Well, I’m back on track and stacked again, with 25 minutes to go ‘til the end. But the bass is flat and the lyrics bad, every string is out of tune and every song is kind of sad. And not in a good way. Well, I suck at dreams, every hit’s offbeat, but I can program all the fills and hit repeat. No, I’m never gonna get it, not a notice or a buck, and I’m always gonna suck it but I’m never gonna fuck. I’m 20 years late to do what I do. Punk rock is dead and now ska is too. I broke up the band and blamed it on you. So cover your ears, I’m gonna scream and thrash and swear and yell (fuck it). We’re all losers and chumps. Well, I can’t play ska and I won’t play punk, but I piss like jazz and fart like funk. And it’s never gonna matter if I keep on getting better at the music that I’m writing ‘cause it’s nothing that they’re after. Hey, no not today. Hey, not yesterday. Hey, file me away. Just take me back in time to all those losers and chumps. Hey, turn that shit down. No, not today, not yesterday, not Saturday, no how, no way. No band to play? Yeah, that’s okay. Throw it all away. Yeah, I’m here to stay with all those losers and chumps.

Sincerity’s gone but the spectre remains in half-hidden shadows reciting your name. Replaced your ambition with posture and pose or some fable that you arbitrarily chose. So give up on me, give up on your whole life, because nothing’s worth knowing if you can’t know why. I’d pity the dreams that you trashed for a plan if you’d finally admit that you don’t understand. You don’t understand. And maybe neither do I. But someday we might it we’d bother to try. The truth’s such a bother. The truth’s just a lie. Boredom and blather. It’s too hard to try. So go scream into the void and nestle in the echo. Pull every plug, kill all the juice. Let’s see you survive without the shit we produce. Cut all the lines, abandon the track. You can take everything, but you can never take back. I pull every punch, you tighten the noose. I’ll take you down before I take that abuse. I’m working hard and living well, ‘cause even if you were right, well, then I’d see you in hell. And the first thing I would do is laugh. You fear the unknown. You fear what is known. You fear every statement of what we have shown. You fear where we’ve gone. You fear where we’ll go. You fear every question and what we can know. Still you cling to shame. Still you cling to vanity. Desperately applaud anything but reality. Traded all sincerity for a sick and flailing clarity. Wasted away. Senseless decay. A sad antic hay that we dance ‘til we die or just whither away.

I talk to myself, don’t know what I said. Probably better off just staying in bed. Awake a long day. Shudder the heart, mute the applause. Nicotine, a skip and a pause. I told you I don’t need any help. There’s room for reason if there’s room for regret. And if there’s room for giving in, I haven’t found it yet. You can only forgive if you agree to forget, but that can be a real tough trip. Cut through the smoke, simmer and seethe. Suck in a drag, the anger recedes. Breathe it in real deep. Bastard of perfection, master of vice. I’m overrated and overpriced. But I pour a mean gin. My chest constricted, muscles tight. An Ativan: okay for the night. It doesn’t even really matter to me. A breath redundant. I try to eat. My throat is closed up. I never speak. I never move. I never sleep. I just daydream alone in the bend. The sun returned in a halo of smoke. I fell to pieces on the eve I awoke. I’ll just repeat the words slowly to myself. And I think I’m done with it.

