If you can bet on it then it’s probably rigged
Every description’s cautiously vivid
Follow the program becoming toxically rigid
Bothered by thoughts hauntingly cryptic
Smothering logic by feeling irrational
Rock bottom starts seeming manageable
Ignorant of the cost,
Knocking on the doorstop leaping down another rabbit hole
Just another lost cause
Stop trying to fix the process, just for once be fucking rational.
Somehow all the right trees are uprooted at the wrong time
We all feel the ground beneath us shaking
Wonder if we have things that need disconnecting, too
But the ways we learn begin to be so painstaking
How could anything of value grow in this place?
Search for something solid,
what’s real all fades away.
There’s no high left to chase
We run and hide, we run and hide,
but nothing seems to change.
The warning signs all wail
Desperate not to become a waif
Desperate not to become a waste
Desperate is all we’ve come to stay
Desperation coming in droves makes it hard to create.
We’ve reached rock bottom so things can only get better – or more obscure –
of that, we’ll make damn sure
Circling back, surfers find the shore
Circling back, search for nothing more
Circling back, desperate for a cure
Circling back, this window I’ve climbed through is nothing but a detour.
So what’s the allure? What’s the allure?
We’re all out here looking for something we cannot escape,
What I thought was a garden was just a nest full of snakes.
Do all you can to relax,
take deep breaths,
take your time,
take things slow
It may still seem impossible
But daydreams make it feel logical
Sharp snap back to reality,
and the smog covers over
can’t see to the other side
You can only wait it out and know that you’ll survive
no matter how long it takes
these things come to pass
You could wait and flip and flip the hourglass
Everything is rarely clearly revealed
It’s all a guessing game and putting faith in something that may not be real
Play the game for keeps
and keep all the leverage you can get
Try to figure out existence
but the purpose, I can’t guess
What if we can’t nail it down
Until we do we will wander around aimless
I watch the dial spinning on my moral compass
Money, sex, love, success, or happiness,
the dial’s out of control
And if there is an afterlife, well how am I to know
I can only find out whenever I die
Or I’ll wait to find what cross I am nailed to
Do I have a cause I would wear a crown of thorns for
Sometimes I am lost I would die to find something to carry on my back
But I just can’t
no matter how much I search,
I’m like a foot soldier who’s lost the battle and the war
And so much more
And so much less simultaneously
And my opus I’m still writing in an untimely manner – of course –
I don’t know what’s the matter anymore
Tired of this illusion
Tired of this confusion
Tired of this constant state of bemusement
Tired of uncertainty,
give me a foregone conclusion
I won’t search anymore I’m too exhausted for any movement
If someone wants or needs me they can prove it –
even if I won’t believe it’s true or absolute
because trusting anyone is too hard to do –
I’ll set up my defense mechanisms once it’s too late
Serving a sentence for my own carelessness
I’ll care too much and then give up
But sometimes all the doors are closed
and no one opens up a window
Getting in is sometimes just as hard as getting out
There is nothing that makes sense here
My mind is troubled by endless doubt.
Put evil in and get evil out
Can’t recognize your reflection now
Eat your goddamn heart out, take a bow,
Listen to your fucking ocean sounds.
You can’t sleep your problems away
Instead, all night just dig your own grave
So tough it out or writhe in pain
There are things that just can’t be saved.
But what else is there to say?
The game is rigged so don’t play,
Hearing the same things repeated gets tiring
Beat the same horse to death then keep on riding,
Get the fuck out of your head
before you can’t anymore.
Mostly you deal with all you can,
then give up when you’ve had enough
The cards will just fall where they may
Nothing else to do besides sit and wait
Passing the time becomes harder with age
Trying is nothing but a pain in the ass
Sleeping through all of the hours I shouldn’t be
Keeping my head on straight becomes impossible
After long enough, I know this makes no sense
Count your change – not your blessings – you’re still flat broke.
Stuck somewhere losing his mind
The architect of his own demise
He sits and waits and waits some more,
looking for more time to kill
Time stands still
He watches hell unfold from inside his window sill
There’s a chill that washes over his bones
for a second thinking that he’s all alone
“Here I thought I was unique,”
We all learn that we aren’t after plugging so many leaks
Thinkin’ ’bout what we shouldn’t have done
and everything that we’ve done wrong
The only thing we put at risk; ourselves.
Sitting there, he signs his whole life away
Barely disgruntled, but in constant dismay
Wanting to sleep and nothing else for days
There’s nothing here that’s left to chase –
Maybe distractions,
maybe a grave,
Another helpless life to save –
But he concludes,
Your problems are your own
They shouldn’t burden anybody else’s home
The brain’s a war machine, destroying everything in its path
The more he thinks, the more he wants to take a napalm bath.
Clarity avoids me
Is this worth sticking around?
