Wishes

Are you depressed,
sick, tired, worn out and stressed?
Have you no place to go and capture some rest.

This world can eat you alive if you let it,
but I ain't got time for that so forget it.

Do the covers not keep you warm where you lie,
is the no one to dry your tears when you cry?
When you are hungry where do you go for a meal?
I bet it ain't far, and you ain't gotta steal.

Sure the world has become a fucked up place,
full of deceit, trickery, anger and haste.
What good is moaning to the leaves in the fall,
you can't stop them from falling can't change nothing at all.

See, we all want to orchestrate this perfect utopia,
the more you play director, the more I lose hope for ya.
What makes one man smile is sure to make another sad,
We don't know what we've got till we've lost all we had.

This world can eat you alive if you let it,
but I ain't got time for that so forget it.

I cried yesterday for what I laugh at today.
How big of a role do your emotions play,
when it come to the way things really are.
Are you driving a lemon or riding a star?

One day you had a feast for a king,
you threw up your nose and touched not a thing.
The next time I saw you was more of the same,
Tomorrow you'll be eating a hot dog and placing the blame.

People been known to get real down,
all our expressions replaced with a frown.
We use therapists, pills, unhealthy vices,
to add a little flavor to a life without spices.

This world can eat you alive if you let it,
but I ain't got time for that so forget it.

That fact that emotions they come and they go,
let's me know they can't be trusted to decide what I know.
Decide you own personal truths, however inconvenient,
act accordingly and hope God will be lenient.

When it comes down to the sheer fact of it all,
who you are supposed to be is nobody's call.
We can all be hypocrites in some way, shape, or form,
we ultimately do what we want there is no norm.

If only people would do as we pleased,
we wouldn't have to spend so much time on our knees.
Praying for other to change as we'd like,
left cradling disappointment when it doesn't end right.

This world can eat you alive if you let it,
but I ain't got time for that so forget it.

I wish I could leave you with the answers we seek,
I wish I could instill power to the weak.
I wish that tomorrow things aren't so bleak,
I wish that all you ever wanted, you get it.
This world can eat you alive if you let it.

An Honest Appraisal

I have spent most of my life making payments toward complacency through drugs and alcohol. The life of my childhood that provided my last truly happy moments has left me like a disgusted lover, while I was lost in a host of mind altering chemicals. As I crawl out from what I now view to be a pretty shameful decade, I realize I have nothing. The only thing more terrifying than the pain of yesterday is the uncertainty of tomorrow. I stand, feeling completely alone. at a point where tomorrow can be whatever I want it to be. In spite of this, I have so little faith in myself to succeed that I feel I might as well just give up now. When I wake up in the morning I get on my knees and pray for something better. I pray for the strength to be someone who can shine brightly on the lives of those around him. People always tell me what a good person I am, what a good heart I have. This is the only way I know how to be, but to be honest, I feel all it has ever gotten me is shit upon. Girls, employers, you name it, have all taken advantage of this supposedly positive quality and turned it into some real bad days for yours truly. In the midst of my despair I am afforded the clarity of thought to realize I can no longer deal with these feelings in the way I always have. I can no longer swallow, sniff, smoke and shoot them away. We all know where that leads for me, and in truth it stopped working a while ago anyway. So I fill my days with activities that I should enjoy but don't, in hopes that when my mind settles upon me once again I will see something more in myself. I don't yet. I try not to be ungrateful for the gifts I have, I'd like to use them to someones benefit if not my own. The things that I let define me for so long no longer exist to me and I am finding, to my horror, that I am no one. I anxiously wonder, contemplating on which wall I'd like to scribe my future and with which media I should write. Endless potential can be a curse to the indecisive. My limbs feel weighted by my limitations. The people and things I involuntarily wake up yearning for, the objects of my obsession, are the very things that have hurt me so much in my past. I hate myself for still wanting them. It is truly difficult when your own thoughts are not trustworthy and blind faith is the only promising solution. I am fortunate to know that this loneliness I feel is a figment of a broken self image, but with this realization comes guilt that I cannot deliver the person my supporters are cheering for. Only a scared shell of a human being, impatiently fighting to get through another day doing the right thing. I have lied to myself for so long that I don't even buy my bullshit anymore, I have banished all my co-signers to their respective vices. What I am left with is nothing but, what I feel to be, pure truth. It is enough to drive me to drink, funny how that works isn't it?

