise equipment to insomniacs
These days it's sad books
and writing about
the times we used to have
I'm drunk but I'm no hero
My father was an alcoholic
so yes
that apple is rotting
where it fell
My father made good
turned his talents into profits
I turned my talents
amazingly
into cruel jokes
There must be a law
ensuring these endings
The clues were there
I guess I missed them
So many people wanted to help
but I was compelled
the other way
What great defect
brought this weight down on me?
There is still the smell of
a church choir on me
The scriptures that I bathed in
still resonate
What I miss the most
is the virginity of it all
a cleanness I cannot find today
I want to shave my flesh clean
bathe in lye
cauterize my wounds
protect the innocent
because no one will shelter them

Instead
I sit alone and waste into the night
The hum of a 40 watt
and the rage in my mind
are the only things
keeping me alive
I can smell the hymnals
can still sing the songs
but the joy turned its cheek
the story got contorted
I am still there
fixed in time
I've lived so many lives
plagiarized so many lines
fixed the outcome
but was still surprised.