Daylight creeps across the pages at my feet. At night the theorems haunt me, creep inside my dreams. What is this construction? Why does this suffice? I’d welcome any answer, as long as it’s precise. Hardy stood beside me, a drink inside his hand. He peered into the darkness and this is what he said: “We’re all students of the subject, masters only of our doom. All else is superfluous to assume. Now given you try hard and even might do something new. But eventually the questions will consume you. Fall to your knees. You can never go back. The questions you’ve asked have buried your path. Some people say it’s better not to have asked, but I don’t understand that. You’ll give your life in earnest, grateful for the chance to be the next victim of this subject’s misery. And sometimes truth will find you toiling on the roads of proof, but that doesn’t make it any easier to – I don’t understand just sitting by and scribbling all your life to waste, a family or just stopping on what you’re working on for today. I said that’s not for me (not for me), and I know it’s not for you. I need that majesty, that misery or uncontested proof. That’s all there is. All else is incidental. Now I know you have a ways to go before you can teach me. Insight isn’t part of PhD. And as a master of the subject you’ll be a student of your doom, so lash yourself in and wait for the monsoon. It’s coming soon: the full typhoon. You can’t sit by and scribble all your little life to waste without regretting all the things you lost along the way. I said that’s not for me (not for me), I’m glad for what I do. I need that majesty, that misery, of uncontested proof. But never again. I must know the end. It must have an end. The Riemann-Zeta Theorem. I’d trade away my soul and even immortality. I’d take the Riemann-Zeta Theorem. Look at what the questions left unanswered did to me.” Hardy, my friend, when it comes to an end will I be just like you? Will I crumble too? I’ll give it my all and devote my whole life, but how can I be sure it was worth every strife? “Never, my friend, will your time come again. Look at me, mine is gone and I’m useless to help. I gave it my all, devoted my life – am I glad, am I sad, was I right?”

I met you for a drink down 4th the other night. We shared a smoke and stood in line beneath the blinking traffic lights. Then later, walking home, you catch me on the phone and you ask me if I think that you will always be alone. I pass myself, sidewalking. Like a cancer of the eyes, these streets all blur as one. Sit and think about the home you left, the friends you had to shun. What’s the price? You took the chance: stepped into the rough. If they spite you for ambition, then they never had enough. I know the days are hard and you toil all alone for a shifting heart that jumps at every tremble of the telephone. Your parents call to wish you well, rejoice you didn’t stay long enough to make the same mistakes they both know they have made. So tell me aren’t you proud of all the things that you have done? Is it difficult to conclude there’s no one else you should become? Your action speak the words you strive so hard to just suppress, so does it really matter who you’ve failed to impress? I pause for just a moment and listen to you breathe, then ask you what the point is in asking this of me? Shall we rise into bedlam or tumble to our graves? Or maybe just convince ourselves the other will be saved? Now I’m not one to proffer any empty vows of faith. Those soulful consolations only camouflage the ache. Every vacant sapour of a time you never had is still choking out the life of an identity you were glad to cast away, to start again, but you’ve no place to return. You raged against the lesson, vowed you would never learn. And what have you to show? A gutless vapour of a soul. A simple person no one cares to ever really know. So sit awhile and rest your feet, I guess tell me how it hurts. You’ve time enough to spare before returning to this earth. But soon the morning comes, always one place to return, and nothing we can do can slow the pace or bend the turn. So play the martyr. What a chump. Your friends are in the take. Those motherfuckers relish every dumb mistake you make. Like you’re so fucking different – slide it all right out of context. Our decisions are much easier when we only want the credit for the thought. I don’t mean to be harsh or revel in your pain. After all, it’s possible that we are both the same. Maybe you could call your friend and he could hop the fence. Give yourself that gift and bask in all its present tense. So turn around, flip your dress up, listen to the stagger of your heart. I know I’m not any better, yet I always play that part. Still, this story ends the same every time we turn the page. There’s little sense to pity, even less to rage against that aching in your heart, in your soul, and in your gut. Maybe your god would like you better if you just weren’t such a fuck up. You’re too scared to lie to him, so just lie to yourself. And slip across the sidewalk like a demon stealing Judas out of hell. No conviction. No reasons why. No remorse for suckers. No consolation prize. There’s nothing I can give you that would be of any use. We must remain resigned to rue the actions of our youth. But you’re scared again, well, I warned you once: you’ve no place to return. Nowhere but back to those lessons that you never learned. And I can’t stop the sun from charting out its dismal map. I can only help you understand where you are at. This song and dance, the only key. Resign yourself to memory. Distort the rhyme and sing along to the remaining melody. Our best intentions flit away like seagulls on the breeze, our honour and our pride clasped firmly in their beaks. I’d wrap my arms around you if I thought that it would help, be the friend I always am to everybody else, but nothing that I do will make the truth sting any less: as me, you’ll be alone as you draw your final breath.