Reality
Entitlement
Free Country
Opposite of Progress (Look out for Number One)
Hold On
Scratch the Surface
Butterface (Everything's Nice)
Lament of the Voiceless Ones
Vicious
The One Who Lost Out
Pledge of Allegiance
Preservation of Innocence
Unmask
Always Hope
Warera-no Ai
Human Nature
The Test (Zum zweiten Mal entkommst du mir)
Gift
Aphrodisiac Baby
Every Kiss
You Are (Lucinda Erin)
Thirty-Six & 11
More Than Anything
What You Mean to Me
New
Small Packages
Punching Bag
Just One Chance
All of This for You
Never Doesn't Mean Forever
Stranded Astronaut
Open My Eyes And Let Me See
Useless Words
|
Turn off your brain when you turn on the TV Let's watch Chyna Doll make out with Mini Me Irrelevant quasi-celebrity dysfunction Temper tantrums, antidepressant consumption
It can't get too ridiculous or too extreme
Our lives are so simple, our lives are so surreal
It takes no skill to be the sole survivor
Newlywed shows have run their course
They put their families on display for you
My teen is out of control, she already has four kids
The ratings are up, the public loves this stuff |
Everything I do is right and everything you do is wrong.
It's just a simple fact of nature;
Don't feel bad about your inferiority.
I'll blow my smoke into your face and blast my music into your ear.
Your inconvenience and discomfort are of no concern to me.
I deserve and I'm taking my fair share,
But if you're looking for a contribution then don't bother me.
Why should I work then all I need to do is take?
Why should I care when all I know to do is break?
Who the hell do you think you are?
But that's okay, you can get assistance,
Just choose the path of least resistance,
Give up working and have some more babies,
Stay at home and abuse the system.
They're giving away our country, giving it away for free.
Welfare cheques and public debts and the people on TV.
Politicians and oil companies, we pay them all just to rob us blind.
How can we ever get ahead when they keep forcing us behind?
All their mansions and private jets are paid for with our blood.
Built on the backs of a dwindling middle class, our pride cast into the mud.
Pass another law to raise your own salary then make up more taxes to pay for it.
They're giving away our country, giving it away for free.
Everything I have is mine til they take it away from me.
Pollution and contamination, no regard for the future.
What kind of world will our children inherit?
Can they reverse the deterioration?
Can they stop humanity from abomination?
Will we ever realise our salvation?
Because they've given away our country, given it away for free.
Now there's nothing left for us but the struggle just to be.
Presidents who don't preside
Confidants who don't confide
Advisors who cannot advise
A legislature built on lies
A cabinet full of broken glass
A swift kick right in the ass
Another inane law to pass
No concern for the price of gas
Slather the fat on the pork barrel spending
If the story gets out then they'll rewrite the ending
All that's important is looking out for Number One
It doesn't matter that nothing worthwhile gets done
Rob from the poor and give to the rich
A smile on their faces but their hearts black as pitch
They screw over the voters who put them in office
If pro is the opposite of con then Congress is the opposite of progress.
|
A sea of negativity is closing in and drowning me. Now what do you expect of me, the remnants of society?
Oppression is my enemy, depression is my friend.
Can we defeat the ennui as it threatens to smother us?
Oppression is our enemy, depression is our friend.
I'll be your anchor if you will be mine. |
Scratch the surface of the world you know
Unveil the secrets of the true reality
Face value is only a part of the story
The greatest wonder is just around the corner
The light hurts my eyes as the real world seeps in
A whole new mystery unfolds before me
I'd like to remain in my womb, my haven
But the urge to explore is too overwhelming
But out here, no one trusts their neighbours
Selfishness and deceit know no limits
Why didn't I stay safely tucked away from it all?
