Everyone looks better in the dark so I’ll keep it dark here. More cryptic metaphors so you won’t know what I’m talking about, So you won’t get the joke. We’re all waiting for the catch-phrase. Let’s not speak too frankly here: “We wasted too much time, that’s not our only but our biggest crime”. A strong sentence to begin with but no clever words to spend the night with, Just broken chords and burned out holes as big as the moon collected in our pockets. Apologies will follow:

Don’t crown me John Lee Hooker because my/this/our youth’s never earned the blues. But cover up these words of mine in healthy noise And call it “free expression” if you may. As if I/we had something to say, as if we ever had it hard enough to earn the blues. Dreams don’t come here to die, my friend, it’s even worse: Most of them come true. So have a break, you deserve one, Because earning stylish pain is hard labor and we all know that here, But hell, it looks so damn good on us. So this is it, this is everything we have to offer. Where can I find home but here, in healthy noise and singers who never tried to sing? So let me sing a song for you in spite, a melody stuck in my sore throat, One more broken chord and I’ll puke it out, A song for the gladly hopeless with no rhymes for drawn smiles But with fingers crossed so hard they turned numb and black.

One day I had enough of it, on that day I made a list, A list of pros, a list of all the things I should be glad to have, a list to remind me And at the end of that list I wrote: “Note to self: Others would kill for less” On that day I fed my feet to the worms as an appetizer for what they won’t get alive. I fed them my feet so I had to stop running away, So I had to sit still and be content with what I have, until the walls started caving in. But fuck walls and all the other clichés, I’m not afraid of walls: I’m afraid of people, I’m not afraid of what they might do, I’m afraid of what they won’t do, I’m not afraid of walls, I’ve never been, I’m afraid of people, (I’m not afraid of what they might think,) I’m afraid of what will never come to their minds, (I’m not afraid of walls, I’ve never been I’m not afraid of what’s done, I’m afraid of what just happens) and so I sat in fear. And for one year I sat there and watched history play rise and fall, Watched it save kings and sacrifice pawns But today I don’t need to see more, it’s enough, Enough “being” not “becoming”, enough contentedness, enough sleepwalking, Enough friends, enough grinning suits, enough I don’t need to see more to stand on new feet and to set fire To all the things I should be glad to have.

If I had a cent for every empty word I heard I’d buy myself a church and nail myself to a cross. So let it rain disappointment, let it fill every hole Until the streets drown in it. Wading through it we’ll line them up, (all the plans we made,) Line them up and bury them without eulogy or praise Write “irony” across their tombstones, the saints cry for them in vain, They should cry for us, we’ll never earn our goddamn haloes. We meet at the deathbed of ambition (call them liars, telling it fought the good fight, I was there, naked skin and commercials were all I saw). No heroes left and I’m pretty sure we missed the chance to die young. So I’ll draw a circle of black humour big enough to call it our own. This is where we’ll rest while the world just passes by.

A room (painted with get-well cards) and a box of the things we (yet) don’t understand, Buried underneath the old mall at the marketplace And the handful of hope you brought back home from your one year in misery. All these songs that lightened up our days, There’s more beauty in them than I see in us. (They’re) haunting this empty palace, (the orchestra of emptied bottles,) we found shelter here. “It gets better before it gets worse and then it gets worse (again) and then it gets even worse”, That’s the deal we signed, no one forced our hands. (We signed it with the last bit of gasoline which we had used to burn the memories, A fire that brought us through this winter.)

We need more, more dreams, more memories, more bottles; the fire’s almost gone out, So throw another penny in the wishing well and poison down your throats. Fate gave us plenty of time and what did we do with it? We blackmailed the piano-man with pictures we took of him and elderly women Playing doctors and nurses, We blackmailed him not to sing us another song but to pour us another drink, For a song we could sing ourselves:

“(We’re) glad that you all made it out from where the lions used to roam, (We’re) glad that you all made it but we’re still in this alone, (We’re) glad that you all made it out from where the tigers sharpen teeth, (We’re) glad that you all made it but we announce defeat.”

