(0257) my second lung

acid reminder. fictional pose. you burn my face. i walk out the door. i'm arriving late. i was paying off another whore. guilt from control escapes out from a jungle of frustration and fantasy; she stops for a moment, then she turns around. suddenly, her soul is gone. flipped on a switch and reacted to silence. i tasted the truth, but i have a feeling inside that i'm being used. we filter out the missing parts.

death in this art; i'm going in every direction. you won't remember when they're pulling the tissue from your vital organs and leaving you on a cold, metal bed. i think i should get help for this addiction to cancer. leave me alone with some dental floss and no answers to this hopeless test. i'll fail just like i've failed all the rest, yet it makes me strangely happy to see them losing a piece of their worthless lives everytime they take a little breath.

i know we need time. i know we need something to fill up our vaccuum bags of disappointment and disenchantment as an image of a false god hangs over our shoulders, trying to listen in on our thoughts.

dropped off my brain in the coldness of rain and slipped on the sidewalk, but i never felt a thing. i just wandered through the alleys of my expired daydream, as fragile as your manufactured regrets. balance your distance with an unlabeled prescription. couldn't decide if left was just the same as right and if day was just a slightly different version of the night. am i shaking through your blood, making it turn blue? am i digging up the truth? do i know you? i disinfect all your little clues. was i slammed against the walls and then cut loose? i hate to be the one to break the news, but your knots will never come loose now, even if you could choose.

i flee the scene, and now your scars are completely useless. there's dirt in your eyes, and no one can wash them out but you and you alone. i don't care to hear your voice on my phone.

seasonal flu has gotten to you, but the faceless men tell you they love you with nothing new. nothing that you haven't seen. one misfired synapse away from another vision of the future. floating by on a star not in view.

connect this face. connect the dots. i won't accept all the things you're not. don't back away. don't leave me here inside myself. i'll take you far away, and we will melt. this ice is hollow. it doesn't bend, but it's easy to break. i want the broken bottle. i want something good to drink. the sun is hot. the days are young. i'm staying for a little while, but my mind is made up. i'm going to leave this place. i'm going to cough out my second lung.

just like that, your eyes grow dark. and just like that, a fire starts. and i bleed in words unclear. i build it up in my heart, and i keep it there. another song that we can't help to hear.

cross out these thoughts. cross out these letters that i write. i won't accept it if you say your heart has died. don't try to to interpret what you can't understand. i'm not a boy. i'm not a man. i'm just a fan of all the things that you are. distractions cause me to drive off a cliff, but it's probably just the car. i'm going too far. i'm not going far enough. i put a signal forth, but then i turn it off. i see everything else around me going down so i must be going up.

just like that, my eyes open up. and just like that, a fire dies. and i bleed in words unclear. i build it up in my head, but there's nothing there. another song that no one could ever begin to hear so i let it go.

boy turns off the radio. he comes to realize he's not invisible. the stripping paint makes his cough restrained. there's no one here that calls out his name. i bleed exactly the same as a deaf distraction miles away that no one hears. the fog seems clear, but he has learned that looks can be deceiving. it's what you taste that's real. week fifty two walks off with my shoes, and we have settled for nothing less. the morning news brings big stories of loss. we see information everywhere that we shouldn't trust. i've been set free but woe is me, a plan i never should have made. the nervous ticks lead to a neverending itch. the difference is locked inside my feet. i hope they take me where i need to be.

looked up the page of ugly, dismantled and disfigured apes. they call them human; i call them by their names. they devolve in groups by the laws of their missing thoughts. there's only so much they can now be taught. the pen retracts its last relapse. it feels bad for what it never had. a song to write for the girl frozen behind the glass. her distant eyes give up the prize. she's left to flutter and hang inside. she hates this guilt that eats her alive. he never understood the swirling patterns of detachment found inside his broken head. she called for him, but he never heard anything that she had said. i come too soon, and my head inflates like a balloon. reacting quietly when even i should know the heartbending truth.