Desperately annoying
“I’m sorry” won’t help me get out
Two words
repeated a thousand times
Jesus Christ
I’ve wasted a temple
I’ve ruined a mother
I’ll die with no son
Sleeping through daylight
Can’t see the forest I’m in
Weaving through trees, hung up to dry
Hung up left here to die
Ready or not
You can run but you can’t hide
not for long enough.
Selfish nature calls my name
I can’t get away.
what the fuck is this
can’t make sense of anything
just got lost again
All night everything with no instructions anywhere, At least there's no more disco. Counting calories, then counting steps, New diet plan - THE BEST ONE YET! Get off the couch, that's good enough, Breathe in, breathe out, that's exercise, now get back to The Lazy Life. Your phone knows more than you do, No one knows more than you do, Let's get offended, everyone needs more attention. More public displays of how they can't deal with rejection, You have to hate everybody so there's equal tension, And debunk the whole "common" in common sense myth.
George put the handle down on the table with less than a quarter of whisky still in it, just enough to coat the bottom of the bottle. The modest watch on his wrist said it was about quarter to eight, or nine. I couldn’t tell if I was reading it right, I just knew it was before ten because by then we’d be on the other side of town meeting up with everybody.
I grabbed the ashtray from the floor and sat it on the table and at the same time someone knocked on the door. George lumbered over to answer while Travis peaked his head in front of the window.
“Just come in,” George yelled to him and walked back to the kitchen table, sitting down with me. George had one of those small, dinky places where you can see every inch of the living room from kitchen and every inch of the bedroom from either other room. There’s nothing wrong with places like that, what you sacrifice in space and privacy you save in price. Too much space, can be a bad thing as often as a good thing – even more often – same goes for privacy. Especially privacy. Privacy begins as a tendency towards keeping personal information secret, goes onto exclusively using cash and never using banks, and ends as becoming a recluse living over a mile away from a neighbor in any direction.
Travis came in and his eyes went right to the almost empty bottle on the table. I lit a smoke as he pointed at the handle.
“Goddamn, how trashed are you guys?” He asked.
“We’re good,” I said as I sank into George’s couch. I almost burned myself with my cigarette in the process of sitting down. “Actually, we could probably drink some more.”
“Fuck you guys, I need to be on your level,” Travis whined.
“So knock out the rest of that handle and go to town on this one,” George reached into his freezer and threw another handle at Travis.
“Hey, your wish is my command,” Travis started drinking. My phone rang. It was Cameron, probably primed and ready to tear into us for not being at the bar yet. “Yo, who’s callin’ man?” Travis asked me.
“It’s just Cam, probably bitching about us not being out at the bar yet.” Then Travis reached across his body and mine and grabbed my phone out of my hand. My reaction time was admittedly a little off. Travis wasn’t in hyper speed, but he may as well had been. He and Cam were closer than Cam and I were, though, so I didn’t care. He took my phone into the kitchen and was mostly saying things I already knew.He just got here. George and I were drunk. I stopped paying attention and pulled a joint from my cigarette pack and waved it in George’s direction, waggling my eyebrows while my hand gestured towards the joint. He saw me, gave me the finger gun, and plopped down next to me. Travis disappeared through the front door. With my phone. “Where the hell does he think he’s going with my phone?”
George cackled. “Whoa tough guy, he literally just said he forgot his cigarettes in his car. He said he’ll be right back.”
I shrugged, that must’ve happened around the time I zoned out. I lit the joint and took a long drag. This felt nice. I wasn’t sure of what part was the most enjoyable. The absence of any ordinary concerns was great. Work was the closest to a torture chamber you could get if passive aggressive comments, dick-headed remarks, being surrounded by ass kissers, or mind-numbing boredom were considered methods of torture. Every thought brought me closer to thinking of her. The moment that thought crossed my mind, I was distracted by almost burning my finger on the joint. I took a deep, long hit and held it until I couldn’t hold it any longer without coughing. The smoker’s dance. Another hit, don’t exhale until your brain is all but begging for oxygen, let it out and pass it back down the line. She was already on my mind, I couldn’t fight it. Danielle. That one girl you think is put on this planet specifically for you, well that was Danielle for me. The way horrible things usually start out as some wonderful things that you lose or destroy or dismantle. They really only suck when they stop being your wonderful present and memories and become this marred past of nightmares.
“What’s up?” George asked, handing me the joint.
“Oh, nothin’ dude, just battlin’ the spins.”
“Damn, everthing’s standin’ still. Trust me. Uhh, lemme get ou some water.” And George went to the kitchen. I stayed in my head with the wreckage of my last relationship. Danielle was my white whale that drowned me in every one of my dreams to wake me up and keep my mind racing so that I couldn’t get anymore sleep. It was easiest to just keep it to myself. My friends couldn’t change or fix anything. Nobody really needs more problems than their own to burden them.
What the hell is this
It’s not what I signed up for
Fuck all the fine print
The Deadbeat: Series of Nihilistic Ramblings 