1. |
Sidewalk
03:37
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flashback to a day that you can't pinpoint. warm rain and it is still april. so many sentiments to exploit until your head is level. saturdays suggest what it might be like without the weekly schedule. i think i'm failing but i don't care. starting to miss people. nothing seems as concrete as this crowded walkway under our feet. i can't hear at all. the smell of asphalt makes me dizzy/ i am in a haze that i can't escape but i feel far away so i can't complain and i don't want to crash myself into anyone on the sidewalk that i would rather not stumble across. cross sections of you as seen by an old friend; nothing but half-truths could come out of here. when i say that i won't sweat it I really mean i will shed tears. nothing seems as concrete as this crowded conveyor-belt under our feet. i'm in a state that i can't explain. i don't want to crash my self into anyone on the sidewalk that i'd rather not get scraped off of. things are going to go back to normal.
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2. |
Weekends
03:04
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not sure if this will be a song or a letter. it's been far too long since i wrote you, since i've seen you, been in your arms. why did you chose a place to stay so far out of the way? you changed your name, you've gotten fake. are you okay? and as i write the changes they seem so slight they are barely worth bringing up. so what if we're far apart? i'll get in airplane or a car just to get to you 'cause i miss you so hard. could i see you on the weekends? and make it a point to keep it at arm's length on the days between them? we will make all our impressions, but the dents they will all flatten monday morning. we'll be close and we'll be distant, we will stretch out only to snap back into the same position we were in to begin with. not sure who myself is, or if "he" even exists. but if "he" did i'm certain, I wouldn't want to be "his" friend...or maybe i'd make "his" acquaintance, see "him" on the weekends. and each time it would be different and i'd be fine with it. 'cause i don't care. i'm nobody. i'm nowhere. i'm nothing. i'm a farce. do i have to write a book for you to realize how mutable we all are? could i see me on the weekends? i will plant all my improvements but the flowers will not blossom monday morning. i will grow and i'll be stagnant, i'll get better just to revert back to the same condition i was in to begin with.
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3. |
Scumbag
02:59
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i need to get myself clean, be able to look back on at least a week without cringing, see my surroundings clearly. why do i prefer the blurry version of everything? as if my hearing is faltering along with my eyesight. it's like i'm on the wrong setting, stuck in a story with an upsetting ending. i need to admit defeat already, i'm not kidding. i'm not just singing. if every evening i could beat a little bit of it out of me i would wind up alright, but i don't see that happening. i get jittery, i get shaky. i can feel my stomach sinking. it gets harder to breath. slow and spacey, stuck zoning out uncontrollably. caught dwelling on how bad i can be, if only i could zoom out an perceive the component parts that add up to less than their sum, i could finally see the scumbag in me. i don't want to replicate the scenes around me. there is nothing i want to copy. i don't want to manipulate you with my misery. i don't want to interact with anything. punch me if i complain. send my angst to an early grave. draw my ego out of me and force me to see everybody i'm damaging.
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4. |
Continue To Live
03:49
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so hit yourself until your knuckles are bruised, i can see you've made yourself your own punching bag. it doesn't hurt to show a little remorse, but for you it always feels like a bloodbath. if it's true that you get what you give it would make sense that trying to give you hope is pointless. all you touch always crumbles to dust it's no wonder that no one will follow your footsteps. a list of goals from a month ago not one of them completed. i'll never amount so i just cross them out to make sure they'll never happen so when you check up on me you'll see that i am failing and then me and you will be able to relate just like new won't we? why can't i just cut you out of my life? it's like i really want to see you suffer. but even if i gave you another shot it would just be another form of torture. and although no one knows how to burn out and decompose as well as you i'll do it better and hope that you know that i wrote this in code, but you'd be better off studying a mirror. if everything you've turned out to be were written out succinctly i'd call it the guide to how to wreck your life and print a thousand copies and pass them out and spread your story around, and one day you will thank me for making it so that you led someone to warn everyone that they're going to die lonely. it's nice to know that you don't want to patch things up because i don't either. we'll go on ahead like nothing happened but i'm still so bitter. i wish you wouldn't drive so fast, it makes me think you're gonna die in a car crash. i know i shouldn't talk like that. you'll probably die of something dull like a heart attack, or die of embarrassment, but until then i will run barbed wire across the side of the bridge to prevent you from trying to jump from it. even with cut-up skin you will be able to swim, you'll make it out in tact, you will continue to live. everything i hate about myself reminds me of you. in the end i will reject what it comes down to; that i should set it all aside and get over it and forgive you. i think i'll forget you.
