A title

It's on the lines that they catch your breath, on the script you trip. It's the words written on paper thin, we're watching you stumble, you itch.
It's on your skin as a bright red flush, it's on your hands you bleed. It's the voice falling from poison prick, we're encroaching, and we've been freed.

Someone else

And my skin, how time passes when I leave you behind.
My heart, how days go by when I forget.
The pieces left on the bedroom floor for someone else to clean up.
Sometimes we say this isn't our life
and life is indeed much easier.

Educated

And here, they call us liars when we say what's on our mind.

Higher

"Just take the recommended dose," really means, "but if you take more you'll be flying."

Can't swim out, don't know where

Just fifteen miles from
shore we're sitting and laughing because
the sun is shining the water's cooling
the black pools are hidden we
no, we can't help but take pictures
we look so perfect
so picture, perfect loves
that we're waiting for our ship to sail in but
it broke down and sunk just fifteen miles from where we can see
so We'll keep waiting.

There's birds flying in the sky
and trees, a forest filled with berries
and dark caves we'll sit
we'll make a fire together
and sit around, singing
those songs with music from
outta this world they're waiting
just past our reach, we're screaming
the monsters just past the glow of the fire
in the trees watching
We're scared.

Our tents cold walls, so thin we're
curling up together to get warm and
pulling the fabric over our heads we
close our eyes and drift off
the noises won't
touch us We're dreaming.

The charcoal embers smoky
we wake in freezing fits of dreams
smiling we're holding hands and warm we
get out look around and, look, see
the cliffsides the mountains it's
quiet so peaceful we're
heading down to the water's edge
we're waiting for our ship to sail in.

Guitars strumming laughing
making up stupid lyrics for
each other's theme songs and
it's cute, we're cute
too cute to realize what our fate is
so we dunk each other under water
and scream so loud the trees shake
in a good way, shimmy shimmy
we're really finding ourselves out here
two more days won't Kill us.

In the forest dirt floor walking
picking fruit from trees we're talking
eating in a quiet lightning, we
tell each other exactly what's on our minds
it's interesting to find such
kind thoughts we're sadly common
enough in the fact that
our shoes are boots
we love them too
just as people always do
we
believe this isn't going to Kill us soon.

On the mountain side we're sitting
watching sunsets rise we're dreaming
what our future's like we're waiting
Our ship is just a day late it's
no big deal we've got time to waste
and time to spare we'll wait for fate
but that's what's going to kill us.

Days alone and thinking
we're waiting for a dream in
the far off past it's gone it
slipped just from our fingers
we're
stuck on a paradise
waiting for everything we hate.

Lights go out just waiting
behind those dark trunks with claws they
grab my neck and pull me back
you scream
no one's there to help you, you're
so alone I'm crying I
feel the skin rip tight
too high
we fall from the edge of the cliff
the sunset's wallpaper glow
we're shadows in the sky
we're trying not to die but
they grab you by your arms
they make you hold their gun
sharp and hot it burns your hands
it blows my brains
just outta this world,
fifteen miles off from
where, what can we see now that we're dead?
Our ship left us
waiting.

Ties

Ties are nothing but flimsy string
we cut with every slice but
Ties are rope, iron thread, slice your fingers
slice your head.

Cut those ties
Cut those ties they cut you back
Slice, slice, slice.

We entertain the idea

Lovely bones lure me forward;
That's really not fair.
Death, your gracious, how can I resist your offer?

Hide and seek

I never had the patience for hide and seek. I didn't want to waste time finding people, and I sure as hell didn't want to spend hours hiding until they forgot about me.
But I finally understand now. The purpose of that game, I finally understand why.

Because it's practice. A test run. You're waiting until you find the perfect spot, you're waiting until they give up looking. You're waiting, you're waiting until they forget about you, until they move on. You find somewhere they'll never think to look and sit your sad self down.
You wait until everyone else is dead.

And then once the game's long over, you get out and look around. When the coast is clear, when there's no one left to find you...you've won.

This will be the ultimate game of hide and seek. I'll die waiting.

Watch out

Ground in gravel
ground in dirt
smiles a marvel
words, they hurt.
Ground in salt
in wounds in blood
ground in hugs
and smiles and love.

It hurts to say
what I will
but the words fall out
and I am still.
Deny, deny
where did we go
How'd I --christ
I'm not a hoe.

It hurts to fall
under water
laughing, HA
a smile per slaughter.

