I’ve been paralyzed for three hundred
And eighty seven days 
Eleven hours; and sixteen minutes
Trapped in the state of Mississippi; as
Low as I could be 
With blood drippin’ - still
Nothing was delivered from my waiting

My hands were on fire in the parking lot
Counted down breathing
Hazard haunts the future harvest 
Playing Willie Nelson records spun 
On my coffee table
In the long morning
With light from the day crashin’ in 

Tied to my bed in a funny enclosure
Picking at the holes in my genes
Kicking up the floor of the trailer
Wonder if I’m all that’s on her mind

Silence chewing caverns in my chest
I’m workin’ all day
Wondering if we want it or not
Is love merely wanting in its absence 
Empty store fronts
Feeling like me
It’s not as I still need him anyway

Everything feels surreal
As though everything is moving fast but stays completely still
I’m running in circles
Past friends and empty faces
Passed stations and bus lanes
Digging up bones in the dark
Trying to find the exit
Eternal peace
And happiness
For I can swear I saw it once
In a red dress; on a cloudy day
and I ran to it burning
With the weight of oceans tied
By a rock from my legs
Left me kicking on again
Pulling at the new scars death had left
Again
On a shackled up ghost; shedding skin
I’m not who I was when you knew me
And you’re not talking in your sleep
“Well I’ll be ******
Here comes your ghost again”
Sitting on a barbed wire fence
On a dotted line; unending
Alexa with her literary references

Again
I’m doing it, again.
Losing my self in what I listened to
And it’s all back
It keeps happening again
and again,
and again.
Until I wish I couldn’t breathe
Until you’re tapping at my door
On the crux of drowning
A hand away from shore

When the war is gone or over
Would you still meet me here
Would you see myself as clearly
If I only ran from you

Trains don’t run to Blackburn town
You gotta walk an awful way
Just to make it to the depot
Then you really got to pay

When the ******* war is over
Once I see them **** the king
Meet me at the Caesar statue
And profess your game to me

I’m too far to hear the robins
But I can hear my angel sing
And I feel you in the water
When we’re swimming in the Seine

Trampled under forests where
The dead dew greets new days
On the night when I saw you
We were turning a page

And somebody saw you
Dancing
At the Bluebird and Flamingo
Killing time on Delmar Street
While I fell at your flat feet
Half-drunk and underage
Captive by the suture on
Your woven dress backstage

I’ve been thinking of my home a lot
How hard it was to just move along
And I still can’t touch the picket fence
Without wondering what went wrong

But there’s royalty in
Knowing
That I’m not ****** here forever
In your heart, am I alright?
And you could be mistaken
By my hollow shade of pale
I am not one of your ghosts
And my blood isn’t for sale

So I sleep with your name on my lips
In the night, there’s a crackling whisper
That lingers like dew on the wet moss
Stuck to the boot of a drifter

Now I’m burning my back in the shower
Feeling like the wind could ******* down
And I know nothing good can last forever
Only evil has that staying power

You and I went walking down the road to his café
Counting empty houses
Feeling like two louses in the neck of a sparrow

And I continued on when someone called for you
Pacing through the seconds in a chore
I watched you fall to pieces that July
Leaving in my clothes that you’d outworn

We had crossed the Platte River
The end of December
The heater was broken; we shivered inside
I crossed into Denver the moment he died

The doctor told you what you knew all along
And you told me in Walmart up by Castle Rock
My heart; it erupted; I spun you around
While locals with pitchforks said we were clowns

But I ran out of money by November
I took up busy work by tending to the bar
Just outside the city; on a gravel country road
We took to the shelter when the weather got too cold

And soon, the money was coming in
Salt was selling faster than Beyoncé
I took us out to dances; put a lien on a home
You were feeling golden; we could finally be alone

Habits die hard under diamonds of pressure
Wishing I had checked out when you came
The VA wasn’t kind to me; I wasn’t kind to him
Nearly drank myself to death at Vicky’s Bar

Finally we ended up where we were all along
Your mother tried to tell you we were wrong
I came back home to care for him and stay
You started to grow restless and uneasy

I was waiting for you at the top of the stair
You slowly said goodbye
I was never really one to ask you why.

I thought it was written in the smoke
That extinguished all our jokes
Filling air as we both choke
On the firing line

And when it was seven until
I headed out west for the hill
And I threw up those pills
Without saying goodbye

But still I will always return
Like I want to get burned
In a love I’ve unearned
For the rest of our time

I thought it was written on the wall
That had cushioned my fall
From the blowback assault
From the one wanting you

And when I gave up on the bridge
I remembered your kiss
And I swore off that *****
As I stumbled away

David Bowie’s voice was like a race car bed to me
To take me back in time, when we were only seventeen
Sprinklers in the summer air, my feet on muddy ground
Turn into ***** bottles as I scream without a sound

Rachel’s cabin in the woods was a race car bed to me
A lovely little paradise that brought so much to see
The outside world did not exist, when I was with you there
We kissed inside the living room with flowers in our hair

And now I find that there is not a race car bed for me
Nowhere else to turn to in my grand attempt to flee
Fears that hunt me down like prey have chained me here to die
A grown up bird, so limitless, but too afraid to fly