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5. |
Maybe Later
04:50
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we woke up at the same time and i asked her if she was doing alright and circles under her eyes suggested otherwise. she said that i had a lot to drink last night. and all i wanted was to not be so shy. i thought a lot about it all and in a moment it occurred to me. so now i spend the better part of my nights kidding myself to sleep. one day i'll gather the strength to stop. maybe sooner, or later, i can't say. i get the picture over and over. been trying to rewire my brain. well i got up to say goodbye and she told me that i was out of my mind. i stood still and stared straight and she asked me what i could possibly derive from such an awful state. and all that i thought when i put my hood up, feigned a smile as i looked down at your feet, was that i'm glad that i got a chance to watch it all slip out from underneath. this is all just a paradigm that i've gotten used to throughout my life and now the consequences batter my mind.
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6. |
Next To Nothing
04:19
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do you remember when we would park on the rest stops on the midcape? and be completely quiet as cars came closer, and listen as they drove away? could all the days those years held somehow fix you up/save you from yourself? all the times you and i would talk all night enter my mind when your life flashes before my eyes. i heard you got better. i hope you really recover. you said check out "diary" so i got it and it changed me. we poured our hearts into our band, loud fast and short-lived as planned. we used to beat on our equipment. now you beat up all my friends. well your tough-guy stance was no more when your mother called me the last night we made eye-contact to let me know you made it home. i bet you couldn't wait to waste away in your room alone. i heard you got better. i hope you really do recover. lately i've been to thinking the chances of that happening are only shrinking. lately i've been to thinking the chances of that happening are next to nothing. but we can't do anything now. i'll run the next time i see you around town. and you will show up at my house. like every other time you'll tear me down. but it should come as no surprise. you were only the first one of a long line of friends to meet their demise. and for the first time i feel done trying to find life in someone where there simply is none.
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7. |
Downer
03:00
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admitting cynically all the time i'm wasting, but i know honestly that i can succeed- at the art of losing. i could achieve the worthy feat of effecting absolutely nothing. i'll consolidate the strength to be a nobody. mediocrity seems alright to me. at heart i'm a loner. in my head i am a downer. i don't think i'll ever find myself at ease. and i've got this gut feeling that misapprehending it all is a good way to be, at least a temporary strategy. i'm not gifted. my only talent is feigning interest. i'd rather fester. i'd rather bleed. give up the search for the cure, learn to love the disease. a small price to pay for anonymity. any positive trait i will lay straight to waste and let it languish in solitude and interrupted sleep. "come on now, don't sit so scrunched up. you've gotta get rid of those dreary eyes. to shy away is to give in to those who want to control you and scrape out your insides. i know that there's gotta be something out there for you to do. you will work it all out. i trust you." everybody's always convincing me to do something valued for a chance. i would rather have no bearing on anything.
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8. |
Vacant
03:10
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i've been letting so much slide. i settled into the downhill slope of a long, dark afterlife in no time. one look at the bright side left me blind. you are brighter than me, so bright that i can't take it. you were right there for me, to think what you put up with. we have grown to be so estranged that we just fall apart in person. you don't have to concede. you don't have to do anything. i am not worth it at all. no, i left you all alone. and i am so sorry for everything, that everything was happening so fast, like trying to hold a severed hand up against my wrist in hopes that it will reattach i know you’d let me use your skin and bone as a graft and it tries me to recover how fast paced our hearts raced. it kills me. it pains me to know that I couldn’t remember, i might as well have not even been there- and how you were effectively alone. it sickens me, too sick to see, I’m lashing out blindfolded. if you don’t want to keep being friends with me, you know i’d understand it. now everything seems fucked permanently, so fucked that i can’t fake it. and in reverie, you escaped from me, and left my sad smile vacant. you left it vacant. you were so close to me, i just was not used to it but i refuse to believe that I didn‘t mean it. you could never be too harsh on me; i will always deserve it. but can you just please trust me, i don’t do it on purpose.
