Who was it that said: “So this is
the voice of god, out from
the man with grit in his face, out from
the bed, rose late as shit with grey eyes
to match the day. Our forms
spit smoke and brown rinds in streets
named for trees. And I’ve been lost
in my skull, woke up mad, scared,
new, born on the first floor
of a wood stove, its smell is still on me,” who was that?
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Seventy-Eight Words For Jules
Monday, September 28, 2009
Holy, Holy
We made our house into a church and lay on deep carpets admiring the gods in the ceiling cracks
and lit candles in the kitchen, singing loudly for salvation over the phone to gone friends and dying mothers.
We made murals with old paint, getting sick off the fumes, got classic rock radio coming in static over a secondhand boombox
and prayed feverishly to the bugs in our sugar, the leak in our roof, the infection in our gums.
We baptized ourselves in the bathtub, yelling over the thunder about the danger we were in,
yelling new commandments into a tape recorder until the batteries died
and fed each other snack food with our eyes closed, opening gas station wine bottles with the key to your Chevy Lumina, shit chardonnay staining our teeth.
We stared deeply into the oven for a sign until our heads were heavy with gas, dumb with visions of sex and saviors
and broke every window on the second floor for lack of stained glass, letting theleaves pile up, burning them for boredom.
We punched ourselves awake to observe the equinox, great stretches of bitter October night on the roof watching traffic,
watching the sky for new light
and weighed ourselves next to the television, thinking about the anchorwoman naked, counting our ribs.
We ran hands over each other in ritual, keeping warm under eaten afghan covers, sweat sticking to our sides
and urinated off of the fire escape as a gesture of our own holy, making a fuss over the trajectory of piss in relation to the changes in wind.
We went on pilgrimages to the corner store for sleeping pills and Reese’s cups, smiling high and tired at the woman buying five types of lottery tickets,
smiling for the way our feet were swollen inside our sneakers, stomped out too many ceremonies around the whistling furnace
and grew a beautiful beard just then, our faces sore from cheap razors and hailstorms on the way to the library, cutting out naked statue pictures from history books to put next to our sleeping heads
We spent a day in Manhattan looking for images of the messiah in Coca-Cola billboards, making eye contact with beautiful strangers in tracksuits,
making out in the back of taxis, taking pictures of each other next to monuments,
and reaching enlightenment.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Realism Cookies
You’re a nice enough guy, but so is everyone else.
The next person you meet won’t remember your name.
One man’s newspaper is another man’s cum-rag.
People wouldn’t miss you as much as you think.
Talk more about your unfortunate childhood. It’s charming.
You will never be famous or even particularly well-liked.
(apologies to Frank O'Hara)
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Song From The House On West Nelson Street
The children holding themselves around the ribcage
and giving a some-toothed smile, running
until they fell,
and we were caught very much unawares,
holding the flower they gave us,
realizing age.
The only something I regret is not jumping
more into the arms of my mother,
looking through her cut glass earrings
at the passing cars.
And my grandfather would eat peanuts
with the shells and bottles around him
and a baseball game on the television.
Formerly a would-be war hero,
in the telling at least.
We ran back and forth from the kitchen
to get him another Budweiser,
slipping on the crooked floors.
To have something like this:
Little scars take parts of my face
from brother-fights. A way to see
how happy I was in a backyard,
next to the regional high school
where we could light piles of leaves on fire,
scale the brick monoliths and holler
with our power. I spent a whole day
in my closet, counting the times
I had been in love. When the door
swung open everyone was waiting for the emergency,
and I think I half-upset them by being alright.
For maybe one second
that kid heart, dizzy with excitement,
fell back to me, its owner.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Everything About Himself Is Somehow Worse Than The Way He's Imagined It
1. That new Saturday haircut is like readiness and beauty.
2. White shirts make it all look pale and sick under these lights.
3. How do teeth get that yellow?
4. See the eyes closing right in front of the face.
5. A face like that belongs on a military recruitment poster, so it was.
6. Backwards adjusting the stray eyelash out from under the eyes shot with blood.
7. Such a piercing gaze, and she’s done it.
8. The flexing and smiling for one, same as always.
9. Please read on as he evaluates himself.
10. Hear someone relieving himself, isn’t it the same water or whatever?
1. Hear: isn’t it relieving? He read “evaluates” as “please himself on.” So it, --a military face that belongs-- was on a recruitment poster. Front-right of the closing-in face, see the eyes. She’s done such piercing it, and a gaze. Stray, shot, backwards blood adjusting the eyes, the eyelash, with out-from-under. And that new haircut is beauty is like Saturday readiness. Smiling, flexing, always as for one and the same. Get that yellow, “how do?” teeth. These lights look sick, making it all under white shirts and pale.