(0256) soul decay

we weren't home. they destroyed everything. they parked their cars where you slept, and i walked away. summer's dream was ending and autumn's delusion was beginning. another one caught in between. we found the maps, but there were children crying in a circle. one whispered a poem to another in secrecy, and a cloud disappeared in my hand. a poor soul couldn't hope to wash these colors off, not in a million years. we took cover under some thin walls with the ceiling caving in. i reached out for a ghost, and it shook my hand without any touch whatsoever. so much for an ending. i watch your water go down a drain with no remorse. i felt the panic and so did you. i tried to warn you. i really did, but i was too late. finished my dinner alone and watched endless commercials of endless insanity. i was never your complexity. you were just imagining. days go by without change, and i see all your beauty within simple words. dad never cared. dad lives in his bubble with a frozen perception of all that he hoped to be. he's in a place i'll never be. took an elevator ride to the sky and never made it back alive. i clean what's left from these pretty bloodstains on my mouth and lips. last days of the year, and i'm living proof. i look at photos and see someone that isn't me. a waste of time. the distance is unreal. brains left over from the beauty pageant. an upside down cross hung over an adjacent stairway that leads to a basement. is this the way to eternity? i didn't think so. crushed in the center of the universe with dust particles forever lost along the way. somebody forgot to turn in their halo that day.

it's another loss. i'm not coping well. there's only a few things that bring happiness to this psychedelic hell. i'm a bomb of lust. i don't trust myself. i have feelings that would make me fall if i wasn't stuck on a shelf. there was destiny. there were throngs of light, and i saw you fading under the ordinary limits of my fucked up sight. i have things to say. i have nothing to do. i impregnate my empty heart with a unrecognizable melody of truth. i have a gun in my hand. you have the bullet in your veins. there's a simple place where i go when i'm lost in the smoke coming from my frantic flames. under neon sky. under the drag of tusks. under a ceiling made of unforeseen mistakes in the structure of love. i'm holding onto the air. it's all that comforts me. there's nothing left in the future sounds of innocence or clarity. we all role the dice. it always comes out wrong. i know exactly where i want to go, but i feel the loveliest breeze from the rationality of these songs.

the economy's in shackles. and what does freedom really mean now? or democracy? it's just propaganda. yeah.. a liberal media that just happens to be owned by giant corporations. and it's not ironic at all.

and i might as well just not be here. and i might as well just sit alone in this chair. and i might as well just hope to not understand. and i might as well just keep feeling my own hands. i might as well be a bum in this crowd. and i might as well just hope to not ever be found.

and i've come to learn that i don't write for you. and i've come to learn that the sky is not even blue. it's just another illusion that hides the truth. and i've come to learn that everything i'll ever say is a piece of a puzzle that just gets in my way. and i've come to learn that the sound of youth was just a quiet nursery rhyme that kept us asleep, and everything that's here for me is in my own eyes... i swallow it down until it makes me cry.

i feel the buzzing inside my dreams. and i've come to learn that everything can be exactly how it seems. fuck the movement. i want peace. i don't want chaos. i want these weeds to undress their sadness and insecurity onto me. i want all the birds to just settle down. i want my eyelids to close out this town. i want the obvious in a gift-wrapped box with the only set of keys to all the locks. fuck your styles. i want what's not in stock.

laughter is the insanity that keeps me sane. what do i have? a piece of history in my hands. a drop of blood from your beating heart in my veins. i counteract the rain with a pulse you don't see, and i'll leave behind nothing but a blocked out memory. something new leads me to believe the little white lie under my breath. i see a flash of light in your disease as i grasp for air in my selfishness. i see your eyes are hollow, and i'm assuming your heart can only follow.

do you think i'm oblivious? taking a step in that direction? if the ground wasn't moving beneath my feet, i wouldn't be moving at all. in fact, i escaped a long time ago anyway. they've all morphed into what they always were. they've all joined the enemy of the crowd. it wasn't pretty. it had to happen this way. their success is their great failure. they don't get it.

alarms going off and robots reacting in time. you don't even look at me and think i'm just doing quite fine. the sense of narcolepsy i sense in you is overwhelming to say the least. i'll leave soon enough. i'd slow down if i could, but i don't have that kind of control. the parasite continues to dig. i'm a lone spectator from the outside who can only watch the collapse happen from within. the problem is that i can feel it too, and it expands into infinity like space and time and makes me hurt. thank god for god, right? no. thank god for you and for my broken heart. am i alive? i can't even tell.