05 READ COUNTING LEAVES (TWO) LOSING SLEEP Let’s Hope Galileo Was A Goddamn Liar Here’s to hesitating and shaking hands, To social angst and losing friends To staring at the sun wondering If the fact that it doesn’t circulate this earth Might just mean it only warms itself. And I don’t want to live my life that way. I’d rather stick to the moon, Sometimes more, sometimes less But always there no matter what No matter if the sunlight shapes the worst of it. Because I’m still in love with the idea That all our failures mount up to something beautiful in the end. Y.O.Y.O. (You’re On Your Own) It began with an outrage Now it’s just a long line of accidents I witness Without reaching out my hand. It’s oh so quiet after the noise is all gone, It almost hurts Yet I’m the white sheep, gazing paralyzed, Witnessing. The monk by the sea. (At the same time this agglomeration of flesh, blood and dreams has never felt so tired.) At least it’s oh so quiet. So let me sleep until the calendar ends, Until the rites of spring are evoked by caring mothers shown on an art nouveau fine print (That’s) hung out to dry in a garden no one enters, Until we’re more than zeros and ones, Until then just let me sleep Because I did my research, I observed, I counted and then began again: There’s no harmony in anything, at the most there’s choreography of the smallest parts Summing up every now and then (to form something that’s breathing), To form someone who’s dancing to this misplaced rhythm, this binary code of growth and decay. “Oh, such a clever boy, figured it all out, now do your math”, The apocalypse in its smallest parts, an equation I never solved. Although I can’t stop to count the fallen leaves how could it feel right to say: “We’re all dead, we’re all doomed, we’re all damned etc. etc.” If tomorrow is surely coming and it’ll be just like today? Reenactments of a slow dance in between long lines of accidents, My head’s spinning (so please pardon my sarcasm), I danced with Lazarus for far too long. Agnostic Manifests Pinned To A Thousand Trees It seems like we communicate through stories So I wrote a thousand essays about standing beside myself, all in my head, I counted every leave of a thousand trees, all in my sleep, Drew a thousand pictures of the whale inside my head that’s weighing me down, All in one blink, nothing changed. Halfway to depression I ran out of breath, opened up my ribcage And let Goya’s nightmares eat my insides out until they ate their fill Despite all I just couldn’t unravel this knot inside my chest. Licking wounds and trophy scars, useless idols, unemployed gods, All my pretentious and quite predictable wannabe-poetry won’t help me, Speechless, fumbling for words, to say what we mean and mean what we say. So keep your hands where I can see them (this is a robbery). This show of scars is over (don’t even try to call for help). Now empty your remote controls, I’m collecting batteries for my flashlight at the end of the tunnel. Hand them over, nice and slow, no use losing any sleep about it, Because rewind buttons don’t seem to work and “fast forward” is useless anyway (Don’t play the hero, keep your hands where I can see them and) count to 1983 and I’ll be gone. INTERLUDE Reprise And when they’ll finally catch me I’ll be searching through piles of leaves, Searching for the right words I buried there, without the slightest chance to ever find them again Because these leaves, they’re just like us, once fallen down they all look the same. (THREE) TALKING TO GHOSTS Putting The “Fun” Back In “Funeral” With weak knees and shaking hands, Let them cry alone, sickness found its home. So this is how grief looks like, I had imagined it’d be less familiar. Although I should know by now that each person is a potential memory Each ringing of the phone gives me the creeps, Because the dying dances elegantly through the wire and gnaws right through my ear. (But if I don’t answer it,) if I just lay here (trying not to recognize the clear tone of Job’s message,) Will it be gone? (What I don’t know can’t hurt me, right?) The years are mocking us, singing their shrill song, it gets louder with each day, But I’m lacking sound vocal chords to scream louder than their rhapsody of fallen leaves: “We get born and then we end, get worn out and then we end, We count leaves and then we end, we crawl on and then we end.” A fair implication, I suggest. But without a heaven to spread its hands above my head, It’s the best advice to follow, though. I won’t admit my sins. What I won’t know can’t hurt me, right? (So) tell the white light I said “hi” for we have many mutual friends. Now hold me as tight as you can (Because I don’t want to be alone now) if in the end we’re on your own. I Don’t Keep A Diary Constant subjects to change, that’s what we are, evolving and revolving, constantly Like changing dots on a segment afraid to lose touch So we build our own museums to keep track And I think it’s safe to say I’m way more afraid than brave, As a matter of fact I’m a (grumbling) coward And these occasions that will last in my memory are the things that frighten me the most. I was scared at my first funeral, I was frightened on my first day of school, (And when I kissed someone for the first time). I was scared on very birthday and at every celebration, All these moments to remember, they scare me to death, That’s when the wolves show their teeth. (Do you) remember that evening in the year your mother died? I just couldn’t find the right