2. Thank you.
An Image Of The Face Looking Frantically Around Itself While Becoming Defeated
Could we look more disheveled,
getting off the train
in a major American city?
Moving out from under the elevated rails
to watch the rain from
a less comfortable distance
and feel more a part
of whatever way the people that day
are holding themselves,
their crumpled bodies
just barely touching the ground
in a heavy wind. Pushing glasses
up their faces, newsprint ink running
down their arms. Strangled and rushed,
the beating body, and the body being
beaten.
Do human forms
still crash together
with alarming force and frequency, the air
thick with their sweat? On days like
this, when the end seems
nearer than usual? I’ll still kiss you
but—
It is difficult to imagine you naked when you are running late.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Thoughts On Spitting While Speaking
or
The Human Body Growing Less Useful Over Time
Begin finding the moon in the morning
Morning, how the day turns heavy
Heavy how we hang our heads
Heads we recognize from the back
Back when I lived closer to the earth
Earth is something else we named
Named you, seemed alright in the mouth
Mouth was always busy with spit
Spit carefully into the river again, but better
Better that we don’t speak now
Now lift your head and begin
(repeat as necessary)
Twelve Lines For The Crumbs And Yourself
1. I spend a day enjoying my fever.
2. The face appearing from beneath the mine.
3. Chest explodes with some small noise.
4. Her leg resting momentarily on my arm on the chair’s arm.
5. For a time I was the hot bath.
6. The edges are a gutter.
7. Your hair has become stuck in the branches.
8. The mark was left where my mouth had been.
9. I pick bugs off your back and eat them.
10. It blots the moon at the end of my arm.
11. Throwing the body, then standing very still
12. They have a good idea about where the eyes should be.
Sunday, September 6, 2009
How To Stay Insane While Completely Going Asleep
And from behind my sleep-gouged eyes
I spoke in nonsense to the invisible woman
Who put a pillow over her face
Coy, disappearing
One shivering, outstretched hand
Stays shivered, stays outstretching
As my teeth grind efficiently against each other
For want of any other thing
I bathed in my own death sweat
Tonight
Like any other night
Was a series of disappointments
Broken by shallow breathing and batting mosquitoes off my body
Friday, August 28, 2009
How May I Find Love In A World That Could End At Any Second?
All of us romantics are too distracted by our imminent deaths. We sit in front of the television, wringing our hands and pursing our lips. We have no time or energy for love in between all that worrying.
Some have said the “culture of fear” in the United States of America is politically paralyzing, that it leaves no room for free thinking, rationality, or dissenting opinions. This may be true, but we must also consider what fear does to love. Love, that fragile beast so well tended to by our artists of fiction, is seldom observed in modern case studies. It has been supplanted by fear and worry.
As much as we like to pretend, our world is nothing like your typical Hollywood action picture. We are not prone to meeting our soul mates during a global crisis. When the end of existence is haunting us, love tends to be the last thing on our minds. We are constantly made to feel as though we are just about to die. With my heart in my throat, it becomes increasingly difficult to breathe, let alone love.
Extinction is not regarded as a distant threat anymore. In my lifetime, I have seen large buildings full of my countrymen topple to the ground in flames. I have seen numerous school shootings. I have seen anthrax poisoning, SARs, chicken flu, and swine flu. Every day, people die at the hands of suicide bombers, gunmen, officers of the law, and other murderers. This list is by no means exhaustive and does not even mention natural disasters or accidental deaths. I can be sure there are more attacks, epidemics, murders, accidents, and catastrophes to follow. I can also be sure that someday something will bring about the end of my species. This knowledge surrounds the idealistic concept of love with a thick layer of perceived futility. By the time I find love, it may very well be too late. Do I still try?
I am eighteen years old, I have lived through two wars, and I have never been in love. It seems all I have done so far is get my affairs in order in preparation for the apocalypse. Other than the occasional one-night stand, not much thought is given to romantic pursuits. I often catch myself assuming that there will not be enough time.