(0255) an involuntary movement

i imagined some sticks and stones. i imagined your skin and bones. i imagined a car wreck, put a noose around my neck, and then i drove myself all the way home. i imagined a rainbow in the sky. i imagined a fire in your eyes. i imagined a hurricane where our voices were an ugly stain that wouldn't wash off in the dark of the night. i imagined that the grass wasn't green. i imagined that i wasn't able to see. i imagined an atom bomb that led to a new song in the morning of our greatest relief. i imagined that my blood wasn't red. i imagined my brain wasn't in my head. i imagined your interest. i swear you had me by the wrists, but then i woke up in a cloud once again. i imagined the conception of a beautiful thing. i imagined the death of the spring. i imagined an elevator, and i said i wanted to hate her because the truth wasn't something i could conceive. i imagined that the cynical had died. i imagined a groom and his bride. i imagined the desert; clueless birds in the offset of a new generation had arrived. i imagined i was crossing some sort of bridge. i imagined i was becoming unhinged. i imagined i ate something that poisoned my imaginary suffering, and i imagined that ignorance was a real form of bliss. i imagined an empty road. i imagined i was getting too old. i imagined my sadness. a fishhook got caught under my lips, and i stayed here in the battering cold.

god vacates my thoughts like a rat. i'm a waiting animal in the ether, collapsed on the ground and playing dead. we have no submission line. the stars are always realigning to keep us one step behind. i thought i was less than the price of gold. i was wrong. we all have the barcode imprinted on our ugly hearts. it's a teflon reminder i keep in the undertows of my guilt, whistling all the way to the end. the returns are piled up in secrecy and put back on the shelves before you can even notice. a shallow remorse only leads us to a shallow grave of remainders moving at the speed of light. the napkin you had used, you just folded up and left it in the night. the night of our first encounter. our first seizure. and now, blood is left in our wake - a severe amount, but still, a sampling of what's to come. i waste this time because time lays us all to waste anyway. there's no reinstatement. it's like one second goes by, and we're gone like we were never here to begin with... but i don't mind so much anymore. it's kind of funny actually. i arrive back from the carnival. i must admit, it was grand. i tried to hallucinate, but all i saw were lonely tramps. they must've been looking for all the meaning they didn't care to know. they're just caught between their own secretions... i always see them come and go. they're happy when i'm not, but as far as i can tell, the cost of living's actually lower when you have nothing to sell.

no excuses when the lightning doesn't strike where i want it to. it's just a television screen where we wish our projected lives were worth attention. romanticized plotlines. no excuses when the telephone wires are cut. no excuses when i'm lumped into the rest with all the others. it was meant to be, i'm sure. such a pretty spirit. such a pretty imagination. a sensory overloaded and overexposed, and it's no wonder why we feel withdrawn, detached, and unable to fall in love. unable to breathe. to trust. it's embarassing, the way i think. just remember to forget. i wish i could forget.

an involuntary movement leads me to wither away under the shade. a quick and painless dental procedure in the next room. i shiver and shake until i get over myself. only then, have i accepted the fate of choosing to be stuck in this state of emptiness. useless long division, but if only i could use this calculator, things would be much easier. i travel to the depths of my delusions and recall a voice too afraid to speak up. if only i could speak up. tense negotions only go so far in my head, and then i throw in the towel every single time. this infection should be disinfected, but i don't think i'll get around to it. no. not for a while. i'll write my own ending in time if i have to.

there's a city in the dark in my mind. i keep traveling there, but i don't see it anywhere close nearby. i'm a double connection too late except in the parking lot of your stubborn convex restraint. and there's a pillow under these words. i like laying here in the pretty scenery of nouns and verbs. i'm a polemic punk rocker without a look. i look to your ghost, and i see the truth. and there's an empty space where my conscience erodes. i'd try to sing if the sun wasn't feeling so bold. i'm the mosquito bite that keeps coming back. you keep scratching, but it's invisible to your indifferent hands. and there's an orpheum that plays our fears in the vacancy of dreaming somewhere far off and away from here. i let it pass right through my periphery as a crushing wave of futility awaits for you at the bottom of the sea. there's a simple, old man who sits at the bottom of the hospital waiting list as he's reading empty magazines while the clock just laughs and ticks. twenty-seven miles away, i'm worrying about every word i have and haven't said. what a pretty sad waste of time in my head. and there's the dust that collects inside, the useless showers that we take at night, the useless beds where we try to sleep - i try to rest, but nothing ever comes cheap.

