breathe in for luck

time crawls by as i wait for this train to stop

dying for a breath of fumes, my lungs are fit to pop

my hand shakes uncontrollably with need

a coughing fit rips through my chest and my stomach starts to bleed

i'm nothing but a ball of nerves, please don't set me off

i'm a jittering mess of edginess, beset by a cancerous cough

this constricting addiction makes everything surreal

a desperate need for poisoned smoke is all i feel

i can't eat or sleep until that sweet inhale

sitting here, in reverent fear, the world has gone stale

twenty minutes to los angeles and peace

twenty years until the end of my body's lease.

the death of discretion

a complete lack of personal discretion

takes me by the ears into the throes of depression

the sick sad moments of life spoken into a telephone

this overwhelming self-disclosure has me chewing my nails down to the bone

choke me with my shoelace and use this pen to slit my throat

crash this train into the ocean and pray to god that it won't float

disgust for my species turns my stomach upside-down

this poison in my ears has me dying just to drown

she told her hideous stories about her ugly things

well let me tell you about love and how bad heartbreak stings

the pacific flies by out the the window on my right

and the girl on my left is talking pretend suicide

she hates everything about her step-dad and his money and his house in la jolla hills

well let me tell you about a mom and son in a one room apartment, trying to pay the bills

he's in a hardcore band and his girlfriend's always dressed in black

mom works at the coffee shop and is dying for her old life back

dad doesn't live here anymore, he found a place in huntington beach

son is screaming sad songs and wondering when life slipped out of his reach

apathetic atheists

tick-tock, here goes my life

cut me from tit to toe, with your dullest knife

press it hard into my flesh

zig-zag across my ribcage, this is for the best

create a trickling trail of tuberculosis juice

my mind has held me down too long, time to cut it loose

the only ones who give a good goddamn about religion

only know what they've been told, they're the ones with tunnel-vision

the educated have become overrun by apathy

we've been beaten with the book of life, it's killed our sympathies

we'll be led by the blind no more, we shall not go on

we'll sit here with our eyes closed tight, forever waiting for the dawn

sheep in wolves' clothing, we're hardened to superstition

"fuck you and your phony god", emphasized by repetition

dressed in black and smoking camel reds

we don't know what is true, we'll tell you when we're dead

killing ourselves slowly: agnostic therapy

we'd rather be not sure than wrong, don't place your bet on me

i can't make out the meaning of the words upon the page

the only thing i know for sure is that life is but a stage.