[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.