Autumn

I want to go walking again maybe right after dusk
With my keys in my pockets, get up and shake off the dust
Because I’m getting strange as I sit here alone while my windows go black
Like a far away screen shows a train as it jumps off the tracks

Last week when we talked I was still doing fine
But it doesn’t feel real as it did at the time
I lived in a moment and that moment died
Where does that place me?

But I know we break through every now and again
But only if I’m either drunk or in pain
And all it amounts to is rattling the chains
That constrict us

I’m collecting the views that I find when I’m pulled out of place
In the odd neighborhoods through the night or the wind or the rain
And I keep them all hidden away between pages of books
But when I try to share them they’re gone, I don’t know where to look

The leaves lend their colour to asphalt in autumn
For months until they’re washed away or rotten
That’s guaranteed, even when it’s forgotten
It continues

Like the frames in their joy spinning off of the wheel
That the eye can’t ensnare with its practiced appeal
The image may flicker but never reveals
Any meaning

I’m riding through town on bus
Bag of clothes on my knee
Through the glass and the concrete are places that I just can’t reach
And I’ve passed here before, but only at my own expense
And through the gulf of routine
This world didn’t seem so immense

The highway rolls out and away and divides
Into a sprawling ocean of tucked away lives
Something was lost but the rest still survives
The time passing
The skyscrapers catching the dawn as it cracks
Rise on the horizon and fall to my back
There’s a promise of freedom before it retracts
In the daylight

I will count out every heartbeat and tally each breath
Until the matter in the universe approaches heat death
Every single instance forms an uncountable set
Infinitely insignificant just lost among the rest
So I move around, place my feet, it’s trivial and boring
But I don’t have shit-all else so I write it like a story
In the grand scheme of things the ending is probably coming shortly
If it doesn’t turn out, I won’t ever say I’m sorry
It started with a song that started with a track
With me wandering the wilderness alone without a pack
The lone wolf starves, I’ve confirmed it as a fact
Nobody did this for me no one taught me how to rap
The frost on the mountain is slowly creeping down
Until it covers every house that makes up this small town
Another spell of darkness within my mind’s bounds
The hungry ones are waking I’m the coldest one around
The streets are always chattering but never really speak
But I know the mask they want so I’m humble and I’m meek
But in my mind where I step even metal tears and screams
And they only made me stronger when they took my dignity
I wasn’t born with talent, just spurs in my side
And a future that I wanted to destroy or deny
I never loved my art but I made myself try
Even if my best option was manufactured drive
Because I’ve seen so many nightmares in other people’s live
Like the six billion mirrors almost all worse than mine
I couldn’t deal with what I had I struggled to get by
So I must have been defective nothing else explains why
The body is a prison and the prison is a throne
And not a single one I've ever seen as a home
But you know I’m ready for it because I’ve felt it in my bones
Everything that’s ever been lives and dies alone