Can we just keep pretending,

Everything is how it should be,

Pretending isn't hard,

We've done it growing up,

We do it everyday when we say we're okay,

No one is listening close enough,

To tell the difference between truths and lies,

Is that why all that follows your words is silence?

Is that why all you pretend to hear mid-chaos is the quiet?

i carve deep into my own body

for the source of suffering,

but i know i'll never find enough

to justify what i did to you.

so here is your answer:

i drink scotch to fade reality,

because there are no consequences

for make-believe boys.

and when i look back

at pictures of you, i feel

like i am all mouth

and no sense.

i think, would you miss me?

seven minutes less

at a small-town petrol station;

does it even matter?

you've turned your stomach

into a bomb shelter

and papered the city streets

with propaganda.

those are my handprints

in the wet cement.

those are my eyes

on the paper pull-tabs.

you are lighting a funeral pyre

for the music we cried over —

you say, dearly beloved,

do not go gentle.

in the whiter autumns,

i feel a strange sense of sadness

sleeping beneath the ice.

do you know it?

you are loved, you are loved.

i remember what i said to you,

and i wanted you to believe it then,

but not now. not anymore.

i know it's not the right love,

and i'm no longer what you want,

but if i could undo it all,

i would be willing

to fall to my knees

and call you some kind of holy.

if we were only friends,

i wouldn't want to kiss you like this.

you walk by, and i am caught up

in your cold hands, blue hair,

how you smoke half a cigarette

and say you've won back

another three and a half minutes.

you put your arms

around your own waist,

and my head warns my heart

not to beat so faintly when i look

at your soft chin, grey eyes.

so enter love, enter fear,

the first words to a false romance,

because we're only friends.

and i know you smiled at me first,

but your eyes were so clear,

i couldn't make out what you meant.

it was just coffee on a rooftop,

a breath of city air, before

you took a taxi to the airport.

these are things i won't forget,

just like you'll always say

that we're only friends.

i think i'll stay alone, then;

but loneliness is just a way of life.

and in the springtime,

i will still spring reckless

back into wanting you.

suddenly i'm told i need god.

through the smoke and stains on my shirt

and the thoughts i scrawled on paper,

they know i'm too much for

humans to handle.

but i never wanted to talk to god.

i like to make the first move,

but he never seems interested.

maybe he sees through me:

i'm not interested either.

he's another boy i lead along to drop at the foot of my bed.

he doesn't agree with the ways of my world.

and

suddenly i know i need a god

but i don't think he cares.

i am too smart to talk to god.

i am too small to believe i could if i wanted.

i thought

i was tired

Of my name

But i was 

Just tired of

Hearing you say it 

beneath the weight of your hips,

    i am all mouth, folding like wax paper.

you are turning ashes into

    house fires, writing legend into history.

and now that lugano is underwater,

    we say we are on our way to the ocean;

you forget we made up our minds

    to stay. you remember now. i know

you are a darker shade of grey

    than most artists know what to do with,

but you always hurt the ones you love —

    so when you broke my heart last night,

i thought you loved me the most.

    we have to make sense of the chaos

around us. after you fall back,

    i lie in post-coital tristesse, learning

how to breathe again, how to

    make sense of reality. which is temporary;

forever is an empty word,

    negative space, less definite than never.

which is white noise: quiet,

    but not empty. finite, but somehow

incomprehensible and sublime.

    with tired eyes and soulless hands,

we slept, dreamed love into caricature,

    like something else you didn't believe in.

and we are lying by the ocean now,

    as you compare it to your loneliness:

which is worse? i lie awake

    in the small hours, my mind full

of contradictions: you love me

    in words, but your words don't mean

anything. and every time

    i think about you, i feel a little

more lonely, as though it is you,

    and not me. i am afraid to take you

seriously; you laugh and then

    you threaten to leave. you cry and then

you beg me to stay. you

    sing me love songs, ballads about

the romanov children.

    the thousand tragedies of living

and how i make it disappear,

    so swiftly, on lighter feet than the tide.

you say i am haunted by

    the things i have forgotten, but

i don't believe that. i don't

    believe anything you say. to you,

it was just sweater weather.

    to me, it was an epidemic.

this loneliness has generated

    an insatiable need to be closer to you,

to make you want me more.

    because i am all mouth now,

all aching: my eyes white whispers

    in the darkness, my voice breaking

on your name (click here for

    subtitles). and your knees touch mine

as you breathe into

    my mouth — all i am, all i wanted;

you kiss me as though

    you will never kiss anyone else again.

What are

Those looks between smiles

You give to me?

Those looks

That last too long

Like the breath in sad songs...

The looks between smiles;

A blink then gone

Looks betwwen smiles

That softens your eyes

Melts from somewhere on the inside

Is that look meant for me,

Or it a trick of the light?

Those looks

That last too long

Like the breath in sad songs...

The looks between smiles;

A blink then gone

This is not a sad song

What is tragic is what is not said

For our minds are our keepers of all things fair

Knowing that your nothing like the rest of us

Is quite freeing if you dare

If you suppress the urge to show love

You are denying what was

For we can safely say we are no more than a shade of grey

A rippled puddle in the pocket of earths pitted face

If you censor yourself out of fear, where are your manners?

You would be denying me dessert

When you thought you were doing right-you actually hurt

I would like to explore every dimension of you

Have your mind as my 4-course meal

Submarine into your subconscious

For I have observed how our lives hang like crows on the line

One patient at a time in the purgatory waiting room we call life

I see I have no power to stop the sun from its rise

Like all creatures living

Like all creatures die

When you can diminish your high flame from the candle of self-purpose

And realize

That simply it is living

That will give you the right to meet the divine.