city of stars

Tattooed to paper enamoured by the pencil friction tension always tension How long do we have to beat at our chest and call it a labour of love I saw your silhouette refractions of rivers against a moon-sky I wanted to remember you as you felt to my eyes not censored and reframed by the internal critic Good questions only breed better questions so what will I do with all these children of cynicism? They feed on my fear I suppose but love is messy and seeps into crevaces and cracks it leaks from windows and nestles in my shoe like a pesky pebble I have yet to isolate it so I can examine it carefully, Like the scientist I am I make no claims of causality Correlation is fiction so I'm back to the beginning searching for proof a sign but I've never uttered a prayer and believed it So we can discount belief, fear and observation, truth is a cruel and flighty mistress, there is only instinct words spoken resonant with regret

Being brave is always depicted a long the border a hunter-scavenger defying homestead Thorns at his heel I thought defiance made me never look back never look down always away away like sailing but wind comes and goes and then you've got nothing but your hands an empty picnic basket 20-20 and my fragments manifest on a dirty kitchen floor The question is who nourishes you? Who can trace the roots of your being from your hands to your eyes? So I returned to where you found me to find myself I chose to fight

Stormy night inside this bottle I'm shaken volatile splitting split I walk straight but always turn around different depending on where I stand I'm like a leaf crumpled at the whim of the wind at the mercy of murmurs damn this feeling in my inner ear like a crooked metronome sometimes the puddles of dirty clothes swept under the bed is the closest you get to a rewind clean slate every breath is throbbing swollen like a morning sky we will forget or we will be forgotten