1. |
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[for the past.]
Well, I was born full of hate and cast onto a stage. In the spotlight I burned up with all of my rage with my umbilical cord coiled tight ‘round my throat as the audience laughed; their tears stained their fur coats. Then they gave me a bottle and forced me to suck it: “Go to school, get a job, get married, kick the bucket” and when Death comes for me, he’ll spit on me and say “You were just a number, you’re no goddamn snowflake.” I’m a neurotic guy with below-average looks. I like pale, dark-haired girls that like their old-fashioned books. I’m afraid of death, rejection, and the government and what I’ll see in myself if past the surface I squint. I graduated back in the class of ’11 but God help me if I’ve got any real direction. I quit my one steady job because it felt like a cage. Now I sit on my floor counting my leftover change and this is where I am at. So I’m writing my songs, my films and stories, my poems as I stare at my friends, knowing I am below them and I dream and I dream and I can dream until I’m dead but nothing will happen if I don’t get out of bed. I’ve got philophobic darkness resonating in my heart. I want to get better; I just don’t know where to start. Maybe if I stopped constantly living in the past, it’d be enough to get my head out of my fat ass.
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2. |
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[for Billy and for everyone fighting the fight]
I’ve been spiraling and spinning through a window; I thought it was a door and lately I’ve been thinking I find myself more often facedown on the floor. Let’s assess the situation: I call myself an artist, but my heart knows that’s a lie because I can’t muster motivation to get out of bed or look anyone in the eye. I’m a big boy now, that number says, but something doesn’t seem right. The world is not a Hallmark card. We’re all shaking in our caskets; the only thing is that our minds haven’t caught up yet. If I met God, I would ask Him if He still loves us or if we’re a cruel experiment because things have gotten out of control. I’ve played my part for too long in this movie scene. I’ve just gotta find a loophole like how Billy edits life on his portable screen. So blow your kisses, maybe we’ll talk. Kill your TV, eat the remains. They’re going to find out I don’t work soon. I put gas in my car so I can go to work so I can get paid so I can put gas in my car…That doesn’t sound right. We do this for forty years and then we die; does that sound like a pretty good deal to you?
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3. |
Jellyfish
04:21
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[for Bobby and Ali]
I’m a jellyfish with no heart and no brain floating through the vast ocean and causing sharp pains to any poor sucker dumb enough to touch me. I’ve got no ears to hear nor eyes that can see. The clock likes to mock me with its three middles fingers, spinning so cruelly leaving most moments sick blurs. The calendar plays, too, throwing pages in my face, reminding me I've done nothing for years but take up space. I've been waiting for the spring to thaw the winter of my bones but I'll get overheated when summer comes along and wait for the autumn to cool me off proper until I get too chilly. Are you seeing the pattern? I’m a firefly existing to entertain those on the outside of my glass jar display case and out of anyone, friend, I know how you feel plus the words you can’t say because your lips are sealed. And your heartbeat deafens you as you pull off her dress and you push her down onto your ratty mattress and she senses the heaviness in your sick head, says “I don’t want to do this if you feel like you’re dead” and you lie to her because, hey, you might as well and her body quakes as you invade all her cells and she sits there looking like a hot number eight with a perfect round ass and the smallest of waists and bubbles float down when there is no wind and you can’t put out of your mind yourself as a kid because it was the only time when you were ever happy. I long for ears to hear and eyes that can see.
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4. |
Scene Kid Friday
04:16
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[for the opening shift at PetSmart.]
I’m sleepless in suburbia as I flip the record over to the B-side. Words once flowed from brain to ink so easily now I try too hard to sound like I’m someone else. That photograph of us is still on my dresser in its frame like a monolith. Our ghosts greet my visitors. I often think of us bathed in midsummer gold and that one dance that you still owe me. I’ve got The Upsides on repeat in my car to keep my mood afloat, but I can’t take it to heart knowing what comes after. I write pages of patchy poetry but I don’t think I’ll ever be a poet. I’ve got to be up tomorrow at five for a shift inside a building that burns as the scene kids dream of their big mall day ahead. I’ve got to get up to the mountains. Too small is that coffee shop for all the talent that it holds. Except for me, I missed one class. I came in late. A chipped cup in a cabinet of glasses but I’ll just keep on playing my clumsy chords and let those words echo off all my organs and let them flow like wine out of my cracked mouth and let them just fall onto the floor. And I know that the 495 is there any night I may need him. Such a swell guy. Well I should really start going to class more but I read that My Chem broke up and they’ve got that song that goes “if life ain’t just a joke, then why are all laughing?” Well they’re right. What’s so fucking funny?
