Remember what you saw in the seventh grade?
Well it wasn't by accident, nor my begging for a grave.
The doctors told me I'd be dead by twenty-seven,
and you still give me hell when I won't give my life to them.
Just stomach the time and words to get my hands on their drugs.
Self-medicating a way that makes me feel almost normal,
but I'm any number of ways from believing I'm that.
And I wonder what you spoke that night
sitting around the table
with your family and sanity
safe at hand and stable.
We all have our ritual.
Caught up in lines I'd scribe on the walls in the heat
through madness and the distance I've put between survival
and a social evolution. Bury all belief beneath me,
wash my hands clean, and return to the scene given time.
Where from cracked lips a resonance hangs
in a way that makes me feel almost normal,
but I'm many numbers of ways from ever being that.
Still, I wonder how you spoke that night
on the couch in front of the cable,
with your family and sanity
safe at hand and stable.
We all have our ritual.
Portrait of traditional values.
A sip of something and a swallowed placebo
to keep with this suburban normal.
We all have our little ritual.
I'm more at home in fits
of wide-eyed bewilderment
screamed from nondescript tenements
somewhere west of the city limits.
Somewhere west of established limits.
Somewhere west of good understanding.
Somewhere west of a use for our names.
So far west of sane.
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