Ungreatful Heart

You know what it's like,
when feelings betray truth?
It's like thinking you'll stay dry,
in a house with no roof.

I got nothing but promise,
or so they tell me today.
So then why do I feel,
I should drink it away?

I once thought I had,
that which I wanted most.
And now that I've lost it,
I'm left with the ghost.

I am haunted by yesterday,
and mistakes that I've made.
I'm saving for a debt,
that can hardly be paid.

Sorry for you who had me,
when I was who I was.
Now that I'm me again,
I am consumed by the cause.

Beginning to realize,
that moment has flown.
There is no one to blame,
the fault is my own.

My eyes finally open,
I took a long look at things.
As life slowly gets better,
my past it still stings.

When will my tired mind,
finally clear of this pain?
When my feelings catch up to the truth,
and I get me a roof,
to protect me from rain.

Mirror

What if you could meet yourself,
What do you think you'd say?
Would you approve of what you say and do,
or see things another way?

One day I was walking down the street,
and I saw a man I thought I knew.
People laughed and whispered as he went,
and most of what they said rang true.

Suddenly I stopped and turned,
to see where he might go.
I followed him for blocks and blocks,
to where I did not know.

Finally he came upon a broken life,
of pain and wasted years.
I watched as opportunity passed him by,
while he was paralyzed by fear.

I went to try and help him up,
with all the promise of the world.
He struggled against my gentle hand,
screaming hysterically about a girl.

I explained it was not what he lost,
that made him feel this way.
It was that which he had never found,
that made his world so grey.

When I told him of tomorrow,
and a life he could not dream.
He told me of his filthy day,
seemingly impossible to clean.

I introduced myself as me,
and where I could be found.
I stole one more familiar glance,
before I left him upon the ground.

One day I got a call from him,
suprised to find that he was I.
We met together at the truth,
now we soar throughout the sky.

Unrequited

I've paved this road on which I ride,
with choices, fears, mistakes and lies.
Through betrayal I carelessly glide,
to decipher the truth I've wearily tried.

To my shattered heart's dismay,
in fields of jagged thorns I play.
I lurch through lonely days of grey,
A fool unto my own dismay.

In many shallow pools I wade,
Just as a pawn I have been played.
All this pain I wish to trade,
But know the nature of that blade.

My yearn to fulfill your every wish,
My love and tender thoughtfulness.
Returned to me as a hookers kiss.
A passionate taste of emptiness.

Changing

Like the sunrise through a window,
arrives consonance of my qualms.
As sure as death and taxes,
or the dirt on a working man's palms.

Up from beyond the horizon,
a revelation will soon pass.
With the next train to the station,
Will be my souls reflection in the glass.

The sun of morn' burns brighter,
while I wallow in the truth.
Facing changes I must make,
while I wouls rather be aloof.

When the sun strikes as an arrow,
I know the time is here.
No darkness left to hide in,
but I am paralyzed by fear.

My world is soothed at supper,
by the ebbing of the sun.
I feel relief within my grasp,
as the day will soon be done.

And with the mitigatin night,
in bed I'm kept awake.
By battle that I've left to fight,
and steps I've left to take.

For the sun will surely rise again,
and my consciousness will grow.
of the problems that I've left to face,
and the self I've yet to know.

Pain for Pleasure

My soul hungers for a refuge I have often thought I tasted,
only to have it turn sour and poisonous upon my very tongue.
Holding all I've ever wanted in my arms I thought I'd finally won,
a feast of intimacy and affection I have waited for so long.

Many things in life I've loved have also caused me pain,
In the absence of that painful sting I felt that things had changed.
Creeping comes familiar dread with every breath I take,
this may not be the truth, I thought, but a chance that I must take.

As my heart dines upon your eyes the taste becomes so sweet,
A past behind, the road ahead; smooth and soft beneath our feet.
But when I tried to swallow this treat I thought I'd finally found,
I discovered my stomach empty, I alone upon the ground.

The places I am often led by my lonely broken heart,
are places that I leave alone, left to stumble back to start.
As our stomachs rumble I wonder what this means,
burnt into my very soul, I dream what could have been.

While my hunger ebbs and flows like tides upon a beach,
I still yearn for things to taste like before when it was sweet.
My stubborn heart, it simply won't give up,
even as my mind cries out defeat.