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5. |
Dead Fish Song
02:57
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[for two girls that separately held my heart in their hands 2009-2013.]
Below a churning black sky on a sour milk sea, the dead fish poke their heads out and start talking to me from the edge of my raft through their terrible fangs and I cover my ears as they whisper me things like how I let your body twist into smoke, how my insides would cave in whenever you spoke, how you ran through my head ‘til you ran out of breath but I still couldn’t catch you; my lungs felt like death. There’s a girl that plays guitar with my heartstrings stretched over my ribs and she plays every note with such cruel honesty. I think there’s something that I’ve missed. I’m swimming home quick as I can to avoid being sucked into the sea or up into the void of trillions of uncaring stars in the sky as the machines down below all wave me “goodbye.”I woke up this morning in a strange new place; I shrunk down, found myself on your porcelain face and I dug down deep into the skin of the earth in an attempt to find where I buried my self-worth. In each grain of dirt, I could see an abyss of baby blue in which I dove into to escape a rogue and bitter truth. Now I’m that noise in the dark more frightened of you than you of it just fumbling through the blackness for a quiet place to sit.
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6. |
Channel Surfing
02:56
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[for those who use television as a weapon to dumb us all down. Get fucked.]
I’m sitting home alone in my armchair watching my TV and as I’m channel surfing, I’m horrified by what I see. There’s pregnant teens being granted with their own reality shows and how come MTV ain’t about the music anymore? We’re the Fist Pumping Generation—what’s this world coming to? Honey Boo Boo and FOX News all make me want to spew. There’s commercials competing for spots desperate just to sell and all of SpongeBob’s new writers should go straight back to hell. The History Channel tells me where we’ve been, but where are we going? The anchors say we should be worried but there’s no way of knowing. So let’s turn off the ten o’clock news and hide under our chairs because I don’t want to hear about more homicides—I don’t care. When I was young, I tell you true, that I did love TV but growing old I realize it just spits trash from its screen. There’s men in suits who control every second that we watch. I guess welcome to the Golden Age of Entertainment Botched. And for those of you that watch CSPAN with the Elephants and Donkeys: well, I can’t tell the difference cuz they all look like pigs to me!
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7. |
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[for Lex.]
Everybody’s home from college for the first time since March. Over Half Apps they’ll tell me all these “you had to be there” stories of how much they drank and the strangers they’ve kissed and I don’t think I’ve ever felt more far away. We were those “fucked up” kids with the two-hundred disorders we heard about on TV but aren’t in the books. Now we’re grown up or at least they are because I’m held up in a bathroom at work suffocating on all of the greens and golds. I’ve always wanted the freedom to go “fuck shit up,” but I haven’t the faintest idea of what that even means. So tonight I’ll get my usual drink, inadequacy. It’s the only thing I’ve tried here and it’s much cheaper than the wine. For the title fight, it’s me vs. stability. I hear the ref calling out two black eyes. I think both of them are mine. It’s at parties in basements where I feel most out of place and Brittany has to come over and ask if I’m alright but I like watching all the kids that I wish I were friends with and the girl who makes fat in how she won’t ever cross the room and I’m as disposable as that balled-up tissue that her ex throws away when he’s done thinking about her. Maybe if this wolf was thinner, or had better hair he’d have a better chance of dwelling with that blue-eyed lamb. My inner monologue is screaming to be heard above the static. It knows as well as I do that I’m not like the other boys. I just wanted to be just a little bit of everything but my back breaks from the weight of my suburban mediocrity. Years ago, I was told to stop thinking and just sing but growing up, I’ve found it’s better for the soul just to scream. I’ve been looking at my yearbook photo and the clocks have got me beat. I’ll never return to that place for it’s now just an empty glove. I spent the latter part of that year in Lex’s passenger seat and I took those rides for granted like all the things that I have loved.
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8. |
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[for Ches]
You have a Cheshire Cat smile that lingers while the rest of you leaves, crossing my headlights and disappearing into the inky black night. I’d gladly drown thousands of times over in the oceans of your eyes, taking the endless gallons of blue into my lungs until they burst. But if your pen runs out of ink, well then, take some of mine. I just hope you don’t mind writing in red. When I’m by your side, I fear nothing. Only you. I wanted to declare war on that awful sadness that clings to your guts; to sew up all those pretty little holes you made in yourself so nothing more would fall out. But if you somehow lose your mind, crawl into my arms, well that’d be okay. Just whatever you do, don’t call me “baby.” Don’t call me “baby” whatever you do.