I have to believe, though, that there is always enough time for love. It is one of the quickest and most unconscious actions we make as human beings. Love happens in the time it takes to look quickly over my shoulder at someone standing behind me at a concert. It happens in the time it takes to interpret the waitress’ handwriting on the check. Really, it happens independently of time. Even if the death of our species was seconds away I would still have plenty of time for love. I just need to learn to use that time for something other than indulging in neuroses and irrational fear.
The very idea of love is worrisome enough already. It offers heartbreak, frustration, betrayal, and —very rarely— happiness. We seem to crave these exciting turns of fortune; perhaps because that element of danger is familiar to us at this point. When a lover spurns my advances, treats me poorly, or leaves me for another, I can almost consciously enjoy the rush of emotion that follows. It is not preferable, of course, but it is something. I’ll take heartbreak in an age that usually deals me numbness.
Real love, though, the kind I pine after but do not see in my life, is waking up late with another person under your arm and being completely content. It is the holding of hands and the glances across the room and the telephone calls and the exchange of words and touches. Please tell me this brand of love is real.
I was born on January 16, 1991. Coincidentally, this was the day Operation Desert Storm began in Iraq. Born into war, I now live in it again. For the past six years, the United States of America has been occupying the country of Iraq. Now that I am an adult, I could realistically be dying for my country as early as next year. I am almost too old for love now. Love is something reserved for the young. Am I doing something wrong? Am I too scared? Not scared enough?
The terror comes to me when I turn on my television to check the weather but find instead ten dead in a shopping mall shooting spree and thousands dead in wars across the world. It is irrational, I suppose, to think that my death will come at the hands of one of the many television images burned into my memory, but the fear is still palpable and paralyzing.
The trouble is our entire social and political structure is built around danger and fear. In his “Movements And Migrations,” Edward Said notes that the government now uses the media as a tool to incite fear in its citizens in the name of patriotism. In one case he observes, “In the spring of 1986 the Reagan administration decided to deal “terrorism” a blow, the raid on Libya was times to occur exactly as prime-time national evening news began.” (327) Years later, when the United States dispatched a huge army to the Arabian Gulf, they commandeered the media to help carry out the operation (326). This is terrible news for a romantic like me. How many letters to my congressman will it take in order to reverse this trend? The government should be sympathetic to my plight. I am a citizen just reaching adulthood, not so much in love with my country, granted, but very much enamored with some of its inhabitants. In the interest of love, let’s put the guns and cameras down for at least a few hundred years.
Not that I haven’t tried to love. I have. I’m irrational about it, in fact. I’ve fallen in love while passing someone on a street, seeing them across from me on a train, meeting them in my dreams. So how do I navigate our culture of fear and make it work for me romantically? In Chris Marker’s La jetée (1962), The Man was forced to travel back in time to before World War III in order to find love. This is not an option for me, as far as I know. No, I am already deep within the catacombs of that Parisian art gallery, awaiting my death. Is this a self-imposed feeling of imprisonment or has it been forced upon me?
The love depicted in La jetée doesn’t seem to exist in our society’s conscious except maybe as mimicry of what we are sold by popular culture. I’ve accepted the fact that the love I find on illuminated screens in dark theaters will not be the love I find in my life, but then what will I find? Have I already had love without knowing it? I may well be expecting something completely irrational.
The Man is able to travel back to this woman and love her. In that age, no one knew the war was coming, so they spent their time in gardens and museums. In one instance, there is a long montage of nude statues in “the museum of his memory,” which would seem to allude to the sexuality deprived of The Man by war and imprisonment. He sees the human body in an entirely new light, not as pornographic but as purely organic and awe-inspiring. The human body was not made for fighting. Our skin punctures very easily and our vital organs are all clustered in the upper portion of the body, making for easy targets. It stands to reason, then, that it was meant to be in love rather than at war. Even our necks, which serve many practical purposes, are shown in one of Marker’s many striking images from the film as seemingly perfect objects of adoration.
The peacetime depicted in the film fosters much better conditions for romance than today, when everyone’s eyes are to the sky waiting for the first bomb. Even our gardens and museums reek of fear at this point. People walk quickly and nervously, with their eyes to the ground. Our art is cold and terrified. Our films are about global disasters and tragedy. There is no time to wander the halls of a museum of “ageless animals” when everything in our lives asks us to be very afraid.
