That's Why

So you call me up when you're high
Asking me why I broke up with you
You say you fly upsidedown in the sky
That's why

So you stop me in the hall way
Asking why I broke up with you
You cross your eyes and sway
I shouldn't explain

Let Me Be Enough

I can't play the drums on Rockband 2
I walk kind of funny and slip out of my shoe
I can be quite strange and play a little rough
But I really love you, is that enough?

I need to dye my hair again
I want you to choose me over them
I need to learn to toughen up
But I love you, isn't that enough?

Some days I get on your nerves
I'm such a loser and such a nerd
And some days I'm just too much
But I love you... Let that be enough.

Lucky

He is acutely quirky
He is so dearly shy
I would be so lucky
if he would be my guy

He makes some funny faces
He tells some funny lines
I would be so lucky
if I could call him mine

I could be so jolly that I could nearly die,
I could be so happy that I could nearly fly,
I could live forever and watch the world go by,
But I would be so lucky if I could call him mine

I'll spend my days on dreams
That he'd "Wanna hold my hand"
Yes, I would be so lucky
if he would be my man

I could pay my rent with lies
I could own the red sunrise,
I could win the bonus prize,
A lifetime supply of apple pies,

But I would only be so lucky
if I could call him mine

I could own the world and more,
I could win the next World War,
I could explore the ocean floor,
And walk through Heaven's door,

But I would only be so lucky
if I could call him mine

Birthday Bash

I imagine that the world will end one day and everyone will be gone except for me and him. We will look around and see the city from a park bench. Everything will be silent and still and smell like the cold. It will be my birthday, one of them anyway, and I will be so old and so gray. He will laugh at me and tell me how surprised he is to see me live so long. I will laugh too and tell him the same and then complain about how my ears are always freezing in that burning cold. There will be cars wrecked in front of us, empty and quiet. A police car in the distance will glitter its lights at us through the fog. I will be handed a box and he will tell me "Happy Birthday" behind a widened grin. I will open the box and pull out a ridiculously embarrassing hat. I will tell him that I'm glad that he will be the only person to ever see me wear it. I will carefully place it upon my head. He will hold my hand. And we will silently celebrate my birthday in that cold and empty city, lighting candles to remember our loved ones and talking in Morse code using our misty breath like letters in the sky.

Yarning

I had a dream.

I was wrapping yarn around people down a line, along a high rooftop. There were Charlies and Johns and Frannies and Beths. I paused for a moment when I saw a particular girl with annoyingly blond hair and I bluntly skipped over her, instead wrapping the yarn around the next person in line. I ended with myself, tangling myself to these people. The exiled girl stared at us and then walked over to me. With a shove she left me falling over a ledge. The rest of us kept sliding over the same ledge until we were hanging from the rooftop like a barrel of monkeys. We might have even hooted and squawked like I always imagined those little plastic monkeys did in micro sound as I dangled them about. The girl at the top was laughing at us. She was holding on to us by a string. And then she let go.

I woke up feeling so confused and unusual, until I fell asleep again.

The second dream was exactly the same. I was still knitting myself to a line of people on a high rooftop. I paused at the same girl but decided to wrap the yarn around her this time. I ended with myself, tying a knot, after tangling myself to that same group of Charlies and Johns and Frannies and Beths. So this time there was no exiled girl to vengefully push me over a ledge. I instead tripped over the extra yarn. I went flying over the edge laughing. One at a time they all went flying over that edge laughing. No one at the top was holding on to us by a string. No one had to let go.

I woke up that second time feeling even more confused and even more unusual than the first time.

Fake Little Christmas

Fake little smiles
Fake little tears
Fake little songs
Fake little cares
Everywhere

Fake little givings
Fake little jokes
Fake little joy
Fake little folks
Everywhere

Fake little Brady Bunch
Fake little party
Fake little feasts
So fake an hearty
It's everywhere

Fake little everything
Fake little everyone
Everything
Everyone
EVERYWHERE!

Sailing

Dance with me tonight
Dance with me, so slow
Wrap me up so tight
And never let me go

Let's go on sailing
Across the open floor
You can hold me close
Until the final score

Stay with me tonight
There's nowhere else to go
Wrap me up so tight
And never let me go

What if...?

