you're a feather light mountain bike in my garage and i'm a casual cyclist i got a shotgun on my shoulder and i'm singing for my sorrow 'cause i lost my only job to my sister's ex-best friend there's a chance that she made conversation and her burgers tasted better and i wouldn't be surprised so i'm stately, that's to say that i'm in a state today in council estate, hooray! but i'm dealing, but i'm doing okay for my mistakes and i'm making all my outtakes good to go on the next season of my life on dvd you get trouble for your money and your guilt measures up to one hundred and twenty and there's nothing you can do because your basket's filled with oranges and sugarplums and nectarines and we put you on the road, we left you out to rust waited for someone to steal you and you stayed out on the lawn til the very next autumn 'cause i started to worry about my legs

i've worked my fingers to the bone to see you grin i've put the pedal to the metal just to see you take a spin and i'm wrapped around your middle finger 'cause your pinky is too small and your thumb couldn't be bigger for my feet oh no, the memo's obsolete again i lost all my real friends to the bends that album's really loud, but it's soft at the same time sometimes i feel like crying, oh no sometimes i feel like dying, oh no sometimes i feel like driving so i don't feel so bad sometimes i feel i'm stupid, oh no sometimes i feel i'm worthless, oh no sometimes i feel like 'sometimes' would be kidding myself because it's all the time every second of the day every second week is torture every time i take a break every sign that comes my way tells me i can't drive much faster i guess that i've been working up the nerve to ask you out for dinner and dancing and all that that implies, because i cannot drive much faster than i'm going, without breaking the limit and i don't want a ticket because i'm new to this and i think that my heart may still be in it, oh no my mind certainly isn't, oh no every time i breathe i want to drive into a tree or i just want you to leave you’re a picture perfect mascot dressed in felt and love and plaster and you’re covered in the remnants of my hidden teenage diaries thought i burned them, yet I’ve got explaining to do for the moments that i thought i’d nothing to lose when i was younger and so much wiser how i wish i’d died there, how i wish i’d burned the pages when i could still light them oh no, i can’t read my writing, oh no i drive myself crazy, colon dash capital d wonder how i survived there

i used to stay in all night drinking colt 45 by myself and fumbling with a gun that went by the same name that i bought when i turned 21 just in case it's been in a box in the basement since you started sharing the bed i guess it goes without saying that i no longer consider death much of an option now i sleep with four limbs tied around you, you are a ballast so i don't need to choose between sinking and swimming when i feel so high that my lungs turn into ribbons and my skin is just friction on the sea air i come back to my parents' house and everything's immaculate i wonder if now i've left i'm just a guest here and if they clean up for me like they do when their friends come over for dinner to grease them up for drinks and games of poker if you can figure out what nothing means you can see the wonder in anything, i guess when i was younger i used to eat everything with coney island relish, but i swear i'm never ever going back to new york i'm averse to the way the city crawls upon my skin and digs its nails in

you can wash your hair every day of the week you can buy two pillows just to hug when you sleep you can touch yourself every night just to feel like you're alive but some days will be bad some days will see your downward dog across the kitchen floor some days will see your laundry done and plants growing up tall some days will be a testament to how much you've grown up but some days will be bad and all your best friends will ask you what is wrong you will not answer them, you'll cry yourself straight back to bed and oh, your mom will call and ask when you'll come home and you'll say, never, god! i just want to be left alone i'd like to be a braver stronger person when the year runs out i'd like to say i'm sorry for the things that i'm not sorry for i'd like the local airwaves to turn their ears to me and say i'm sorry that your dad fell down the stairs and i'm sorry that he's mean i'm sorry that i can't stop being sad, it must seem like i don't try i put my coat on each morning and take it off again each night i don't know where i'm going, i just know that i'm awake and very scared

i traded all my messages for a soap dish and a second chance a chance to prove my innocence, a chance to spit out all my wrongs i pull off all my plasters with a chisel and i cast them out into the streets where i have lived for seven awful years all of you belong to me but you have disappointed me i think i saw you sneaking out after your parents said, don't leave the house you're meant to heal my cuts it looks like i am out of luck you have all seen better days i have to look the other way i wake up every day feeling so sad and so alone but every therapist i talk to reminds me that i'm not alone i roll my eyes 'cause i don't need reassurance i need medication to deal with all this anger and frustration i know that it's not good for me but nothing's really good for me 'cause everything i eat turns into poison, bile and sputum but i'm told that there are pills that make my days turn into better days and i want out so give me a way out i can take orally so i can write myself off formally i ask myself that i am afraid to ask and i get answers, that's the problem, why can't you understand? you ask me what is wrong with me the same thing that is wrong with me since i started paying bills so that you could play detective well i cannot deal with scrutiny or ideas so new to me the thought of changing everything is very very scary and you know that i am on the brink of having no more songs to sing i'm bad at inconsistency i think i'll end this litany