Deny, deny
it ever happened
life is life
never, captain.

Why wait?

After all this, I don't know.
I can't be bothered?

It's all pointless anyway. It's all monsters in hiding, but they're waiting,
and why make them wait any longer?
It's just time, and once you're past it it's like it never even existed.
So in that sense the past doesn't matter, but the future doesn't exist, so that doesn't matter either.
All we are is the present, and the present is utter shit.
The present is heart heart beating
waiting to be
knocked out
to be
killed.
The present is hiding from monsters who could be anywhere.
Why hide?
Why wait

It's not going to matter in a thousand years,
and the time will really fly once it's over.

Smile and repeat.

Force

Force. 
Forced to wake up each morning. Forced to get dressed and leave the house. Forced to step onto the crowded bus and walk past those people you were forced not to talk to anymore.
Forced to take the underground train to school. Forced to go to class, to sit, to listen, to go to class, to sit, to listen, and repeat. Forced to complete assignments, to answer questions, to learn. Forced to write essays and reports, to take tests, to let them judge you on their flimsy piece of paper...

We are forced to live.

Me, though. I am forced.
I am forced to walk past it everyday. To remember. I am forced to think about it, to confront the thoughts I'm hiding from.
I'm forced to smile when told to nod on cue to agree and move on. 
I don't agree, I don't.
But what's that silly little word that follows? Force.

I was forced to lose something I didn't want to lose and grow up, fast. I was forced to keep quiet about those bruises in the past. I was forced to say this, to say this, to say that. But fucking force can't control what I think about that. 


We're forced onto the platforms, one-by-one, pushed to the edge. We fall a step lower and our knees bleed, gravel and dirt ground in. We're forced down one more level, two more levels, three.
We're forced and forced until we're so close to the bottom that they don't have to force us anymore. We look up at the dark layers above us, no more light seeping in than comfort, and we step off the edge blindly, hardly caring what we hit when we fall.

We're forced to live until we're forced to die, and they say, you know, that that's supposedly life.
But life should be choice, should be freedom.
Freedom is courage to climb back up.

My hands are shredded.
I can't.

Get a scratch
on your skin
let it burn
let it sting.

But what about ^

Sticks in rows in
an arrow on the dirt pointing
towards where we're headed
in the end
we'll fall off the edge of the cliff but
that's what warriors do, anyway.

It's our life or theirs and you can
hell bets we'll try,
won't we.

Oh the places

Don't go back
Can't go back,
they're all waiting.

I'm not scared I swear
I'm terrified.

I lost you to distance. Out of everything, I lost you to fucking distance.

Name called

"Nova."
My throat dies, my knees shake.
Terror-wrought, I stand and walk.
If I am to stumble,
if I am to trip,
they're all watching.
If I am to cough,
if I am to choke,
they're all listening.

They're gonna tear me to shreds.
They're gonna eat me alive.
They're gonna bury my skin,
they're gonna cut me in fives.

Can you hear my heart?
My thoughts are wild.
Can you feel my fear?
I'm just a sodding child.

Run

Run before they get too close
run before they find you're a ghost.

Quiet right before the blast

It's quiet, right before the rage
the storm
the age
of time and all
that's gone, we're gone
and it's too quiet to hear your own thoughts.

I feel like a giant let-down
flying down the road of fucked and dead
we're all dying, you know.
I'm surrounded by shadows
but not mine
because we left a while ago and
the sun's not shining here
the sun's not shining here anymore
and we wonder why.

It's silent, right before the war
Right before the guns go off
before the bomb lights
flies
before the world dies,
the quiet before the storm
We wonder
what happened when the light went out that
we're all too sane to think too straight but

The noise that follows is
so loud it's
too bright to think it's
too dark to smile and
when the sunlight's gone we
scream
We cry
we're all hurting on the
inside
But that's fine
for a while, we're gold
ace great
we've got guns and
sleeping gear,
food in a pack
that'll keep for a while, years.

And if we don't wake,
it's good because we're all dead here
anyway.

I heard

I heard you got your heart broken again.

See, and that's another thing.
You shouldn't leave it out in the open to get smashed. You've got to lock it up and throw away the key, right? In dungeons, in dark corridors where no one will go looking.
You've got to ...
Stop letting people let you down. Stop caring.

A memoir

72 pieces of paper
to tell everyone what my life was like
when I'm dead.