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9. |
Fuck Me Sideways
06:49
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[for Marisa]
I once was wrapped in an angelic girl that sang in a church choir. She had eyes bright enough they burned me; they reminded me of blue fire. When she told me she was fine she became the filthiest of liars. I wish so badly that I could help while Mommy Dearest sends off to boot camp her precious little boy. He didn’t want to go to college but he’s still her pride and joy and how she hopes with every shred of her that he will not be deployed as the death toll forever rises. Now he’s lonely and far, far away from your homemade church and steeple. He’ll go out and rape a Middle Eastern girl for he was taught that they’re not people and as she screams he’ll think about his white girlfriend’s tight little shithole. How he can’t wait to get home. But there are better men than him blindly keeping this nation free but free from what? We are hypnotized by our own Facebook news-feeds and from the second we wake up, we need stimulation from a screen. We’re all rotting in our homes. Everything’s a commercial for something else; they all say “find salvation in me” while the movies prey on every single one of our insecurities like death and hope and how a nice girl might kiss an ugly fuck like me and the politicians laugh because they know their public’s made of fucking morons, clearly spelled, and each false promise that they make is more for us in which to delve. No, I did not vote last November; I knew we were fucked for 2012 for the world is too forgone. Now boys are quick to say “I love you” but no sooner would they shove you down the stairs for someone hotter; next thing you know, you’re not her and you mourn at how your cat became a venom-spitting snake’s martyr. Now your friends comfort you while you cry. Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve dealt with girls and I know they are just the same. They plot and plan so intricately and play their little mind games and they will torment those interested until a husk is what remains. I should know. Yet we still reach under blankets for a warm hand to hold. to satisfy ourselves and shelter our hearts from the bitter cold. Oh, but hearts they start to wander pushing eyeballs that they’ve rolled. You can always be replaced. The sky, she rained like I know she should, sure as Sierra will learn to walk and “we can’t take advice until we’re ready,” Ad said; that’s why he and Jade still talked until they woke up and decided that this isn’t what they want but now they’re not so sure. As for me I’m twenty, looking back on wasted years using my apathetic cynicism to hide my countless fears and I will never be a man—just a little boy with a beard or, at most, just a guy. I can self-loathe eternally, for pages upon pages; hate myself into my pillow and into microphones on stages. I will never be free; I’ll just move into bigger cages. I am not a fool. I’ve been told hundreds of times advice I’ve put up on a shelf: they’ve said “no one will ever love you if you can’t learn to love yourself” and that what I keep bottled up inside is harmful to my health. I guess I’m a lost cause. And so for now I’ll stumble through the dark looking for clarity but all I find are endless piling heaps of ambiguity and I lack the brains, the motivation, heart and ingenuity to find anything else. So I’ll stay here and write such scathing songs about all the fucks I’ve met but I lack the wit of Max Bemis plus enough ink in my pen. So I’ll build a wall so high just to tear it down again so fuck me sideways and goodnight.
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10. |
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[for Donald]
It’s Saturday morning and I’ve rolled over in bed for the fourth time while last night’s dreams fade from my head. I don’t work today, sunlight’s peering through my blinds and I keep remembering that someday I will die. I’ll send a message to Adam and when I get an answer, I’ll go pick him up and head out West to buy records. High school’s two years gone and my future looks bare and nothing I do, I feel, will make me quite prepared. I’m still writing but lately it’s been mostly poems but they help me cope while I’m going through the motions. I finally got a new job, but it still feels like a cage but I won’t leave until I move onto the next stage where I will not be so afraid all the time and I’ll know what I have and I’ll know that it’s mine. Yeah, it will be a long road, and for once I won’t quit. I just know once I get there, that it will be worth it and this is where I want to be. I know I’ll win the war that’s been raging through my head. The battle lines are drawn, there’s just no attack plan yet. So for now I’ll just sit beside this great big bonfire in Donald’s backyard and know that I’ll never tire of him and the rest of my friends that are stuck like me and we’ll just try to not give a fuck while Act Two of this suburban ballet makes us sad kids, we’re gonna try our best to keep ourselves laughing.
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