i am not as bitter as the lemons you would have two of with every breakfast all i ask is faith in my opinions all i ask is state beyond transition oh, how i found you in the darkness of the somewhere there is static in the fissure someplace we can go to hide our sutures but the road is charming for the future will be gone in favour of our new fears oh, how i found you in the morning light and oh, how you danced to heal the wreckage of my suddenly a voice cries in the distance it is but the voice of our creation coming from a mother to a sister first she cried but subsequently kissed her oh, what a happy child of circumstance and oh, what a victory for the elements and oh, what a talking point this will be for our once upon a time i heard you wonder if the water washing down the river was an act of god or one of logic should i be so fragile or so caustic then a pilot flew by in his cockpit and we threw our spirits up like rockets all i said was, some things are so tragic then you laughed, your face so automatic oh, and we walked between the lines we read and oh, how you left me an eternal wreck and oh, how i struggled and i fought to fill the bowl and everything that came after that stayed

the way that my dad drives, i'm shocked that i'm alive you should see the way he overtakes when he thinks he's got time i always flinch, and i'm very mary mary quite contrary very scared my friends are all sad but they know that it's all in their heads at least i think they know that or else i think that they'd be dead everybody has a reason to break down, and life is a letdown if you let it get down under your skin let yourself go and learn how to tango and salsa and pirouette and hustle and ballroom and revel in how you're a virtue you cry when i hurt you, it's sensitivity that's your sin! aw come on you say i do you right but you're trying so hard to make me go wrong sing along you know the words i know you do you're stubborn in your culdesac you're black then you're blonde i love you, do you love me too? i thought you loved me back but i could always move on i keep on moving back and forth and back and forth and back and then i'm gone i am at a loss for why i cannot fix my clock i've had the minute hand on three for what seems like an eternity but i know that it is daylight savings time in a few days everyone i know says they are sad and feel alone from time to time because their lives are not the way that they would like and though they're fine with their families their jobs and their money, and though i'm not done it's the matter of the bug and the bear once there was a bear that lived right next to a mirror and one winter's day a beetle came and settled on the tip of his nose the bear said, i can't breathe the beetle said, well don't you see your exhalation's warming me, you're keeping me alive and then the bear realised what's an inconvenience when you can help somebody else to thrive inside the niceties you know that you are morally required to provide the small and insignificant people that you happen to pass by everybody has a reason to cry

i was walking off the docks one morning all of my bones were on the edge of their seats in the front row i jumped over the atlantic ocean and i said, fuck you all i'm never coming back home you said i set your teeth on edge but you never gave consent said i never paid the rent but you never took a cent so you wrote yourself a teenage anthem and you rested your hands on my ankles and you tied me up and watched me dangle from the right hand corner of your bed keep on keeping off the railroad tracks got your heart and your handcuffs in a leather satchel got a beat up car with a broken axel got a stanley knife and an alto sax in your hand back in school i was a student counsellor every day a girl would come and sit in front of me and she'd say that i was her everything because she had no job or home and certainly no family i used to think she'd change, that she'd start to act her age but some people just aren't made for being fourteen they're too brave, she never lost her ways some people just don't change and someone told me they don't know how to reap just what they sow

i start my year in velvet and i'm desperate to mention all the rules i'm gonna break, every semblance of convention and i say fuck you to you and you and everybody else because i only need myself and all the books i've left unread all my friends i didn't make last night asked if i thought i would die before i could turn 30 and i said i thought i might someone told me i could write and so i spent the night inside the giant echo of a shell and i haven't turned to alcohol, i haven't got the spirit and i haven't sung a song in months because my heart's not in it and i can't get a train home, i have no money for a ticket will somebody tell my parents that i love them every minute that i grow and the paper said your house was burning down in last december's snow you left a velvet suit out on the kitchen table too because your best friend turned to alcohol and cigarettes and glue he went about his daily business with no sign of an eyewitness because the prices were too high, and well, the next best thing was you and everything you know is just a profit of the system all the simple rules of trade behind my back when no one's listening cut the crap, you're quite the act, you've got us hung on your existence all the oxygen you burn leaves no room for welcome wisdom close your eyes, when i'm older i'm gonna die and truth be told that's quite alright, i've come to terms with all the terminology involved it's fine, you'll tell my family, i want you guys to bury me in the biggest open space that you can impossibly find i want to rent space in my coffin to the flora and the fauna but i hear that the agreement's just a tough reality for those who wanna spread their roots, i hope that never prevents you from wrapping tight around my ribcage and screaming in my face you've got some nerve showing your face when all your parents do all day is play the lottery to win that flight to rome you always talked about even though you're not there we're all very very scared you've got us terrified to come home when we know that you're not there