The Narrator’s use of the term “ageless animals” puzzled me at first. Are they ageless because their corpses are preserved in the glass boxes of museum? Are humans ageless as well? No, it seems that in our quest to stock our museum galleries full of animal bodies, we have forgotten our own. As with any other animal, human beings have an age, and with every passing day we are a step closer to the end of it.
There are those who escape this fear and lead fulfilling lives unhindered by the neuroses that weigh me down. I applaud them for their bravery, but I wish I could ask them how they do it. Are they blissfully ignorant or is there something in their character that tells them to set that fear aside and take life in with all of themselves?
True, I have worry-free days. Sometimes I forget to watch the news or forget to read the papers. Sometimes I just forget to be so afraid. How can I replicate this? It always comes at random and I never know until it is over. My mind clears itself of nerves and fear and allows me time to love and live. On these days I become The Man watching The Woman pull her hair back at the museum and revealing her neck. I stare at my potential lovers with fascination and wonder. I wish that they, as in the film, would “welcome as a natural phenomenon the ways of this visitor.” Lift your heads and love me back! Free yourself of worry as I have somehow unconsciously done! Because it is natural to have a clear head and an able body, to spend a free day finding love. I want more days of this.
So how do we go about freeing ourselves from our culture of fear? If everyone weren’t so nervous all the time, we’d have a much better shot at romance. It cannot be a new sensation, this fear. It must be as old as the human race itself. As a species, we have been in a state of constant war for hundreds of thousands of years. So has there ever been love? Can love exist in wartimes? Certainly not love in the way it is sold to us, as an eternal, uncompromising, all-encompassing force. Are we just fooling ourselves as to the nature of love then? Are we simply chasing after our animal lust for sex while “humanizing” it under another name?
It strikes me, though, that while our species has been at war since its inception, the supposed danger of our situation is more apparent now than ever. With the advent of mass media, we were exposed to a constant stream of tragedy and horror available to us at any time.
To draw another comparison to the catacombs of La jetée, our newsmen function as The Scientist, that “reasonable man who told him in a relaxed way that the human race was doomed.” At every turn, we are reminded of the risk we run by being human. This is no way to live for someone looking for love. Any search for romance seems futile when everything around me suggests I will die before finding it. Will I? Am I in true danger or is it only manufactured and imagined? Is the appearance of danger more paralyzing than the danger itself?
Marker, Chris. La jetée. 1962. DVD.
Said, Edward W. “Movements and Migrations.” Culture And Imperialism. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994. 326-336. Print.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Shower
Those damn meteors
Always looking like bombs from the bathroom window
We are invulnerable, of course, but still terrified
And the kids
In the backyard with cheap telescopes
Pointing at Ursa Major engulfed in flames
“There it is.” They say
Demystifying that for me
The other kids broke into their dad's liquor cabinet
And they’re watching the stars too
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Victory
She shut me up from the basement stairwell
It felt great to be yelled at like I was at home
I put one finger over my lips, mimicking hers
Then wanted to be her, with all that power
Perspiring in the heavy afternoon, it was so commonplace then
To know directly I was not a thing of this earth
And we all thought that was fine
Just another way of doing things here
She still looks at me with those mean eyes
Every time I climb a stair she retreats
Until we are in the kitchen
Kissing hard against the stove
“You are the only place I am,” I say into her mouth
The tea kettle lets loose a shrill howl of victory
As we have just defeated the enemy
“Yes.” I say again. We have done this together
Her mouth is salty with every other man’s taste
I went to the ocean with her an nearly drowned
Right on the shore
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Gown
I went back to the place where they call me destroyer
It’s a pretty town but I wouldn’t want to stay
When I get out of there I always seem to feel lighter
Why that is I really couldn’t say
Too many times I wanted to jump in front
Of Confederate flag-waving pickup trucks
And all I do on my day off is talk myself to sleep
Kept up by the neighbor’s fights and noisy fucking dreams
I buy my brother Happy Meals with money I have found
On grubby supermarket floors or in the folds of your best gown
You keep inside your closet and dress up late at night
Look at yourself sideways to emphasize your height
We stop at a beach just to stand in the surf
I examine your bones through the holes in your shirt
The sand beneath my toes feels right cos I was born in it
A stupid, bloody animal and ready for my fits
I keep a pack of gum around for whenever we are out
Can’t stand all that fake mint myself, but I love to watch your mouth
Your eyes when you are thinking turn inside themselves
I never feel as sick as when I’m lusting after you
My unborn older brother ate my mother’s insides up
Now I have turned into him, it’s an awful thing to watch
Like any high school wrestling match or any network’s news
With kids dressed up like emperors, beheading all their fools
Every time I sleep I think that this is how I’ll go
In the same sunken mattress and still very much alone
And all this background ambiance of construction, early morning
The sky looked goddam grey today with all those storm clouds forming
These days I know every face that I see
From the gum-stained streets, from my window seat
I see the barber, and the cop, and the drunk, and the wife
At the pharmacy, looking to take her life
And someone at the corner store will sell me cigarettes
And some girl will be beautiful with bug bites on her neck
But I will say, “I’m leaving here, though I don’t know the roads.”