The darkness encroaches and hope seems to fade
But in this strange new place, there is good to be found
Miracles can happen every day
The obstacles we face could be blessings in disguise
I hold my head up high and face the unknown
Scratch the surface of the world you know
Unveil the secrets of the true reality
Face value is only a part of the story
The greatest wonder is just around the corner
I'm not afraid because you're here with me too.
|
All the heads turn as she walks into the room. She makes your knees buckle with the scent of her perfume. High-heel shoes and a low-cut shirt, Long, long legs and a short, short skirt. 'That body won't quit,' the men say as they stare At her perfect chest and her long blonde hair.
Drink in the view, cause she loves the attention,
Yeah, everything nice ... BUTTERFACE!! |
|
All they let us know is they’re right and we’re wrong All they let us know is we’re weak and they’re strong They don’t want the truth cause the truth won’t sell Just feed us their lies and we believe so well Now we’re on trial just for having a mind Instead of staying in line and remaining blind
We’re found guilty
We’ll never beat them, didn’t you know?
We’re found guilty |
Behind closed doors he thinks he’s tough
Nothing she says is ever enough
He treats her like his little whore
Why does she take it anymore?
She feels that love is like a grave
What makes him think he’s so damn brave?
Is there a way she can escape?
His clawing fingers tear and scrape
A blackened eye, she feels the stares
She says she just fell down the stairs
No one suspects, no one can tell
She’s living in a brutal hell
She’s locked inside her own despair
When he fucks her, she isn't there
He’ll never own her heart of hearts
This never ends once it starts
She feels that love is like a grave
What makes him think he’s so damn brave?
Is there a way she can escape?
His clawing fingers tear and scrape
He suffocates her hopes and dreams
He confiscates her self esteem
Her individuality
Lost in a false reality
She prays that she can find the strength
To leave him and start again
A vicious cycle, but can it end?
Will her shattered heart ever mend?
| Your universe was mine. We shared everything, Until the day you threw us away. No warning, no explanation, no apology. Now you're gone And I must start all over again, alone.
My universe was yours. |
| I pledge allegiance to | no flag | ||
| no country no nation no government. | |||
| There are more important things to give my loyalties to: | |||
| myself | |||
| my family | |||
| my friends | |||
| my beliefs. | |||
| These things will remain constant, no matter where I go. My heart does not concern itself with borders and legislation; Only with the people who love me as much as I love them. I do not delude or distract myself with anything else. | |||
We shared our joy and we shared our pain,
At least I thought we did, but you wouldn't explain.
You shut me out and then you reeled me back in,
But it was just another superficial layer of skin.
Which do you fear most - trusting someone,
or being trusted by someone?
What makes you withdraw so deeply?
Breathe in the life around you.
I still want to be your friend,
And you say you want that too,
But still you don't say what you really feel,
And you've made no honest attempt to.
Just take off the mask and let you shine through.
Now matter how bad things can get
One thing always holds true
I know that there's always hope
As long as I have you
My life could be in ruins
My heart could split in two
But I know there's always hope
As long as I have you
The world could turn its back on me
I could fail at all I do
But I know there's always hope
As long as I have you
I love you more than anything
I know you feel that way too
Together we can do anything
You have me and I have you
|
Our love is a flourishing mystery, Beautiful beyond description. Ever-growing, strong yet subtle, Gentle but irresistable, undeniably pure and true. It can put a smile on my face While putting tears in my eyes. You are everything I've always wanted, And nothing that I could have expected. What more could I possibly want? All I need is you. |
Selfishness is what makes me tick.
So what’s in it for me, me, me?
And then when I’ve used it all up,
It’s gone, forgotten; next in line, please.
Give me sex, give me drugs,
Then give me rock and roll.
I’ve got everything I could ever want;
All I had to do was lose my soul.
Give me sex, give me drugs,
Then give me rock and roll.
Living for the moment,
That’s the only thing I know.
Alcohol, tobacco, pornography,
A raping, murdering visionary.
War and chaos, everything’s dead.
Everything I need is all in my head.
Give me sex, give me drugs,
Then give me rock and roll.
