its all in your head everything you despise its all in your head your untimely demise all thats yours was once mine the world is not dead you can see it with your eyes its all in your head all this trouble with time just repeat after me i cant pretend, i am who i am so smile for christs sake the end isnt near and everyone you need to know is here dont believe it was his fate its alright to cry it shouldnt have to be that you live and he dies you write all your speeches at the start of the day but when there's ears to hear you search for what to say but you are the keystone most stable of all but this age has decayed you and i fear one day you'll fall and lay amidst the remains of your glory days what would your father say and how can you rest when with your dirty hands you accept money in exchange for death you could swim in the nickels and dimes to pass the time but could you ever be loved again before you die just repeat after me i can't pretend i am who i am

well i've been thinking about you for days i think i heard somebody say your name but by my second wind you had left and i stayed so a seconds worth of breath it remains i've come to expect nothing less well i've been walking around the streets more looking at houses - wondering which one is yours its a weekday and you're wearing a skirt over shorts i'm a weekends worth of work then i'm yours i swear i won't be as big of a jerk as i've been before so i've been thinking about you for days picturing those drawings i saw you make or what you were reading about when you sat on stage but a seconds worth of breath it remains oh a seconds worth of breath it remains

i want to know if you're alive because it'd make me better inside oh the years keep adding up and now its been one since we sat at the seaside i want to know if you're still breathing because your insides are closest to mine and i still need to pay you back for the french lunch we had in the sunshine you sat on tarmac in Alaska so i slept on the sidewalk until you arrived when you're mom got worried you told her i'd be fine i brought a Tuborg drinking horn wrapped in newspaper to Washington a little piece of Denmark i found for you in Oregon

sometimes its good to say out loud "nothing has happened" that i feel weary and chilled is of no consequence and that i run about the streets all day is of my own conscience i defend myself although i know it's all over a moment more and everything will have lost its meaning the table and the cup and the chair to which i'm clinging mine is a lonely face i thought to raise and sought for some familiar thing for someone i'd once seen but there was nothing there there will come a day when my hand is far from me and when i bid it to write it will write words i don't mean when my harp is tuned to mourning and my organ the voice of the weeping with a somnambulic certainty i drag back my deepest fears a childhood illness i had conquered begins in me again the fear that i might betray myself and tell you all that i dread mine is a lonely face i thought to raise and sought for some familiar thing for someone i'd once seen but there was nothing there and if i fall asleep the fears the fears the fears that i might swallow a piece of coal or a number might begin to grow in my brain until there's nothing left there

don't say "i love you too" because then all i could do for you is gladden or give you pain between your hope and suspicion before your blame or praise and on me alone with the shine of the light the shame of having a face have i not had nearly one hundred times only to promise not to die i have begun my long love to god that quiet and aimless chore it's a life learning languages but you create nonsense and nothing more the lumpy lead of patience is a long road from the swift happiness of gold to take all this once more upon myself i, the estranged, return home