We’re sick enough to spill someone else’s blood, paint a picture of ourselves with it, and call it love. I guess that’s what the ego does when it forgets the bodies we’ve become will eventually turn back to dust. We’ve held onto the worst parts of our nature, tried to survive on rotten fruits of our labor— maggot filled and mangled flesh, should’ve seen it as a sign, but lately we’ve been complaining that the apple hasn’t been tasting right. Taste buds blossom and reach up for the taste of death, spit spilling out our lips, smoke collecting in our chests, hands erecting effigies where all of the ash collects, man the flames we set ablaze, and call ourselves the architects. We didn’t plant this garden, no. It grew on its own. Now its starting to resemble all the bones we left below: palms open, hands stretched. Strangely I can never tell if they’re reaching up to comfort us or asking us for help. Oh Eden, please believe that the snake still slithers in our teeth with the lies that we believe to satiate our endless need to be better than the barren land we leave beneath our battered feet. We watched skylines start to erupt, saw cityscapes in the empty space that surrounded us burying the truth we knew we couldn’t sell: Paradise was never lost. We stole it from ourselves.

The curtains climb to the ceiling, and the lights dim. All eyes on the miles of the shoes I tried to walk in. Maybe once too often, stalked by bitter silence to memorize the lines that were etched into my irises. Followed the script 'till I was part of the plot line, found the spot we're these two lives intertwine: One where my reflection wouldn't look me in the eye, and the other with a confidence that I could never recognize. I built these bones out of lethargy and broken glass, pieced the mask together with torn out pieces of the past, stitched the smile with surrender, it didn't take long before this body became a costume that I couldn't take off. The premise sounded perfect. All I did was practice, adapted to the characters that I carefully crafted, but knew I was a miscast the moment that my mouth started reciting words that I knew I wouldn't write myself. I've played the lover, best friend, and the son. I've played the pillar, the temple, lifeline, and the loaded gun. Played the optimist, the pessimist, I've even played the glass. I've played the characters so long that I forgot this was an act. Reality's a passing glance. Truth, a novelty. Promise is just a simple misstep from dishonesty. I didn't lie on purpose. Learn for certain it's a habit. I'm not open like a book, love. I'm open like a casket. See, I'm the beggar with a suit and tie, lover with no alibi hit and miss, I learned to kiss with lips that taste like iodine and clean my slate so heaven's hate doesn't seem so distant, the stench of cleanliness is mighty inconsistent. Sometimes I smell like cigarettes and last calls face painted with regrets from memories I passed on. I won't pass on until I learn what the words mean. The pressure behind every one is starting to concern me. Happy hour has been echoing like church bells. It makes this innocence somewhat of a hard sell, but I've found every time that I'm down, I can figure out my problems just by looking around at all the trouble that surrounds my glass, eyes glazed and looking past my surroundings while I'm drowning. Life and death fail to contrast. Juxtaposed, thrown away, a symptom of our dying days: Were nothing more than memories at the bottom of an ash tray. I've played the lover, best friend, and the son. I've played the pillar, the temple, lifeline, and the loaded gun. I've played the optimist, the pessimist, I even played the glass. I've played the characters so long that I forgot this was an act. Reality's a passing glance. Truth is a novelty. A promise is just a simple misstep from dishonesty. I didn't lie on purpose. Learn for certain it's a habit. I'm not open like a book, love. I'm open like a casket. I'm just a normal guy that happens to make music shifting through the notes to figure out what the truth is. This is to the pages that I've scribbled on and scratched out just so I hear the way an empty heart and pen sounds. But it sounds like death; it sounds like contempt; it sounds like secrets that I kept tucked nearly underneath my bedsheets So I could be closer to the truth when I fall asleep. It's not to say that I won't let em out, but you shouldn't be surprised when I contradict myself. We're only human. Thoughts change, so do you. Inconsistency shouldn't be anything new. I'm left to stumble and it's purely out of habit. My eyes try to find where life and song attach. This is a promise. The reason I'm so distant is the difference between right and wrong has gotten so ambiguous.