Living for the moment,
That’s the only thing I know.
That’s just my nature.
It’s my human nature.
Kill everything, leave it all behind.
The entire world is the size of my mind.
What are we coming to?
I’ve no faith in the human race.
We’re all alone on this big blue rock,
Drifting through the vacuum of space.
Sometimes I’m ashamed to be a human being.
|
I don't understand why you must test our love. I don't know why you can't just accept it and be happy. But this trying period will only serve to make my feelings for you grow ever stronger. I lost you once, long ago, and though it was short-lived, it nearly destroyed me. Now I feel as if I've lost you again... and the promise of your return Isn't always enough to keep me warm at night. You would have just let me go for good if you didn't love me as much as you do, Of this much I am positive, And I cannot imagine my life without the security of your warmth and love. I pray for certainty: what you need most. I pray for patience: what I need most. And I pray that not even death can force us apart for a third time. |
You are the peace.
You are the light.
You keep me warm through the long cold night.
You're all I could ever have asked for,
All of that and so much more.
I had been waiting,
Sitting there waiting for so long.
You proved to me
That all this time, I've been doing nothing wrong.
You gave me one thing,
The only thing I need to stay alive.
You gave me a reason;
You are the goal to which I strive.
You are the peace.
You are the light.
You keep me warm through the long cold night.
You are my soul.
You are my life.
I know someday you'll be my wife.
You're all I could ever have asked for,
You're everything and so much more.
|
Before you came into my life, I had an emptiness in my soul. I was waiting forever, And I thought that I was doomed to an eternity Without someone to love With all of my heart.
But now, it feels like my heart
I can't wait to lie forever
The ardent fire of our love
When I look into your eyes, I see eternity.
Like conjoined twins, connected at the soul,
It is you I'll love for the rest of my life. |
I love the way your smiling eyes
Just set my soul aflame.
I love when your heart skips a beat
As I breathlessly whisper your name.
I love you more than the stars.
I love you more than the sky.
Knowing that you're there for me,
It makes me want to cry.
Every day we shall celebrate
This magic between you and I.
I love you with all of my heart, mon ange,
And I will love you until I die.
|
You are my everything. You are the sun, the moon, the stars and the sky. You are the cement that holds me together where otherwise I would fall apart. You fill my heart with happiness, so innocent and pure. What food does for my body, you do for my soul. Your love is the nourishment which keeps me alive. You fill me with a love most people only wish they could feel. Without you I'd be lost, blindly clawing through the stygian darkness, praying for some kind of anchor to keep myself from drifting into the depths of insanity. You saved me from all of that. If there is a word that can adequately describe how much I love you, I don't know it. I don't want to know it. I'd like to think that it doesn't exist. Je t'aime, mon ange. Je t'aime pour toujours. |
No one has bothered to try it before,
But you gave me a chance; you opened that door.
You took me for a loop, you threw me a curve.
Now I just hope I'm the man you deserve.
Everything I was has been left behind.
I've gotten myself a new state of mind.
My soul has been cleansed and my heart is aflame
With thousands of sparks, each one calling your name.
The love that I feel will never stop growing.
The emotions inside feel like they're overflowing.
You gave me my life back, all shiny and new.
Thank you for letting me share it with you.
|
They say the best things come in small packages, And now I understand why: For the most precious package of them all Stands barely five feet high.
Inside her is a love so strong,
When I see her smiling face,
She seems to know just what I think
What I did to deserve her love,
Everyone has heard that phrase; |
Take out all your aggression on me.
That's all I'm here to do.
Bruise me, pummel me, I'll never break.
I can take all your punishment, and then still more.
Don't give it a second thought.
Just keep on going until your pain is gone.
And when you're done, just leave me there,
As my limp carcase waits to be your scapegoat again.
Turn the key, open the cage,
Open the book, turn the page,
Give me wings so I can soar.
Finally someone has opened the door.
