Serenade The times aren’t with us as they once were Or have been for years of dying days. The sun descends upon us quickly, This plot of land God’s given away. And though we try to till the ground We’re just salting the earth. It gets worse from here. But the tales are told hope exists somewhere. Today we set sail in all directions, though waters are dark, And set foot on gleaming landscapes alive more than ours, And if I should for get my true love’s name I’ll just sing. The rain can’t find a good place to fall. And who would want to feel this clay soil when underneath, Where we’ve buried our sorrow, the ground shakes? Magma flows beneath our footprints, and bitterness beneath our scorn. And everybody here is tired, and though still living, so forlorn. And all the pain we give away directly correlates To remorse creating this beast We’ve tried to kill and isolate But all in vain, and all the lost We’ve it to hunt, we’ve it to blame And still we try to kill again When of this creature we are born And thus I must attempt it as all the many before Just hoping this time it works It gets worse before it gets better And the heat raising under the ground Makes the floor vibrate and we hear it die even more Our disillusion gnawing through our skull Is the same thing that created this beast in the first place Even if we succeed it starts again. A causeway to nowhere They say when you sit upside-down for long enough Your vision will correct itself But as for me I’ve never tried it long enough I’ve never took the time to concentrate On one thing long enough to turn it around So maybe these just aren’t working I’ve always had the eyesight of a vulture Flying nowhere but in circles even though Everything avoids the desert these days I guess we’ve smartened up to the turning of the tides When the rainfall slowed down anyone figured it out. So leave your belongings right here and you’ll still feel at home. We’re shipping off for a causeway to nowhere. Sleep with the fish we’re all bloody carnivores. A heavy soul with scars so deep from punishment gives up a meal to poor children Less fortunate; a wastrel does not a saint make. A soul faithful wishes must reduce to stealing to feed his starving family, Tell me does not a thief make. So then why, God willing, I have to watch you waste away Forgive me, I’m far from a saint. The collection of matchbooks and paper trails Just fit together to burn The incendiary steam of passion Maybe the streets aren’t so cold tonight You’re used to the pulse of the moon And your heart slows down. Hell is bitter cold No use explaining, pushing a weight up a plane of 90 degrees. Change with the leaves, fall rusted to death when my pigment’s gone. Walk and walk for miles and miles, after so long all the blocks start to look the same. Orange and red and brown aren’t different colors anymore. The sun burns farther away with every day, the days are short, Hell is bitter cold. My legs are filled with lactic acid, my lungs bereft of oxygen. This abundance of histamine, the ultra violet waves burn down, And I’m so discontent, this melanoma lasts until the frost bite With my fingers frozen off, what sculptor would make a swan out of this? The sun, the leaves, the empires fall The first sight is always the worst When you remove the bandages I know you’ll have to adjust But we’re sure you’ll be fine in a matter of time And there are lots of things you still can do If you just put your mind to it Everything’s awkward at first, but you’ll manage Prior cases have turned out just fine without them, With medication you won’t feel the pain yet, you won’t feel a thing And of the five senses this one’s the least important to capture, to touch and to feel, The only thing that matters is what goes on up here As long as you can see and hear and taste and smell, it’s just like normal, you’re all set What good has complaining ever done And we know you’ve been patient enough So let’s get these bandages off And see just how well you’re recovering And then send you off on your way There, there, it’s not like the stories you hear that say “It gets worse before it gets better.” The sun, the leaves, the empires fall It’s only natural. The masts are shrouded in storm I’ve got no place to go And no place where no-one would stare The spotlights are always shone on me If I had a choice I’d stay inside the curtains where no-one would see. Most other people would call this a tragedy But I don’t like to use such strong words Such strong tones, they hurt the ears Let us not wake the neighbors, and wake the strangers that never offer much, As I have never done, and you’d think that once you’re here it would look the same, But it never does, it’s so much worse from up close The pavement stretches on and on The waves bombard this vessel You can hear the howling wind and wolves Hear the rolling thunder The gutters and the prison grates Everybody head below The masts are shrouded in storm When the sun comes up the weather will warm up and maybe I’ll stop shaking The street lights keep you awake And the dumpsters are filled too high or smell to foul To spend the night when time is right I’ll bring down this stone with full force to my head And I’ll finally get some peace Ghosts and skulls and dystrophy Last night I dreamed I was the perfect candidate to make you smile And so I swore I’d not give up We’ve had our share of hardships but we’ve always pulled through them And this reason is good enough for me to stay Partly because your eyes are too scintillating to turn away from But it’s as if we’ve never hurt each other once And I felt so warm that I was woken up With no-one else around it’s comforting to hear Footsteps on the roads getting louder But when they grew deafening and came up behind me I felt a strike against my head That night I had a dream, the sky had opened up And wanted to take me up to heaven But they couldn’t lift me up, my shoulders in the air, My legs would anchor me to the ground And so I was dragged through fields of wheat and over the dead leaves, And roses and the cacti And slid on sheets of ice and freshly fallen snow The burn more than they seem to freeze Volatile Seasons Cut the loss and clip the hedges into Anything we can use to scare neighbors away We don’t want any untimely interruptions You can’t see anyone until you wake up You must be so proud to get so far when you never think Do you even know how you got here? You are so beautiful like a rose hanged upside-down And left to die With color still intact, a corpse we dressed in its best suit to bury in the ground You know that this is hurting me a lot more than it’s hurting you And you’ve hurt me much more than you’d ever feel What’s done is done and useless now, there’s no excusing what’s happened, There’s no stepping back or straightening things out It was cockeyed from the start and though, you offer up your hands or soul, You never miss a cue to make it worse. And it’s not the only way to see what happens right in front of me The view’s just so askew it’s near opaque The grass is so much greener than it was at this same time last year, Albeit quick to grow and prone to burn But these volatile seasons seem to tease upon our memories And your eyes don’t show their clarity these days Now that you’ve debased to nothing more than irises and retinas, And optic nerves to sever and crash the circuits, the lights go off from here on out. The medication’s wearing off The only thing I know right now is I’m tied up and cannot move And though my vision’s still a blur I can see the blood stains all over And though I owe it all to you, I’m not in a great deal of pain And if you neglect the time and place the atmosphere is not so bad The medication’s wearing off, this latent scene we’ve built for ourselves Shadows in which we lurked around have dissipated with the sunrise Why don’t we kill this masquerade, sirens are barreling down back roads And if you have a change of heart, you’ve no position when it’s through So if you’d please to help me up onto my feet Because I’m buckling at the knees, I know you understand there’s nothing after this As the story goes on the pages start to move faster and so fast you might miss what’s going on But won’t want to go back, the momentum was enough to scare you once Algorithms and Anaerobics It gets worse before it gets better It undulates through the fetters It feeds on us, consumes us all We’ve tried but it’s unstoppable Don’t make this any harder than it already is (Fall in, fall out, fade in, fade out; face it, we’re creatures of habit)