love song to punk rock (or: in which i reference a bunch of punk CDs that no one knows about)

i found these stacks and stacks of CDs
with these angry dudes yelling obscenities
wearing plaid pants and ripped shirts and messenger hats
and i wanted to be angry just like that
but i always heard the lyrics wrong
and all the songs were only two minutes long
but it's okay, i know what they're saying now
about getting bloodied up and being clamped down

and i learned how to rhyme like a preadolescent
to stick with the booze, avoid antidepressants
i learned about the american jesus
and exactly where the path of hate leads us
i learned how to dance and how not to sing
and how to clean and ruin everything
and i learned i was born 20 years too late
but my heart is strong and my edge is straight.

no more children (or: in which i start at the end because i can't write a coherent story for shit)

hit me in the back like a sledgehammer.
you know me, i don't believe in bulletproof vests
or painkillers, no talk-around bullshit.
burned back. concrete. where is this?
at least we're all here, right?
the few who didn't explode.
but you know as well as i do that
these assholes are never gonna let us go,
so we might as well show them what's what,
swallow the blood,
buckle our shoulders back together,
pretend our hands still work,
punch their teeth in while we're still alive,
fuck them up because it's our best chance to
no, the only reason left to survive.

on friday i found jason singing all by himself. the pond was frozen. bigfoot appeared.

don't know how to explain it except it's
sort of belated and pretty pathetic
but it's okay, i've gotten into the habit
and it's okay if you've gotten used to it.
maybe i'll take john k samson's advice
and praise the things i can't forget
by remembering, sliding on driveway ice,
falling down, standing with my back soaking wet,
by asking the past four years where i left her,
and what the hell i've been saying,
by following women down to the river
and praying

distress (post-revelations)

you keep telling her
that it's under control,
that you've stopped seeing the fires,
enemy patrols,
hearing the bombs go off down the street
killing kids who refused to retreat
but when she's gone you put yourself back there.
fifteen years doesn't make it better.
you can still see the ashes in the air.

but you have the cure, the haze,
the calm in a little glass bottle
you stole from some army hospital.
you keep saying
"this is hell, this is hell"
but no one understands
and that's not what you need to hear.
you try to still your shaking hands
with drugstore heroin,
make the safety disappear
until you're free to fire at will.
but you just keep on killing that kid you killed.

this is not something you can handle.
there is no reason, no excuse.
but you'd rather live the dilaudid lie
than have the only truth you can remember
dissolved in the fluid inside your eyes.
and you've already sent out the SOS call,
tracked the letters in the static snow.
you keep saying
"this is hell, this is hell"
so i'll say what you need to hear.
true and sober.
"i know, man.
i know."

你为什么不找我？ （或者：最近你好吗？）

i locked myself in my room
for a week
felt like walden pond down here
for the clarity
i looked at old photos and i
felt the same things i've felt for months
i kicked out all the criminals
and took back the solitude
i read about how evolution
does not have an apex
we are not the best we are just
the newest model
here's a truth
we look just like we did 100,000 years ago
and we stare at the same uniformitarian seas
for hours and hours
here's another truth
the one thing that makes us unique
is our ability to imagine
what our futures look like


i lost my future
maybe if i retrace my steps i'll find
where i left it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Fc5AMZpBE skip the interview part at the beginning

i'm losing all my friends.
i'm losing them to self-consciousness,
quenching of the puerile thirst,
long distances, much too long
for my whispers to span.
i guess that means it's just not in me
to be a father.
i feel like i've been caught
in a trap made for fools.
the one spot of optimism
i forgot to rub out.
i used to resent it but
i miss the black and white field.

i am not your guardian
or your best friend.
i'm not even close.
today i am only a man who knows how to feel.
i've already dug myself the grave.
just do me one last favor:
before you wave me goodbye
ask the caretaker to keep my plot
clear of color.
i froze my body to make sure nothing would grow.
here i am condemned
but at least i am on the mend.
so i hope you'll forget the things i still lack.
like color. like friends.

will you weep when you feel this love you have killed? oh, until we all come crashing down, we are what we are. (or: who killed the neanderthals?)

there's no security in our dorm rooms
or our miniature refrigerators.
this is just one way we learned to cope.
sometimes it's enough but sometimes we get hurt
and they tell us we have to learn from it.
but i'm not strong enough to cope
and i'm not smart enough to learn.
i feel like a pre-human,
gracile in form,
with the bits of my brain in all the wrong places.
they say we took over because of our
"complex social milieu."
but i can't figure it out.
how to relate to everyone else.
i'm 1.6 million years behind

millions of years and all we've got
are badly built backs,
haphazardly built brains,
opportunistically built guile.
but who's doing the building? and why?
where were you when it all went down?
i hear the snaps and pops already.
my back is killing me and i can't
organize my overflow of ideas and i can't
stop wanting to kill small animals.
they never asked for our approval.
just threw us together and waited.
one day we're going to go extinct and
our miraculous brains can't do a thing about it.
they never asked us.
they never asked us.

dr. spencer reid (or: the cutest puppy you have ever seen)

unafraid of the air on your ribs
equipped with sleight-of-hand,
bad aim, honesty, a snapshot of the abyss,
some empathy you dug out of middle school
because crazy is no stranger to you
and the smart ones are the best liars
when she can't distinguish your smile
from the truth, when she asked
if you heard the voices too.
and we all get nightmares.
even your best friend.
even me.
and no, it's not fair.
sometimes eight girls die and you don't know why.
so just think about the ones you saved.
close your eyes and believe.