And they will say, “The important thing is knowing you must go.”
I used to hear Sister sing herself to sleep
Songs about changing the colors of leaves
But now she looks older and tired with life
And some stranger’s gone and made her his wife
And they fight in the home that I grew up in
Now I don’t really know where I live
The next time I lay down, that’s where I should stay
With just my body and my mind I’ll surely go insane
When the neighbors burned their house down
We watched that spectacle
Nobody was hurt much but the dog bowed like a ghost
When their daughter drank her poison
And threw herself into the gorge
We wore our best black clothing, and smoked outside the church
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Walt Disney
I woke up this morning with voices in my head
I fell asleep to the sound of your breathing
Into my good ear
Lay on my chest here
From my bed the windows give me newly colored light
And muffled morning sounds and time to empathize
With the bakers who rose so early again
Like my mother when she had something to say
I found today again another unfamiliar place
Looked at the body I’ve got the rest of my life to waste
I kiss your fevered head
You take a day of rest
Just like a god I don’t pray to anymore
That little cross you kiss before you go to work
And on your forehead a holy fucking bead of sweat forms
It forms
And if you couldn’t tell
All my favorite people have killed themselves
And if you’re feeling well
Take a look around you, I’m sure you’ll come down
And if you couldn’t wait
All great men have someone good to hate
And if you couldn’t bother
Even Walt Disney just loathed his father
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Second Marriage
All our stars are dead again
All that light is in your head
We waste so much time together
I have so much else to go for
Home is a place I’d like to go
O, to be a little warm
And close
Yours is a face I’d like to see
O, could you pick it out for me
For me
Nightcrawlers clog up my drain
Every night, the same refrain
My old buggy, boring town
I could be out getting killed right now
Home is a place I’d like to go
O, to be a little warm
And close
Yours is a face I’d like to see
O, could you pick it out for me
For me
At dawn, all is calm
In the morning she blinks with great effort
In the evening she thinks from her favorite chair
In the afternoon she does nothing
Every night I shut off her body with my hands
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Hum (Sky)
The day tasted like ocean and my father’s cigars
Felt like the back of your head while you’re counting up stars
Looked like a bug while you’re spitting on it
And it smelled like sunscreen and freshly cut grass
I told you about this, you shut me up fast
You said, “All days smell like desperate kids.”
