i don't want to go out in public because strangers claw at me with their beaks their caring eyes make me sick their empathy turns me weak in the knees i embarrassed everyone or just spoke out of turn but either way it's done and the shame will make me burn and i would hate to be your fetish i only want to be your muse do you really think we could show them or am i just your foolish ruse i'd rather fall asleep at home in your arms and curl beside your pillowed feather wings i scared you off but i still feel your charms your fuzzy memory can make my heart sing and i would hate to be your project i only want to be your muse do you really think you could love me or are you just my foolish ruse and when i talk you hear the crop sans the cream i'm not myself when i act debonair but i won't find love if i hide inside and dream of candy kisses and furry derrieres and i would hate to have your sympathy i only want to be your muse are you the one who makes me feel seen or are you just my foolish ruse

it feels like all that's grown has gone to seed because i get everything i want but not what i need closeness can't exist in isolation desire flows with or without temptation you may be standing next to me as far away as the eye can see you might be saying you want me but i'm as far away as i could be what is the world that i build if all its cities can never be filled i could bend all physics to my will but if i am forgotten am i really fulfilled and try as i might, i won't give up as a shooting star landing in your yard vantablack to pearly white, used up i was born to wander long and deep and far

i caught myself breaking a sweat again cutting up a limb that's on the mend i'm getting on fine but i can't get off in perfect health except the fever and the cough i caught myself dreaming about you then the strangest highs and lows to which i've ever been cold clarity becomes me and i feel the sweet pain of being set free now when i dream of guys i see them with both my eyes it doesn't make sense in the past or present tense and i don't think of you not that i think you'd want me to but you have left the deepest, darkest wound (and i don't mind) i used to be numb to the solitude before i felt your breathing and i came to i never was afraid to be alone but now the fear lives in everything i own i'm learning to live beyond the yearn i can watch it rise but i won't let it burn it's inside my nature to taste decay but strangely i wouldn't want to have it any other way

someday if my heart hollows out and turns to stone in a fetal curl downstairs, don't leave me alone no matter what i say, i want you to stay even if my dead eyes push you away, i want you to stay i don't ever want to feel that helpless again but it's not something i could help back then and it kills me that death still lives in me caught in the clutch of cold-blooded memory someday if my words come to meaninglessness and my svelte dress decomposes to a felt mess no matter what i do, i'll still want you even if i come unglued, i'll still want you and if i find tonight that i can't sleep i'll just count all the secrets that i keep scared that you'll find out what i'm capable of now that i'm capable of love

all the world is colorless and grey built to confuse, contradict, and degrade but when i close my eyes i can wish it all away imagining your arms around where i lay because gloom is all but illegal in my room the safest place to hide bar the womb or a tomb floating off to sleep on a plume of wet dreams behind where the sun shines and your briny skin gleams where i can be someone else cut from the bounds of my wretched hometown because i am lost, and no one can find me here and all i hear is the clear sound of coming down if i was a bear in your neck of the woods could you rescue me from houston county neighborhoods and read to me in bed with my head on your thighs with the wind blowing in from saturday summer sunny skies and if it gets violet and violent outside can we build a brilliant interior world in which to hide you could shut the blinds and blind me with your light and i'd be alright, tonight and every night because i'd be someone else a juniper in june standing tall above them all because your seed is the only sustenance i need to be a grower growing, springing through summer and fall for i crave a glass of gladness to ease off of my sadness boy, i need a new religion, i need rest for my head is as red as an autumn tomato bisque and my heart is blue as berries if i could be someone else free from the debris living inside of me because i am in pain for the part of me that remains weathered by the cold and blown against the sea

beautiful boys on a screen come and go like raindrops hitting a moving train's window pleasures i won't know, alone with my ego in my dreams i laid beside you in a meadow i used to hate looking everyone in the eye and the rigmarole of simple conversation i still do but i learned how to get by caved in and burned out with frustration i wish i could join the human race but i get out of breath so easily so i walk in subspace at neanderthal pace in the dark, fluorescent light misery