there's an epileptic soul who sings to me when i'm trying to dream. he's dead now, but there's an infinite static in the chords and strings. i will replicate his beauty in this page. it's what we do to keep the insane from crashing our mysterious parade of the predicated songs of truth and change. and there's a voice on the tv that shrieks. they need our attention, or they won't be relieved from the horrors of mass ignorance and greed so i change the channel to zero - the number of happiness and my heroes. and there's a fixation of concentrated wealth all over town; there's a filter stapled over my mouth. i'm a holy wall of earth and fire, bleeding basic tears of hurt and endless rose petals of desire. he stays up for a million hours until he starts to break. there's nothing he can give because he's arrived too late. he unfolds a map, looking everywhere for a trap. looking for something that will actually last. something that's mesmerizing and safe.

(0254) queen bee socialist

walking with the imaginary people, i walk right out their doors. living inside the corpse of myself, i look behind me 'til i turn around. there's too much going on in front of my eyes. social networking leaves me feeling ill. we communicate at the touch of a click, click, click... is there really any sign of life? is there any meaning behind any of the words that i write? i just eventually, constantly blink and sigh. i'll leave it here in the sideways rain and hope it catches up with me. coughed up my heart and shoved it past the silence that never seems to leave. somewhere down the line through the vortex of time, i'll be holding on to what is left. there is nothing original; nothing unique. all i can do is just wait around. a symphony of joy shoots me through the head. the bullet gets lost in my stomach. i start to yell and scream for help. it's then i realize i don't exist, and it's then that i become content. give me some letters, and i'll spell them out to form something i shouldn't want to believe. a piece of your skin and some insulin to keep me from going into shock. being animated is part of the act. i'd rather be a photograph with an outer shell made of porcelain, and when you break it, it's still intact. let the insincere chase their own tails all night long if they must. they have nothing but misguided thoughts. there's nothing there to touch. do i seem down? i am.

death. silence. loss. hunger. all symptoms of a missing piece of the puzzle. i shiver but move on with the rest. something is different, and i feel it choking me in the air. neither one of us can speak. we're not allowed. we know the secret but can't give it away... and i need it to stay alive. we act oblivious and indirect because we must, but i would give anything i could. it's a circle i keep drawing. it's a ghost i can't touch... a road i can't travel on. we become spiders at night. feeling around for the light. perfection is debatable, but it's the perception that damages me. do we only doubt to sabotage as a result of our insecurity? if i keep burning, will it somehow make me whole? if i can't find a cure for my vertigo, how will i know which way to go? how will i know? tell me. you won't. i'll fade, slow and painful.

i think we should embark on the longest journey in the dark to the stars of the furthest unknown galaxy. there will be nothing else but unread books on our shelves, and our skin cells will forever regenerate. all the scars would be gone, and if we turned the radio on, it would only play our favorite songs as we slept in an eternal bliss. you'd put a fork in your ribs, and you'd arrive in a spaceship... if you could open your lips, what would you try to say? this will always be mine because it's what i've designed to hold me in time and keep me rational. and you wrote me a note that only filled me with false hope and the longings of being broke in your apathy. i was missed by a train and walked back home in the rain with tears leaving my eyes so i decided to blame it on a certain kind of divine intervention. and the extent of your scent makes a full-scale dent in the dim chamber of my moving blood and history. she said she just slit her wrists for attention, but she somehow forgot to mention that there were actually connections between the thoughts and actions that preceded her. her instability was caused by the governing laws of a long-lost resolve to deal with her closet of skeletons. and i wish i was able to wipe you off of this table. please don't give me a label. i don't think i could handle that.

