OKTOZEN- Burning Books

[Split Eight]

[Split 8 & Zen]

I’d tell you the truth, but that seems like the waste of a good lie.
So, I’ll tell you I’m amazing and everything is alright.
I watched the sunshine and the wind blow
and yeah, it’s just fine.
It’s only when I write that I think I want to die.

Me Me Me Me. NO, I’m fucking perfect. It’s everyone else that can’t help but be so motherfucking worthless. Mama always hated me and Lonnie said I deserved it. He told me I was sick and there was no way to cure it. (Because Obama went and took my insurance)

Lonnie died when we were young. He ran in the road and was hit, dead. There’s nothing much else to say but I miss him.

I used to jump without looking down to see how deep the hole was first. It’s only now that I’ve figured out that’s how the whole world works.

I drink too much and I think just enough to keep from slipping into the fire. When I sleep, I never dream, and god damn I’m tired.
But you know what they say, if you ain’t living, you ain’t dying, and if at first you don’t succeed, then, keep on trying.

Positivity’s a bitch and she’s always smiling.
No, I just want to complain.
Because it would mean I’m the bad guy
if I’ve got no one else to blame.
You know what helps explain
the thoughts that lead to these half lies?
It's the "once" that I've all but eroded.
the sometimes, that breaks through dull non-emotion.
I wander all the where's I've gone. Start with every errant song
that found its way in a playlist, and the statements that go with.
Anthems for road trips, and the abandonment opens
as sand to an ocean at the handsomest coast,
with no glance of a ghost ship. Yet I'm saddled with guilt,
for every survivor that'll never wash up ashore. That intangible close.
Ever offering more. Every opportunity missed, calling as Im falling asleep.
Salty and sweet, devouring sun & balmy seabreeze at the onset of thirst.
These castles of silt could be our Troy. The prophecy's modern couture.
Yeah, that’s something to strive for,
I say I adore you.
I only use you,
You’re not the only one,
so don’t think you’re special.
You don’t get a medal.
You’re just another
god damn millennial.

I’m only what I hate.
No one
knows what I think.

Looking back now, when I was a child, I never thought, I just did. Then I made it to high school, and, I won’t lie to you, I only knew that I wasn’t a kid.

Yeah, ain’t that some shit?

Now
my beard’s fading to grey and I look my age in the face.
My back aches, and my bones hurt, and I’m gaining weight.
My friends are gone and my girl keeps telling me to change,
and my father’s dead, and my mother hasn’t talked to me to this day.
No,
they all are dead.

I want to sink this ship and drink up the waves,
and set fire to the Earth so God can see it from space.
Without any seas, the tides would just pull on the dirt.
The coals that have burned smolder, unstirred.
And I know the inertia of loneliness works
to slowly invert the old me, indolent, across a fulcrum of words.
With no one pushing that swing, you learn to kick with your feet,
but when you begin to succeed, you slip past the peak-

Solitude's something to which I can adjust. Comfort aside.
To lie is to trust, or protect, or whatever gets you to sleep.

But I think that I'm done with that chapter of my life