His eyes wander from his son to the floorboards. The cracks collect the battle cries, bottle always wins the war waged against himself. His hands shake, his brow sweats the minute hand ignites the kerosene that lingers on his breath. Looks to the wedding band, a reminder of regrets. He takes a shot of Jack and chases with a second guess. It’s frustrating listening to life’s somber cadence clutching at the walls, the walking gets complicated. Now the world that he created doesn’t spin like it used to design he had in mind dissipates in the rear view the past presents a parable for how to flee the scene decoding the moment, determine what it means. Now he can’t see the future, all he sees is the front door leading toward the sunrise and escape that it stands for. and as he steps into the light and fresh air hits his lungs he makes the center of the universe his none and only son. I was the rope that you tied around your back and You were the rope that I tied around my neck. The shadows of the gallows is still stalking my past. Just an old unholy ghost haunting family photographs. I was the rope that you tied around your back You were the rope that I tied around my neck. The shadow of the gallows is still stalking my past. Just an old unholy ghost haunting family photographs. I heard a whisper in the wind and spent my life trying to find it but absence is the sincerest form of silence. After distancing myself, I found, despite what I envisioned predispositions are the only proof that he ever existed. Persistence of indifference. Harsh tug toward his sickness. One too many shaking hands and far too many symptoms. Abandonment found a home inside my bones to live in when I gazed into the mirror and knww only of the image I was made in: open lips begging for another drink broken glass left on the floor, vomit in the kitchen sink, a dizzy step away from all the selfish things I say, and the urge to run merged sharply in my DNA. And I cannot escape the skin that I was given stretching over hollow bones and all your indecision. Two bodies at a table with a setting made for three. I didn’t learn to love. I learned how to leave. I was the rope that you tied around your back You were the rope that I tied around my neck. The shadows of the gallows are still stalking my past. Just an old unholy ghost haunting family photographs. I was the rope that you tied around your back You were the rope that I tied around my neck. The shadows of the gallows are still stalking my past. Just an old unholy ghost haunting family photographs.

Undress me like you mean it. I’m afraid I’ve seen it: the pictures of yourself that you tore into pieces and threw on the ground like rose petals and ash hoping God wasn’t watching you then. How he’d laugh. You took the trip and lost yourself, addressed the need for help, abandoned everything you stood for. Go ahead and sit down. I remember rainy days and laughing, don’t remember how. Compelled by death. Dressed to kill ourselves-- Baby, we're martyrs now. But I backed out and you couldn’t forgive me, cursed the world and my name to anyone who was listening. Then you went and tried to overturn that open boat for questioning the sicking feeling still keeping your head afloat. If that makes me a coward, I’m the one to blame. I knew death would bring some closure, but it’s not really the same as Stepping forward to combat that lonesome plague afraid that martyrs never live up to their name. We needed change. We swim like dead bodies arms stretched out face beneath the waves, and if you watch the storm will stop, and we’ll find our way to the bottom. I traced the freckles on your back until they spelled out run. It was the softest warning that there ever was, but I ignored it. Raised the tattered cloth above the hidden gem was never one to take directs, dear, or follow them. I built this bridge to stand, not to burn down or cross but the sentiment of hatchets in my back has never been lost. You flooded both ends; I didn’t make a sound. Even if it killed me, I wanted to find middle ground, And I did. So you mapped out the places you had been to prove you weren’t afraid to lose the hell that you were stuck within. I would’ve done the same, but to be completely honest: there isn’t treasure at ever X. I promise. You cast off, a failed effort to escape the splintered foundation sinking under your mistakes, and as the current crashed against you, knew that you were lost and the sea slowly whispered your name against the rocks. We swim like dead bodies arms stretched out face beneath the waves, and if you watch the storm will stop, and we’ll find our way to the bottom.

Dear desire, where you been? It’s been a minute. Last time we spoke, you stormed out before I finished spilling my guts off the edge of my bed, reciting that mantra that you pounded in my head like, “Here’s something for the sickness. Just ignore the side effects the jitters will leave once you realize the promises won’t be kept. Let’s market madness as a medicine. It’s better to ignore the past. It’s just gonna happen again.” Ring around the rosy. Pockets full of Rx labels. Ashes that you left me are still sitting on the kitchen table: in that gold vase, wilted petals at its base- thorns you were born with found a way to scratch my face every time we kissed, remnants of a last wish to burn bright as the fire that once engulfed my mattress instead of being snuffed out. Nothing’s left but the stench of smoke and an empty orange bottle. All those milligrams of false hope. Sing me to sleep, I still hope these dreams will bring back my memory. Back then remembering wasn’t an issue I never knew that I would be so fluent in forgetful. Sing me to sleep, I still hope these dreams will bring back my memory. Back then remembering wasn’t an issue I never knew that I would be so fluent in forgetful. When the ashes settle I’ll make angels in the dust and deconstruct the steps away from everything I love. and when I burn out, I’ll immolate myself again just to try and find the things the medicine lost interest in Wrote me a script for sleep, it tasted like dependence life sentence of torn tendons and being stuck at the entrance of a medical conveyor belt: pharmacy to doctor’s desk to set my next appointment for a separate set of side effects. I thought I was asleep, sadly I was mistaken. All the blank spaces along with clouded faces. Moments evaporated like a fickle rain with lightning strikes and thunderclaps running through this weathered face. I couldn’t hear them, I was deaf to the consequence, creatively coping and proclaiming my innocence, hoping that your touch would make me a better person I won’t ask for forgiveness, frankly I don’t deserve it. Sing me to sleep, I still hope these dreams will bring back my memory. Back then remembering wasn’t an issue I never knew that I would be so fluent in forgetful. Sing me to sleep, I still hope these dreams will bring back my memory. Back then remembering wasn’t an issue I never knew that I would be so fluent in forgetful.