We're all walking down a bumpy road
Some are walking fast, some are slow
Don't ask me where I think we'll go,
I don't know

We're all painting funny faces on him
Some paint a frown, some paint a grin
Don't ask me if he'll sink or swim,
I don't know

We will take a vacation somewhere
We will be brave, we'll be all too scared
Don't ask me what we'll find out there,
I don't know

We fell in love a long damn time ago
Going against currents, going with the flow
Please don't ask me if my love will grow,
I don't know
I don't know
I don't know

That Old Town Circus Fair

The jellyfish, they told me so
there is something in the water
They went searching for that elephant
Someone told me that they caught her

I imagine there's a cage somewhere
made from the finest crystal glass
And she is crying to be set free
But they ignore her as they pass

I imagine that they've bruised her
but her wild spirit remains tall
They cannot tame her soul,
They cannot cause her fall

Everyone pays to look upon her hide,
to watch the graceful monster die
They poke her with pointed needles
and laugh while calling out, "Bull's eye!"

I image that she's black and blue,
missing the waters of her sea
While they put her name up in lights,
and they set up that old marquee:


"Calling one and all,
all must come to see!
Come lay your eyes upon
a monster of the sea!

Gaze in mighty wonder,
in all that she may be!
You will be amazed
and that's a GUARANTEE!

You will be bewildered!
We promise you'll be stunned!
You will be astounded!
(Absolutely no refunds)"


So the people will flock away,
to that Old Town circus fair
They will eye the tattered beast
They will swear and they will stare

The gentle oceans will call out
to their lost and stolen sister
The music of the tides will soften
as they stop to sadly miss her

The jellyfish, they told me so
there was something in the water
They went searching for that elephant
Someone told me that they caught her

Desparately Afflicted, Lucklessly Stricken and Sickened

I'm damaged goods, you know?

You Aren't Typical

There's something about you I cannot explain,
something about your unusual frame,
something about the sound of your name,
something that makes you atypical

There's something to the sound of your voice,
something that makes me dance without choice,
something that can both create and destroy,
something that makes you exceptional

There's something to the way that you smile,
something about your eccentric style,
something that makes this all worthwhile,
something that makes you phenomenal

There's something about the way that you stand,
something about the sweet shape of your hands,
something about you I'll never understand,
something that makes you remarkable

There's something about this that just feels right,
something that makes me want to spend the night,
something about this is worth any fight,

Something that tells me I love you....

Crossing Over

I thought to myself, "This is it..."
as I drove over that bridge again,
I crossed it quite slowly, all the while hoping
that it would break and I'd fall in the bend

But in the back of my mind
something was breaking
I started to cry,
my hands started shaking

The foundation was rocky
but the bridge never broke
And as I made it over
I started to choke

I cannot tell you how changed I was
There is not much that I can say
I still can't decide why I was so rattled
when my life didn't end on that day

Rabbit

I made him rock, I made hom roll
I ate his heart, I ate his soul
We talked about this,
We talked about that
I pulled a rabbit out from my hat

I fed him smiles, I fed him lines
I sang him songs, I wrote some rhymes
It came down to this,
It came down to that
I pulled a white dove out from my hat

He learned to love, I learned his name
He played the fool, I played the game
I flicked my wrist,
He tipped his cap
I pulled a black lie out from my hat

He told me his secrets, I told him mine
I broke his heart, he walked the line
He bruised my lips,
I broke his lap
I turned the corner and put on my hat

No Picture So Pretty

Sometimes I can hear her through the walls,
she cries on her pillow until she falls asleep
And in her dreams I hear her screams as she falls
for a boy who naps on the branches of birch trees

She hangs a painted picture underneath the leaves,
but he will not turn his head to see what she has drawn
And all-the-while the river bellow whispers and weaves
the secrets of a young boy's heart, empty and withdrawn

I go into to sleep tonight with someone next to me,
trying to settle in comfort over a pillow that is dry
And I make a wish as I close my eyes, to dream,
to dream of falling for the boy in the birch tree

I'll paint a picture and hang it underneath the leaves,
hoping and praying that he will turn his head to see
But he will remain on his branch, as still as he can be,
and then I'll know that his heart never belonged to me

I wake up each morning with all my love returned,
He is so loving, so silly, so honest and concerned

Yet my songs all sound off key,
new things fail to impress me,
I've lost my sense to cry,
my passion has all run dry,
flames are losing their flicker,
moments pass by quicker and quicker,
the sugar tastes bitter,

... and my poor heart is losing her glitter.