and although i'd like to cast my cares by the wayside of your lava lamps and underwear i'm terrified and i've never been touched or gazed upon or longed for and such for as long as i've wanted to hike your trails with my tongue i shed myself, having never been young now i'm pure and broken, a statuette of regret mint with cherry lips i know you'll soon forget but all i need is to be held not even kneaded, not even knelled and to be squeezed is all you say you need shielding your face to everyone except me and although i'd like to stare down your staircase this home is not my own, and i feel out of place i'm scared shitless, but by your eyes rendered witless for all the dirty things i did my damndest to suppress and i can't understand touch without context of the lingering feelings your body rejects they make me invisible to god and everyone where they see a will to be free, though i have none they call it a temple, but if it only were that simple a carcinogenic impulse pushing on the pull and there's no affection if your affect's disconnection just a weekend spent waiting for your weakness to end but all i need is to be held not to cause a riot, not to be expelled and to be pleased is all you say you need using a username with everyone except me

i've gone a month without hearing a soul this empty apartment's a part of the hole a vacuum for a room inside the complex bugged and teeming with insects grieving a life i'm not ready to leave saved by the ones i've yet to lead but i'll sing until my vocal cords are severed there's worse and plainer pains i've weathered a life i can't escape becomes a tomb everything i am is buried in this room a cell for my jagged biology a prayer to transcend my body i hold nothing but my words and my wires their ringing will withstand all suffering and hellfire no shadow can hold up against a flashlight it's what i need to get through the night

when i was a kid i wanted to grow up to be a ghost somewhere on the ring road i got pretty close but here in the hereafter i want to dissipate into city mist because i want to live, just not like this all that's here are missed connections take-offs, landings, and unspectacular course corrections so what is there for me that's not across the sea if only being born again could happen so easily now that i'm old i want to get someone pretty close but the fountains of youth have turned to ruins for ghosts there's no way to live inside a listless haze of memories crushed by the weight of emptiness and tethered to the breeze no one here will stop me feeling incomplete i've swept every street but i'm still up on my feet so where is he if not across the sea if only falling in love could happen so easily

well the weather's not what it used to be because it always seems to rain down on me when i drive to work the water paints the windows blue but in another life i could stay in bed holding you and i hope it's not the same where you are that a thousand streetlamps walk you home when it's dark where the subways and city lights will set you free on your gilded commute right back to me there's no stars left to wish on in the alabama sky but have i really given fate the good old college try because i don't believe in anything but songs and death and by-and-by but the fabled sea of love will bleed me dry so my life is killing me with each endless day the lonely hours and minutes and seconds that want to drag me away when i open my eyes with the sunrise i wish it never begins and i yearn for the time to come i pray to god it never ends there's no stars left to wish on in the alabama sky but have i really given fate the good old college try because i don't believe in anything but songs and death and by-and-by but the fabled sea of love will bleed me dry...

when you first appeared between my misty eyes on the main stage, bashful and surprised i could feel my heart pulse through my frail ribcage i could see my tears flow across an empty page with the glow in your blond hair and the sun on your tan skin for the first time i sensed something tremble within because you floated through space with angelic grace though to strangers yours was an ordinary face and you touched me so sweetly, so fully, completely little words became mountains when you said that you loved me but i can't trust myself when good things come gleaming i don't believe you, but i'll keep dreaming how could i exist without your tender grip on my wrist the chelsea traffic muted by your good morning kiss the speckled night sky with you nestled at my side walking between raindrops as the world opens wide and i can understand now the improbability of being meant to be the fragile and crystalline nature of destiny so there's crushing desperation abundant when you hold me the simple act of contact saturated with meaning for all the times i only wished to lay d.o.a. and foresaw golden years cast isolated and grey and entertained myself just trying to not to want to die i felt your presence when i suddenly arrived to the crisp clarity of tubes and wires keeping me alive but i'll never escape you with any kind of luck now that i believe you... i woke up

this is the part where things couldn't ever be alright if there's no one to gracefully hold you at night to distract you from the supper of the void the emptiness that keeps you tearfully annoyed if i could write you a postcard i would because all we need is to be loved and understood but wouldn't it be funny if we pass each other by to mourn the could have beens when we die this world is primed to pry your body off me and each day our hearts break a little more softly until the ache only wakes in sad duotone dreams an apathetic tear stream bursting at its seams so should i dispense with knights in shining armor for a warm body to wait out the winter or hold out for heaven behind a white picket fence risking a life contoured by boredom and loneliness all i need is to feel a little less broken if it's a lie, then lie to me about a happy end and i'll wait for someday to be safe and sound with a love so deep i can't help but drown