I've got an open sore. I'm bleeding on my bedsheets folding conviction to somehow make the ends meet. There's no point in sleep; it's fluttering and brief. Lately, she's sick of counting dead sheep, and I see that look you get when you think that it's my last breath. You've met death. You wear each encounter like a cheap dress its not your fault that the questions still itch my skin, and I pick at the scabs that I hope to find the answers in. They never come. I'm left to waste away into no more than a bag of bones, words I wouldn't say. I chase my dreams with medicine. I'll be okay one day. There was a storm that shook the house-- didn't hear a thing, I smiled as you rested your head on my breast. Nature was a whisper drowned out by your soft breath, and as your fingertips tip toed across my chest I promised I'd tell you everything I laid to rest. To every man whose ever met his maker, every sunrise is a sunset begging for an anchor. I've been brought to the gallows. Can't run from it. Tried to tie the noose, but I couldn't get the hang of it. To every man whose ever met his maker, every sunrise is a sunset begging for an anchor. I've been brought to the gallows. Can't run from it. Tried to tie the noose, but I couldn't get the hang of it. I try to keep it simple without losing the meaning. Try to keep the peace without keeping all the piece, Could create a photograph of lessons that I learned, but I refuse to paint a picture, rather say a thousand words. I learned to retract everything I might of ever said, learned the roles, played the parts, lied in someone else bed. I was never meant to be who I always said I was I dotted the last i with a drop of my own blood, and finished the t with the line I swore I'd never cross, found myself stuck in a paradise I never lost. The devil never played a trick, this hell has always been my home. Any means to meet my ends. revenge is such a somber tone. I lied until the white turned black, and I crucified myself on the fingers I crossed behind my back. I could never ask forgiveness for the things that I have done. I was born swinging. I'm the hangman's son. To every man whose ever met his maker, every sunrise is a sunset begging for an anchor. I've been brought to the gallows. Can't run from it. Tried to tie the noose, but I couldn't get the hang of it. To every man whose ever met his maker, every sunrise is a sunset begging for an anchor. I've been brought to the gallows. Can't run from it. Tried to tie the noose, but I couldn't get the hang of it.

I got a shelf full of memories bookmarked with bad judgement. It reminds me of the time quiet added to something. It wasn't my intention to get caught inside the spin, but never knew the consequence that all the still air would bring. Baited my breath with gasoline, struck a match, found comfort in burning everything I ever had. I'm sorry, for every single case of my generation's good intentions horribly misplaced. It's so strange knowing life ain't what you make it to think you took the road less traveled, find out your mistaken to forget the lines between real and fake relations then lose the guide on how to find all your limitations. I tested the water, and I got stuck as the pieces of myself I forgot about sunk. My tongue ain't as lenient as I'd like to allow, so I'll slit my own throat if it helps get all the words out. I was meant to live with my lips bound tightly but it's hard trying to walk the lines that my palms have assigned me. I used to think that I lived on my own accord. It's just so strange the word "past" can mean to move forward. These are just the rules that I choose to adhere to, watch my memories come alive inside the rearview, and even so, it'll never be enough I remember the day silence lost its Midas Touch. I used to two step with the devil on the regular, fate grabbed my hand before she pulled me into bed with her, silence forced the words straight back into my lungs, and these hushed lips kissed death with a lot of tongue. I know the taste it was tattooed on my lips, afraid the ink would never dry. It always made my stomach sick. I should've known before the warning bell sounded I would never get anywhere throwing glass at stone houses, but I did, and I followed the pieces to my shadow: the reflection of the physical, the minimum, the shallow parts of me that breathe and breathe but never could define the essence of the messages that I have learn through life and there I found it: all the light that cast the shade blinded by the brilliance that outlined my battered shape. and I know that that lesson will last regret is a promise to yourself that you've learned from the past.

We were born with the harvest on our lips, all the seeds we needed stitched into our fingertips. Instead of being grateful, we pushed heaven past its limit searching for a paradise despite it being given to us freely. And after all this digging, we stared at the mounds our eyes aiming at the sky from the hole we dug ourselves, and in this passing moment, it just seems so fitting how the hands that dug into the earth will try to climb their way out, and we can, if we don't suffocate from all the weight of the plagues that we create, centuries of past mistakes, a history of ending life as mindless entertainment allergic to forbidden fruit, but we had to taste it. And as the juice is spilling out underneath our gaping mouths every single seed is scattering into the lines we plowed. I can't promise things will change. All that I can say is there's evidence of thriving life peaking over all the graves. Mother love me dearly. I know I hurt you so. I tore your skin apart. But I can't promise things will change. I can't promise things will change.