and i awoke to this joke. there was no shortage of smoke, and the language of your words hit my character. then, the black charred remains were fed into the holes of my brain, and the pain left my body in an instant. we were closed from within when suddenly, a syringe was destroying everything that made us flinch throughout our wasted and forgotten youth. and as our parents had warned us of that oncoming storm, we were oblivious to what was borne from our youthful and intoxicating innocence. we found the colorful sky had fallen without purpose as we realized we would never surface from this underwater circus of compromise.

there is no prediction. only coincidence. there is no decision. only consequence. delusions practically out of line while derailment keeps me lost inside the rhyme. boredom sticks to me like glue, and impulse offers nothing new. emotion kills the personality. indifference? i don't even know which one is me. all i ever had were lucid thoughts, and i'm probably supposed to connect every single dot. an info-gap decision theory past where the paradox always causes a relapse. victim of your instrument by day and hung out to dry where i have no other choice but to stay. chopped up just like every single piece of meat that we're not wanting to have to eat. no point to talk if you're asleep, but i keep a lonesome pen hidden up my sleeve.

simple - the way that i love you. complex - the reasons for which i do. borderline psychic premonitions are slowly warning me of the oncoming collapse and demolition. i don't care because you don't care about me. move to the next one and drown with the other fish in the sea. people die, and we have no remorse. logically passive without trying to open your doors. sedation saves us from the corners of our minds. in limbo, i leave her face hidden behind the blinds. surgery only loosens what i'm trying to hold, and hazy drugs only keep me halfway cold. bleeding on the side of the road, you run me over to make sure i don't make it home.

(0253) second awakening

monstrosities in the wind turn over my fate until my heart turns gray. i weep for my long-lost emotion, battered into this strange and unfamiliar territory. i can't shake this off either. if i could only recognize myself when i looked at a mirror. i don't wanna hear this shit anymore. it just makes it worse. distance doesn't even deserve to exist. what a horrible noise. terminal patient who missed the deadline, and from now on, he listens to classical music when he writes. time signatures i'd love to replicate into something ugly and foreign. there's nothing i don't doubt anymore. nothing is true. nothing is lasting. just a standard card in the deck. nothing more. and i miss the innocence of opening and re-opening doors. built on the thinnest of ice, he comes to bleed with the rest. holding and folding, we bet on the uselessness of flesh. the governments will have no influence left should the canvas remain the same, and death will guarantee a safe transaction either way. winter coming to freeze this over, but these delusions contain all the antifreeze i could ever need. strain to see the light, and i'll throw my hands up and forfeit the fight. tomorrow could be tonight if you would just move your eyes towards the sky.

there is never enough. there is never a sign as clear. it's the disease of our hidden flesh that's got me so wrapped up in my fears. they were one in the same. they were always two steps behind. and now, the silence of this empty coffee cup has got me going out of my mind. blink, and i will be gone with the rest. there's nothing here to stop me. think that you're carrying the nest, but you're only the sugar that comes out in my pee. show me what is left over inside from the stomach ulcer that slowly damages. and i'll keep it away from those who lie to themselves - those who have a reflective sheet of glass hanging over their eyelids. the bacteria multiplies when you're not aware that the sun is always over the ocean. i'll stand in line for years and years and years if that's what it takes to put me in motion. they think i'm leaving, but i'm really getting in position to arrive. the wounds are only deepening, and we're just salvaging all that we can find. if no one knows where the truth in me resides, then that's a risk that i'm willing to take because everyone has something else to give, but me, i'd rather have something i can make. you think that the past is only just an indication of the future so i guess the television memories we had were just an indication of this complex computer. a second awakening was all i needed, and i can only hope i never fall asleep again.