"The best fuel for a writer's heart is sorrow."

Can't Slow Down (I'm in love with Brett Dennen)

I'm fallin' for a man who has never seen my face --
I just can't seem to slow down.
His words are like a sweetened wine shakin' me, all twisted up,
into another drunken clown.

I am a lover, and I am a dreamer
I've been that down, and I've loved, and I've lost


There's just something to the sound of this voice,
the way he seems so cool...
Something about his royal reign and noble rule --
it's weavin' me a fool.


I've been a poor man, I've been a rich man
I've made a fortune and I've paid the cost


Yet something in my pitted heart tells me that he'll never know
my shape, my name, the twists of my frame, or the sound of my "Hello."


And I've been cheated, I've been defeated
I've played the game and I've been double crossed


I hear him sing,
"Follow your heart and you won't get lost."

Moving Backwards, In the Flesh

"When look for faults, use a mirror... not a telescope."

As unfortunate as it seems for me to admit to the entire inter web that I cry myself to sleep as often as possible, it is also just as imperative that I humiliate myself for your further education. I will be turning the foolhardy age of 19 in exactly one month and eighteen days. And still I can admit to never having been sexually active or involved in any major drug usage -- aside from the few experimental puffs from a nicotine smoke in the past.

I'm not bragging. I'm complaining.

I suffer from a severe insecurity problem. I have been suffering from this problem since the very day I slipped out from my mother's womb. Scratch that -- maybe even from the day I was conceived. Shocking, very shocking. I know. To think: all of this time I have been working my way towards being diagnosed with an incurable disorder. Incurable, why? Because the feds, the governement, the Alien Conformant Unit, whoever, whatever, doesn't believe that it's important enough to study any further.

So for the remaining time I spend on this planet, I am expected to look in the mirror and feel as though the flesh I was blessed with isn't really mine. I will live my whole life seeing myself in photographs and not believing that I'm really me. I will live nearly one century long with the feeling that I am stuck inside some sort of alien body with no way to escape.

They call this "Body Dysmorphic Disorder." And the only known cure prescribed for it is "to not think about it." I could laugh at that for the rest of my life, being constantly reminded that this disorder is just another subsection of OCD. How can I not think about an obsession? I put on as much makeup as I can, in different experimental ways, only to feel the same. I have panic attacks (in inconvenient public places) that give me a painful sensation like that of tetanus running throughout my jaw, chest, and fingertips. I don't go out for weeks in fear that someone might look at me.

It is psychological: something that I understand completely. But it is also emotional, physical, and so very real. Who knows when it started? But honestly, who cares? It is there to haunt me every day. It has hindered me from being the colloquial teenager. It has stolen from me every important relationship I have ever been in. And it will keep me from having a stable career and out of the hopes of ever being in a stable marriage, if in any marriage at all.

I can look forward to the possibilities of becoming addicted to plastic surgery, sucked dry of a social life, and turned into a totally home bound freak of urban biology. I can go through life believing that every "I love you" was underlined with some sort of second motive. I could go on forever knowing that every mirrored reflection is both my best friend and worst enemy - One for telling me the truth, and the other for being so cruelly disgusting.

---

I am watching all of my friends move forward, toward college, careers, and families. All the while I am moving backwards, in the flesh. I have been so pathetically depressed for such a long time that I've had myself subconsciously convinced that my life would somehow finally be over after high school.

It is not over.

And I am spending every day trying to inch myself toward the idea that I might actually have to continue living. I might actually have to pick a college and find a job. I might actually have to choose who I want to be for the next sixty or so years.

I might actually have to face the mirror.