well i thought i was called to be brighter than the ones who laid the path for me well i thought i was s’posed to be graceful and smile through a kick in the teeth and the penance we paid by surviving each day would ensure that the world would proceed and the progress would solve all our problems so we’d never again have to bleed i was told it would hold up in daylight and not crumble to dust at our feet with all promises dead in the rear view and the shaking hands cast off to sea and we bled ourselves dry with the cleavers provided by smiles showing sharp and white teeth as the temperature clambered to head height, there was never a plan we could keep the time for regret is supplanted by the rage to demand our release we are starting to choke in a cloud of terror we’ll be snuffed out by smoke when the world’s over we are starting to choke in a cloud of terror we’ll be snuffed out by smoke when the world’s done is there any way to move against the groove? the spiral when the world thinks you’re only a body, there’s no room in your mind left for peace

i've been trying to get the bugs out of my head for the last two years i've been bloodletting wax crayons wax candles wax just like a mannequin don't you, don't you, don't you don't you, don't you, don't you want to live comfortably? don't you, don't you, don't you don't you, don't you, don't you want to forget your name?

my hands connect to yours in my best dreams we’re never out of arms’ reach it comes and goes and when it comes you know i’m on the floor alone, so take me to the sun i have had enough of myself can’t color with no lines it’s pulling teeth and dragging both my feet all on repeat, it’s every week if i could show you everything i know it wouldn’t sound half as sweet as everybody else tearing muscle cells easily with angels on their minds everybody else higher on the shelf beating me so am i not alight? when you find your day to day is a compromise your hands belie sun that shines into your eyes and asks you why you’re still alive these walls will hold your head inside a bug in glass in amber light

baby in a box on a plywood backdrop faces painted on disfigured by lawn lights moonlight bounces up and lights the face of the man and mother who just smile so softly wonder what it's like to know what your life's for to watch your purpose born and the raccoons behind are going wild

it’s not riverside but you more than make up for that it’s not “am i alright?” it’s all in the cause of it did you lure me in with what your hands can’t allow four moccasins something saccharine it’s a fable for now autumn arrives with a drill, a tap, a trazodone another counting down pencil creases beside the thumb have you learned how to live like you’ve nothing to hide have you learned how to die how you wanted to with no mess left behind back through your eyes to days of trash and glitter back when your mind was top of the litter when sweetness was never in short supply with sun at the fringe of a winter sky and a snowfall could lift you up out of your everyday it’s not the same kind of light that you recall that was streaming down the hall in your youth step out of memory out into a blizzard now, are your winters getting colder year by year

my hands aren’t as open as i remembered and it’s not grown any easier now to breathe like a cat i watched from the rafters as it all came tumbling after with the voice and tone of a pastor shouting warnings of a disaster but my head was divided, my ears wouldn’t bother to hear and all the wooden floors i’ve spent a night upon poison buds in spring allure a fawn wish i could stay a bit longer but i just move on, oh i just wanna feel something better than alright i just want to sleep a little easier tonight can you read the ending of a life? is that too much? rotting away like forgotten leftover thank-yous hollowed out just to show me what i don't hold empty people make the emptiest art with my head on my knees and it still doesn't start at the bottom of buses, in the back of a car spilling into the sink with a chain on my heart, oh i couldn't even be the loneliest person on earth and all the kitchen floors i’ve watched you die upon crawling back to lie on summer lawns begging to stay in the warmth as the year marches on, oh i just wanna feel something better than alright i just want to sleep a little easier tonight can i write the ending of my life? is that too much? it sets in when you’re young when you haven’t made defenses and glides from room to room hiding in old boxes hiding in newspapers and you’ll never see it just the trail that it leaves on your arms bridge is not a chairlift ledge is not a slope but we learn to make do as you do bridge is not a chairlift ledge is not a slope but we learn to make do with the blues

(cleaning up the mess we left behind it just spreads around like paint) everybody wants into the pretty house built on empty caches and spines its their duty to run around like wild dogs as it is mine to turn back into stone everybody wants into the warehouse floor where the speaker static drowns out everything footsteps echo in the halls where the cots are all aligned and it’s always been the sound they scramble frequency to hide every drop of blood that pools along the floor is fed into the fog machine footsteps echo in the halls where the bodies are aligned and their mouths are open screaming in the dead of night something came in through the walls (dies irae) and it bit me on the hand (dies illa) and it promised me a better life, a cleaner death (solvet sæclum) when it comes back again, when it comes back again (in favilla) you were captured in a thirty-five of film and surrendered into studio control a map is never still unless it lies and by design all maps are liars by its grace you were absolved of all your sin through some minor edits to the script spun around until you don’t know where you are cut apart until you don’t know who you are (you cannot run from hope cause it will sneak up on you you cannot run from fear cause it has its teeth in you you cannot run from hope cause it will sneak up on you you cannot run from fear cause it has its teeth in you)

this is the point where no one hears you the signal’s lost, the comms are dead this is the point where no one can reach you save the ties to other lives you would efface when you cut the cord i watched you spiral out into the void and your face bore the valleys of some heavy burden i could never see and the lines across your back i couldn’t trace i know you’ve gone and dug your grave but i made the time to see you ‘fore you leave all your flowers never reached the sun i was standing in the rubble watching all the buds get plucked out of their place this is the point where no one believes you from your fiat of despondency proclaimed all of language insufficient, and all of movement heresy and the world kept on turning just the same i heard you say “i am from nothing and i am nothing and when nothing’s really all there ever was will this shared hallucination we call living mourn the loss of one more hollow-hearted fool?” well i hope it does i know you’ve gone and dug your grave but i made the time to see you ‘fore you leave i still offer you the hand of a companion i will stay inside the walls that you have set up as your penitentiary cage and the days have changed but i’m still here the same and the light may fade but i’m still here the same till the day i die i’m still here