All of my love to you I can give.
Just give me a reason to live.
Give me just one chance to show you my love
And we will take our places in the heavens above.
Just one chance. You'll never forget it.
Just one chance. I swear you'll never regret it.
|
All I know is darkness; I've never seen the light. I've never held somebody While she slept in the night.
Just to caress her face,
I've never known the depths of love.
I know she's out there somewhere;
I may not know it all, |
|
My love is a volcano, Dormant all these years, Stoppered up tight With my frustrations and my fears.
The magma boils and seethes,
My love is a volcano,
In a world full of cheap excuses,
Take this burden off my soul.
And when the dam can hold no more
Nothing else will matter,
The fire washes clean my soul
There's one more thing I have to say,
So take this burden off my soul. |
My memory has been erased,
Because the past doesn't matter anymore.
Now that I've found you,
I'll never be the same.
I don't want to look back;
I don't want to turn away,
Because that's one less second that I can spend
With you.
You're the light at the end of the tunnel.
You're the rainbow after a storm.
You're the breathtaking sunrise after a dark and lonely night.
You're all of this, and so much more...
And these are only a few of the myriad reasons
That I love you.
The first poem that was actually written about a real person is Small Packages. You may notice that her name is spelled out by the initial letters of the last stanza. My favourite poem from that era of my life is Thirty-Six & 11, the title of which is inspired by a Tool song called Forty-Six & 2. The form of this poem is a sestina, which has a very rigid structure in which the same six words are repeated in a specific order at the end of each line. I tried to adhere to eleven syllables per line as well, but that isn't a requisite for the sestina form. I chose to do that because Erin's favourite number was 36, and mine is 11, and so the sestina was an ideal form to work those numbers into. The impending end of my relationship with Erin is evident in The Test, which steals a certain Rammstein lyric for its subtitle.
In the majority of my poems, I can hear in my head a musical accompaniment to the words, making them more like song lyrics than just simple poetry, but I have no musical talent whatsoever and I don't know how probable it is that I can take the song that's in my head and make it a reality and have it not sound crappy. So at least you've got the words. One of my biggest influences is Nine Inch Nails, and if you're a fan you'll notice snippets of their lyrics woven into mine.
Warera-no Ai is the first poem that I wrote for Liz, and I gave it a Japanese title because one of the things that we talked about when we first met was about how much we liked animation from that country. Of course, I am far more into it now than I was before, and that's because of her. So I felt it fitting to at least give the poem a Japanese title, since I'm not quite good enough to write the entire thing in Japanese. I could have used a traditional form like haiku, but I wanted something a little longer than just three lines.
I realise that Aphrodisiac Baby is very corny, but I can't be serious all the time. Powerman 5000 is my chief musical influence for that one, with a tinge of Static-X.
I like Gift because it's what we linguists call a false cognate. You'd think that a gift would be a nice thing, but in German it means poison. Although it's written in German, it's not as Rammstein-influenced as I thought it would be.
I wrote Always Hope right after I got into a Swedish folk group called Garmarna. I noticed that a lot of the traditional Swedish songs don't have a chorus like most modern songs do, but rather a single line that was repeated at regular intervals.
Unmask is my last poem about Erin, and although it's loosely based upon the end of our relationship and I used some poetic license to make it sound a lot worse than it really was. I'm pretty sure I offended her by doing this and I'm sorry.
When I was a freshman in college, I wrote a poem called "The Preservation of the Innocents: A Prayer for Our Children" and it was from the point of view of a father opening his heart to his newborn daughter, about how unfair and terrible the world can be, and even though he can't protect her from heartache, he can love and support her and try to guide her along the right path through life. Unfortunately, I lost the paper it was written on before I could put it here on this page. I suppose you could consider Preservation of Innocence an attempt to reproduce the feel of that lost and irrecoverable poem.