walking through this wormhole no one could ever see even if they tried. i think i'll find another way to break through this door of imaginary ice. i start to wonder whenever i look out of this most hideous of windows. the pictures all pass by like days, and i just tumble down the stairs. i said, "a million dropped calls and hands waving goodbye were the best thing that could ever happen to me. i wouldn't miss you or the lie of a relationship we had, no matter what the memory." now, she is free to find what she needs to keep her feeling alive so she doesn't have to bleed. it's a mess of wires, and i have nothing to show you so you don't have to look. i stand forever in the back of my head until i'm ready to depart. then, i look down to my feet and wonder if they could actually ever move me like art. starting to throw in the towel because i never had a chance. i'd be lucky if i ever got the gift of being asked to dance. it's all statistical mechanics when you're looking at me and i'm looking back at you. i don't think there's anything that could be as pure or anything as blue. and now, i have left my emptiness in you. i don't say a word, and we don't think it through. and it'll always be there, even if the sun comes back to save you from my heart-shaped gun of despair. the innocent were always guilty in their minds with the medicine they hide from everyone else's eyes. and just like that, it was all swept away to the curb of your silence with nothing left to pay. i built up this castle and watched as it sank, then i opened my mouth and took one last drink to my grave.

and when it comes down to it, perception is all we have. chaos is in their eyes, and i look away so i don't have to see it. i fail to move in that direction, and the clock keeps circling like my head whenever it focuses too much. better be on the move because nothing changes here. a darkened red cloth in my back pocket. i guess i'll wipe that up too. and on our way, maybe we'll even take pictures. power outage in the basement goes unnoticed. follow the leader. we type it, and we listen to it because the deaf will never see what the blind couldn't hear. nonsensical maybe.. but the feeling is mutual. take a number. take a fucking number and sit down.

this is only a temporary solution, but we bleed the same.

the wrong radio frequencies jam up my broadcasts. he's over the limit probably anyway. once, i had a story to tell. girl trapped between the glass and ambitions we can't control. the other side of the fence is just one decision away. one flight from starvation. the electric thrashing in this static makes me want to merge with the blood flowing through your veins. and that, i'll take to my grave. go ahead and try to read through the lines. like he said, this ain't real. it's reality.

(0252) skin and silence pt. 3

corner of the picture is fading, and the dust collects on the lens. undeniable witness that filtered the rationality right back into the frame. fog rolls in through an open window. i pass off this guilt in my hand... testing the motion of absence. i breathe through these poems and drink out of empty cans. i have visions of the world ending while i'm dreaming. spectacular views from my head. the television picks up your memory and runs while i hide in the radio. there's nothing alive because god is dead. within these lines, i place a pillow. but in the cold, i start to stutter. walking without my directions as the clouds try to follow the sun. rain is useless when you don't need it. it doesn't really matter. i've nothing to give anymore, and there's nothing to be lost and nothing else to be won. love is a phantom.

(0251) skin and silence pt. 2

give me a hint, and i'll make sure to dissect it. tooth fairy blues in these cold surroundings. and laughter obtuse to the errors corrected. and still, i'm digging through the scabs in your stare. the song is paused, and the caffeine's gone, but i know for sure that i've seen a constellation. so i rack my brain again and try to listen in for a lapse in the static of listless white noise.

thanks for the minute 'cause i shouldn't want a lifetime. it's poison, i should know, to try to breathe that kind of hopeless air, but sometimes you can't remember for good reason. sometimes, you slowly go blue in the face.

oceans are drained of life, and there's never any urgency left inside. and it's the carelessness that i've always hidden within the false measurements of time. i washed my hands of you, and that was all i guess i had to do. anonymous letters are quickly written, and they're left in my head... folded up and unread.

forever.

blue sky turning dark,
but i'll be okay......
i'll be fine..
by myself in your cruel sleep-inducing eyes.

(0250) skin and silence pt. 1

at the top - signaling inertia in the sullen stench of destiny. in the page that you had ripped off, i had no decent reason to believe a white lie that we paved with the dirt from your grave. are you closing it shut? ...a sickle drawn cold without any cancer to hold.

at the top - strangling curtains that left no beauty to speak of or feel.

when those shadows bend, can i fill you in? i've been floating in space.

baby's blackening fears were set in motion, but a step in that direction wasn't ever an option. the sedative awaits to swallow your fate, but it loosens its grip.

in the freeze-frame - sitting alone with the summer inching ever so close. in the daylight, darkness has scattered but hides in that lavender rose.

trading loss for gain, we choose to stay sane... waking up from our haze. we pull the bullets out from our giant heads and send that irrational scripture to bed, once and for all. we're lost in a maze; trapped in a cage...

and this desk will collapse
as i'm trying to type what's still caught inside of my breath.