Crying into my coffee cup, sitting on the hardwood floor, GLAD that I'm sitting on the floor cause now the music isn't just around me, it's under me too. I don't believe in God so I don't know who to thank but for the love of everything, I'm so grateful to be alive. Tapping my feet, moving my hands, looking up at this trembling, rocking, noise-making creature in front of me and thinking, some day my guitar will be that loved and that worn. Someday I'll be rocking and noising in front of a room full of people and my heart will be as full then as it is now. Love is all you need, you have to bite the hand that feeds, and bite hard.
It's been nine months since I've had a drink, or done a drug. One time I was in that very house so drunk that I vomited all over the stairs. I've seen a hundred people do just that, wake up the next day sick as all hell and say "I'll never drink again".
I never said never. When I was deep in it, I would have just as soon cut off my right arm. Now "never" is "forever", and I wouldn't change a thing. I've never felt so perfect in my two decades of existence. Love is pounding hot through my veins and it feels so much better than any chemical ever could. I'm not dead anymore, I'm made of blood and dirt and hair and everything is so, so, so, real.
When was the last time you felt really, really alive?
I don't know who to thank but oh fucking hell, I am thankful.
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Beginning.
And they say Write that essay motherfucker! And my brain says no, no let's go dance in the rain by the train tracks and take photographs of the asphalt and fall in love in the wreckage of this lovely dark grey city Boston's underachieving little sister still living in their parents basement drinking vodka and shooting up the heroin capital of the country you'll hear them say. Those 'nam vets, yeah we all know who did it but they just stare past our pointed fingers
And I watched your body develop in those chemicals that dark room the red glow and I remembered touching the tiny bones in your wrists juxtaposed against asphalt and singing under streetlights counting those few stars we can still see
We slept in that warehouse tagged the walls and made love on the floor but we didn't claim it as our own we gave it back to the city and we apologized to the shopping bag before slaughtering it for our own uses. We didn't waste any of it and what was left we returned to the street, its home, our home
Then we watched a boy with thin brown legs chase the pieces down the street as the wind snatched them up playfully. they danced like that for ten full minutes then we walked away to wear trash bags as raincoats and sleep in the park like we did every night
They call it the government's property but it doesn't belong to them because we don't belong to them and never will, no matter how many minds and hands they enslave we will run from those slate gray suits and dance on the rooftops and run from the cops because we were born free and we'll die free. We're claiming the freedom we were promised no matter how loathe they are to give it
Because we want to shine, and we want our children to shine, and this air belongs to all of us and it is free and we are free so why do they charge us so much to live? But I'm burning those bills and taking down the traffic signs because I know, weighed down by those heavy black boots and bulletproof vests, they won't ever catch up to us. We just dance under the streetlights and smile when they frown at us, because we understand what it's like to be alive and burn with a fury that can ignite a paintbrush or a pen or a mind.
We spent months lying on that bare mattress taking pills and waiting for the happiness that had leaked out of our veins to return until finally one morning we grew tired of waiting and went out in search of it and found one another instead. That truth I was lacking? It burns in our eyes and when we hold hands and sing in the parking lots we prove them all wrong.
Their faces are grey and cold as granite and we are flesh and blood and bruises. We've learned to look at our scars like stories not mistakes and we can see the truth behind them like they cannot. We climb the trees and wave our arms they shake their heads and pretend not to see but fuck it, we don't need them! Maybe someday we'll grow into those shiny black shoes and starched white shirts but for now we take photographs in the streams by the streets
and invite the man leaning against the building with that grimy styrofoam cup to eat lunch with us, no it's not out of pity we just want to hear his story the food cost us a couple bucks but his words are priceless and I look at the faces that stare back at us, not understanding why they don't understand.
because there is death in these cities but there also is joy, and you can't have one without the other so we laugh and we cry and we are grateful for the tears on our cheeks and the earth underneath our feet because we feel each breath in our lungs as if it were new
And we know we are lucky because it hasn't always been like this, no it didn't used to be like this and we have the scars and hospital bills and bottles of pills to prove it. But we left those behind along with those poisons we thought would make us well because these days when we look at the sky it doesn't make us want to die,
now we see that the light from the stars was not becoming to us because it lit up our flaws and shone upon wounds we never wanted to see. These days we leave our scars uncovered and welcome them to scrutiny and tell the children their stories and we've learned to love them as a part of what we've become, now that we've opened our eyes and felt what it's like to be alive.
And I watched your body develop in those chemicals that dark room the red glow and I remembered touching the tiny bones in your wrists juxtaposed against asphalt and singing under streetlights counting those few stars we can still see
We slept in that warehouse tagged the walls and made love on the floor but we didn't claim it as our own we gave it back to the city and we apologized to the shopping bag before slaughtering it for our own uses. We didn't waste any of it and what was left we returned to the street, its home, our home
Then we watched a boy with thin brown legs chase the pieces down the street as the wind snatched them up playfully. they danced like that for ten full minutes then we walked away to wear trash bags as raincoats and sleep in the park like we did every night
They call it the government's property but it doesn't belong to them because we don't belong to them and never will, no matter how many minds and hands they enslave we will run from those slate gray suits and dance on the rooftops and run from the cops because we were born free and we'll die free. We're claiming the freedom we were promised no matter how loathe they are to give it
Because we want to shine, and we want our children to shine, and this air belongs to all of us and it is free and we are free so why do they charge us so much to live? But I'm burning those bills and taking down the traffic signs because I know, weighed down by those heavy black boots and bulletproof vests, they won't ever catch up to us. We just dance under the streetlights and smile when they frown at us, because we understand what it's like to be alive and burn with a fury that can ignite a paintbrush or a pen or a mind.
We spent months lying on that bare mattress taking pills and waiting for the happiness that had leaked out of our veins to return until finally one morning we grew tired of waiting and went out in search of it and found one another instead. That truth I was lacking? It burns in our eyes and when we hold hands and sing in the parking lots we prove them all wrong.
Their faces are grey and cold as granite and we are flesh and blood and bruises. We've learned to look at our scars like stories not mistakes and we can see the truth behind them like they cannot. We climb the trees and wave our arms they shake their heads and pretend not to see but fuck it, we don't need them! Maybe someday we'll grow into those shiny black shoes and starched white shirts but for now we take photographs in the streams by the streets
and invite the man leaning against the building with that grimy styrofoam cup to eat lunch with us, no it's not out of pity we just want to hear his story the food cost us a couple bucks but his words are priceless and I look at the faces that stare back at us, not understanding why they don't understand.
because there is death in these cities but there also is joy, and you can't have one without the other so we laugh and we cry and we are grateful for the tears on our cheeks and the earth underneath our feet because we feel each breath in our lungs as if it were new
And we know we are lucky because it hasn't always been like this, no it didn't used to be like this and we have the scars and hospital bills and bottles of pills to prove it. But we left those behind along with those poisons we thought would make us well because these days when we look at the sky it doesn't make us want to die,
now we see that the light from the stars was not becoming to us because it lit up our flaws and shone upon wounds we never wanted to see. These days we leave our scars uncovered and welcome them to scrutiny and tell the children their stories and we've learned to love them as a part of what we've become, now that we've opened our eyes and felt what it's like to be alive.
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