I wrote The One Who Lost Out at work, and it was inspired by a customer whose wife left him, after having forged his signature to clean out his bank accounts first. He seems like a decent enough guy, and I felt bad for him, and it got me thinking how I'd feel if that happened to me.
I categorise my poems into three types. I haven't written any "loneliness poems" in a long time, because I haven't been upset with being lonely in a long time. But the few I do have really encapsulate that uncertainty and sadness that I felt at the time, and I hope that if there's anyone else who feels that way, they'll gain strength from knowing that they're not the only person who's ever felt like that. The majority of my poems are "love poems", because that's just the kind of guy I am. The others are, for lack of a better term, "hate poems", and they stand out from the rest like the world's easiest game of One Of These Thing Is Not Like The Others. The first of which is Punching Bag, which I wrote just before I met Erin. My favourite hate poem is Human Nature, because it took me a long time to write and it contains influences and elements from so many musicians, especially KMFDM, with a touch of Rob Zombie and Marilyn Manson. Vicious is about an abusive relationship, something I have no real experience with, so, like my early love poems, it's based on my idea of the situation rather than my experience with the situation itself. My influences for this poem are very specific, the largest of which is the prechorus to the song "Think Twice" by Eve6. Imagine that song, but instead sung by Adema (like in the verse part of their song "Rip the Heart out of Me"), and add a slight twist of Stabbing Westward's Ungod album. I didn't even know it at the time I wrote it, but it very much resembles Vanessa Carlton's song "Rinse".
In all the hubbub surrounding the 2004 presidential election, I felt so hopeless and uninformed, and I really wondered exactly how much one vote mattered. That uncertainty and helplessness is conveyed in The Lament of the Voiceless Ones. I struggled to come up with a title for this one, which is odd because the title is almost always the first thing I think of. The rhythm of the words is largely based on KMFDM, with a touch of Puddle of Mudd, Lacuna Coil, Trapt and Smile Empty Soul.
A "butterface" is a girl with a great body and a horrible face, i.e., everything's nice but-her-face. This is one of my few attempts at humorous poetry.
Scratch the Surface was originally inspired by the Nine Inch Nails song "Right Where It Belongs", peppered with The Matrix and the short film Deciduous. In its writing it evolved into something somewhat different, and I can't help but thinking that, even though it doesn't rhyme, it would be cool if Andrea Ferro from Lacuna Coil could read/sing it.
At the time I wrote Hold On, Liz and I were both feeling really crappy, and it felt like everything was out to prevent us from being happy. I wrote it to remind us both that we need to be strong for each other or else we'd just fall apart and let despair take us both over. Very heavy influences from Seether and Staind in this one.
Opposite of Progress is influenced by Disturbed, Flaw and KMFDM. It sat idle for about eight weeks before I could finally finish it.
After an absence of nearly a year and a half, my muse came back with not one, but two poems. The idea for Free Country floated in my head for months before I could finally put it into a more concrete form. This poem is the result of a long-boiling resentment toward the priorities of our society and the spending practices of our government. I finished it and Entitlement exactly at the same time, but I had worked on Free Country for a lot longer. The concept of Entitlement is based on my and Liz's observations that so many people have absolutely no consideration for the feelings of others. Drivers who cut people off, irate customers who choose to be inconsolably angry rather than letting us solve their problems, smokers who refuse to respect that other people don't want to inhale toxic vapours for fun, and people whose car stereo systems cause mini-concussions with every window-rattling bass boom. As if they deserve to be treated better then everyone else by virtue of some phantasmal birthright. Free Country is influenced mostly by Smile Empty Soul with a little bit of elements from the Year Zero game. Entitlement is a part Linkin Park and part Static-X.
I don't have any particular hatred for reality TV, but the idea for "Reality" came to me and I just rolled with it. However, I do think the market is well oversaturated with uninspired and just plain shallow and insipid programming. We're so concerned about what celebrities are doing, and we're so concerned with the absurdities and the negatives of other people's lives that we lose focus of what's really important.