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9. |
Contrived
03:34
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i'm too far behind to keep track of the nonexistent narrative. this better be serious. this better be really worth it. or else i'll go lie on the side of the street just to show you foot traffic trampling my bones, under delusions the city swallows whole. getting tired on the ride i buckle my seatbelt up because when i die i want to be awake for it. crossing the street today i couldn't bring myself to look both ways, and still a screeching halt failed to make me feel less pointless. and on your clavicle my eyes will leave a pool of water, suggesting to me that our feelings are all just filler. and so i curse this cold night and all the empty signs. i cannot recall what being warm feels like. and though the stars still shine and i am still alive i can't help but get overwhelmed and disgusted at everything contrived. between the trace amounts of valuable sound spilling from your mouth as you speak i connect the dots and form a poor rendition of a thought, but it's not your fault, it's me, its the fact that i have yet to get a solid grasp on what's important, as opposed to disposable or irrelevant. gain a little control. an accurate hold on the episodes as they unfold. i'll sit and watch our ideas rot is it wrong that i feel at home when i can barely even talk? when there are no words left it will start to make sense. we'll get a sense of what is actually significant.
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10. |
Straightjacket
03:36
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i've learned to practice this one type of patience, the only thing keeping me out of a straightjacket. to the next one to ask me how i'm doing, i hope i have the strength to say the following. i miss the feeling of agreeing on anything, of hearing that's what i've been thinking a lot about lately. these past weeks have been defined by trying to see how light i can tread on the thorny earth beneath my feet and read subtle messages i've picked up from those candid expressions i've learned to decode. i've flipped through the pages of jotted-down awkward silences. i can't act on what i know. the feeling of having no idea where this evening is going at all. the last living relic of a past replete with pain, the only promise of a future so tempting to call off. surrounded and distances, cut up and coherent, like speed and heroin. mix a depressant in with a stimulant. i would give anything to feel nervous or confused again, but i've heard out all the swirling voices and singled out one of them: a tired conversation i have had before. i don't want to talk about it all anymore. and as life slips from me i hope you find out how to be happy finally. the feeling of having no idea where this lifetime is going at all. the laughable sentiment of a maladjusted kid, or the only outlook possible? to the next one to ask me how i'm doing, i hope i have the strength to say it will get worse if you keep asking. no one could crop me out of a photograph of failure. the colors fade. the outlines smudge and there is nothing. i see outpourings of honesty conflicting. i see us when we were young, smiling.
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11. |
Tired Images
03:10
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i could take you up on your offer and submit to all the logical conclusions. i could carve something out for myself and for others. i could give in, i could let go, i could really start to live. on principle, i'm letting myself rot. how beautiful, the endless cycle of the lie falling apart. the ebb and flow, the incessant on and off, it gets repetitive. i just want to make everybody sick. life, liberty, and the pursuit of loneliness. a hole that you don't know until you've been there. with nothing tough to bolster up my untapped confidence and courage, it's like the flags are all just floating in midair. invincible, i'm letting myself die. how typical, and all for the sake of a pair of sunken eyes. i'm running out of time to contrast and to combine these tired images.
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12. |
Lightness And Weight
05:40
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in my melancholy i have found nothing special. it is normal to be in a bad mood always. still so plagued by the day when i noticed that none of my friendships were my idea. or that some people for some dumb reason get nervous near me. or rely on architecture to try and bring us closer. there is a flaw in all design. it's exemplified every time i try to reconstruct my life. it falls apart faster. i don't miss anything any longer. i can sometimes see the beauty abounding around me. i can mostly feel the anguish, the grayness, the ennui. a terrible flash hits you and everything feared to become of everyone has come true. you grown comfortable with bad-tasting ideas of what to make of yourself. some just want to be still. what's most awful is how light everything can weigh sometimes. there can be so much pain in the smallness of things. nothing beats having too much weighing down on me. sun still floods my room in the late morning. maybe i'll someday start missing something if i pull my blinds down. this is all that i could ask for. they say where you are is fine, so long as i can get around sometimes. when you find it suddenly, and you look up to see the sun could keep spinning around enough times to kill you right where you stand. when you try to deconstruct your life it comes together.
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