(Our talks always end with something like this)
I’ve got this notion in my head I’m getting too old
Been watching movies all my life I’m totally sold
On the idea of death as a romantic trip
Grew up in an old house with creaky floorboards
I’ll die in a hospital in the arms of a nurse
And that’s really everywhere I’ve ever been
(From my front porch to the end of the strip)
I used to know recipes and a couple card tricks
The order of planets and baseball statistics
O, I don’t know nothing anymore
I’ve got an empty head that tells me keep going
But everything I love winds up ruined
I can’t love nothing anymore
(So sorry, but no I can’t love you girl)
I feel crazy most days, there’s a hum in my brain
Humming’s good for me, I don’t complain
Humming and standing a little too close to the fire
Burns off all my hair, burns off all my skin
Human being weaknesses
Still I can’t help feeling like what I’m doing is right
(Ten thousand years later, we’re still in love with the sky)
Friday, June 26, 2009
Old
Of course I felt ugly
Letting my chest to give way to new air
Looking at my fingernails gather dirt over time
Thinking about the way the doctors first held me
Like an animal thing, stupid and new
The last time I cried I was just tired
A good sweat carries away dead skin
And I grind my old, old teeth
One day stood so still so I could feel my cells multiplying
The next day had to catch up
I do not remember that one at all
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Neck's Wet
All the way back from a faraway state
I’m smiling at waitresses clearing my place
The flicker of signs on the side of the road
And exits for places I’ll never grow old
You’re dozing off in a seat by my side
Playing home movies behind shuttered eyes
Of a beautiful family you can no longer feel
At my private altar I quietly kneel
To a god with a face like a new dollar bill
With a line out the door of the people he’s killed
In his wars and his cars and his hurricanes
Your hair’s dancing out the window, gathering rain
We stop at a beach just to stand in the surf
I examine your bones through the holes in your shirt
Until my chest tells me it’s again time to breathe in
The rest of my body too dumb to believe it
I curse and the breath is heavy with frost
You say what you say every time we get lost
“There are so many cities but only one road”
It’s under the tires and in the back of my throat
Burned into my eyes and in all of my dreams
It pours out of my mouth when I’m trying to speak
So I’m talking in brake lights and white dotted lines
You respond in atlases, we’re both doing fine
Feels odd to stand still when we stop for a leak
To see a human face again, to eat something cheap
I ask someone the time and the day and the place
They tell me a lot of words taking up space
We’re off again without a thought to anywhere we’ve been
I just don’t care to think about how long that I have lived
Those memories are back again, they’re whispering so loud
Ran out of conversation and now the only sound
Is a slowly dying radio churning out jazz
And a mournful, moaning engine thinks we’re going too fast
And every time we hit a bridge I harmonize my hum
Pass a little lady with two bags and two breasts and a thumb
When I’m filling my tank all my faculties collapse
From the tedium of driving or the smell of summer gas
Somehow these bring back to me my warm New Jersey nights
Sinking into bedsprings, but wanting to take flight
I used to hear Sister sing herself to sleep
Songs about changing the colors of leaves
But now she looks older and tired with life
And some stranger’s gone and made her his wife
And they fight in the home that I grew up in
Now I don’t really know where I live
It’s when my neck’s wet that I realize I’m crying
And the sound of a siren reminds me I’m driving
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Fucking Beautiful
I.
Ice cream and strawberries
Running down your neck
Onto your jewelry
You me and a heavy heat
Driving fast enough
That’s everything I need
A little wind and a radio
Picks up a punk rock station
From the next county over
In your room with your pretty things
Framed pornography
Worthless birthstone on your ring
II.
I want to write songs with you
Commit crimes with you
Make love with you
Turn up the volume on the stereo
We can kiss real loud
And nobody should know
Now my bed feels too big
When you’re not there
I’m drowning in my sheets
I kiss your hair when you go to bed
And I can hear it hum
Your brain, she does not rest
III.
I want to buy a home for us
Make a meal for us
Be a man for us
When I wake up I’m so relieved
You still exist
Not only in my dreams
I just found the perfect thing
I kiss with my eyes open
Just to let more of you in
The world looked a little fucked before
Now that you’re here
It’s fucking beautiful
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Romance
Julius Caesar sprawled out on his bed
Eating crackerjacks and playing guitar
His black eye is conspicuous
Bob Marley posters hung on the wall
He’s sick of his body there’s nothing to do
Hears his parents fight in the other room
Opens the window and nearly swoons
The sky looks big next to the fading moon
You loved him
You left him
A postcard
From Scranton
The electric city where your parents met
You lick the stamp with vague regret
Start to wonder where that love went
Then start to worry about yourself again
Everything’s dull in your little world
You wish you were still a little girl
Dressing up in your mother’s pearls
Talking in accents, so self-assured
Your back hurts
Your skin’s dry
Your chest heaves
With a sigh
Sighs don’t work they’re excuses to breathe and
You don’t feel better when you’re trying to talk to Jesus
And you’re not sure, but you think you don’t believe in
Love or life or sex or joy or reason
Get into your father’s car and drive away
Find yourself on the interstate
Thinking about the things you hate
Thinking about this fucking state
From Sussex
To Monmouth
New Jersey
Life sentence