words, it was your birthday, (You) cried so hard, you couldn’t (even) make it up the stairs So we stayed right at the doorway, sat in the rain and drank up For we celebrate each year that passes, frame memories in photographs, Moments manufactured in-house, facts that we arrange beforehand, Anniversaries, endings and beginnings, hoping not to forget what’s already ended. Each of these photographs inhabits a small catastrophe, a death yet to come But we’re holding on to them so desperately, it’s almost beautiful. The Secret Society Of Concrete Shoes Mind these words, can you hear me, mind these words They could have meant everything but now they’re failing me (it’s a goddamn mutiny). There’s only “Betrayal” in smeared letters all over these blank pages. All the “could have”s , “should have”s, “would have”s formed their own allegiance, They got organized and turned their backs on me while I was sleeping. Last night I crashed their weekly meeting of decisions I did wrong And now the river Styx is filled with cold sweat, it runs right through of my room And I can’t swim, I just can’t swim with these concrete shoes, this is mutiny, My dearest friend, Second Conditional plans to bury me at sea, The sparrows all flew south. There’s no joy in repetition but Phil Conners feels a lot like me, “Nevertheless there’s comfort in routine” I can almost hear him say Because integrity is on the last bus out of Coca-Cola-city and I bought its ticket. And while I’m answering the door, while I’m letting nostalgia right in I couldn’t be more jealous, though. My own words, they formed a rhetoric to empty all these pages, There’s no loyalty amongst thieves when the wolves show their teeth There’s only “Betrayal” in smeared letters allover these blank pages And I recognize the/my handwriting. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SPLIT W/COMA REGALIA (ONE) FUMBLING FOR WORDS: BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB we still celebrate our failures, satisfaction kills desire and discontent stays young forever. and yet peter pan runs out of style. who would want to stay a child forever? take all your self-referential bullshit and don’t open(/answer) the door, I couldn’t care less who’s there and shut the gateway behind me, we must keep the cold outside this ship before it gets us all while we’re trying to stuff these holes beneath our shirts, before we distrust ourselves as much as we distrust gravity. utopian sons & daughters (of fairy tales we once adored), postmodern grave robbers eat their young and I don’t want to stay a child forever so shall i leave this ship, run as fast as I can like a thief stealing hope from lonely places? since „self-confidence“ is just one of many words and I have no use for words anymore (because:) SEND IN THE CLOWNS, FRANK the meaning of words is arbitrary and builds fences I could never cross it builds them around this lighthouse of blemish, outshining all my dark. but damn this earth, it’s flat and I’m head-down in its shadow, restless. (so please, tell the cavalry that they could spare their horses the long way because) I’ll rest my weary head right in your lap, pen in hand again, walking backwards, I’m drawing escape-plans on your eyelids, I study them when you’re asleep: like thieves stealing hope from lonely places, laughing nostalgia right in its ugly face, as wolves in fairy tales we’d smile at certainty while it is bleeding dry and therefore they’d only dare to whisper our secret names in black shadows of empires built on dust. trading in nights for caffeine and skylines made out of ashtrays, spray painting riddles on their walls, we’d escape the boredom of interesting people in crowded rooms singing (their) same old love songs in too crowded rooms. the stadium is empty, like thieves we’d steal their melodies. but the king has never left the building. all my words descend, they melt into a meaningless bowl of sentences and in between these lines, I found nothing there, no answers to the question what I’m still waiting for… +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ DIALECTICS INTRODUCTION: INTRO (=) Everyone looks better in the dark so I’ll keep it dark here. More cryptic metaphors so you won’t know what I’m talking about, So you won’t get the joke. We’re all waiting for the catch-phrase. Let’s not speak too frankly here: “We wasted too much time, that’s not our only but our biggest crime”. A strong sentence to begin with but no clever words to spend the night with, Just broken chords and burned out holes as big as the moon collected in our pockets. Apologies will follow: CHAPTER I: FORGIVE US MR.HOOKER (=) Don’t crown me John Lee Hooker because my/this/our youth’s never earned the blues. But cover up these words of mine in healthy noise And call it “free expression” if you may. As if I/we had something to say, as if we ever had it hard enough to earn the blues. Dreams don’t come here to die, my friend, it’s even worse: Most of them come true. So have a break, you deserve one, Because earning stylish pain is hard labor and we all know that here, But hell, it looks so damn good on us. So this is it, this is everything we have to offer. Where can I find home but here, in healthy noise and singers who never tried to sing? So let me sing a song for you in spite, a melody stuck in my sore throat, One more broken chord and I’ll puke it out, A song for the gladly hopeless with no rhymes for drawn smiles But with fingers crossed so hard they turned numb and black. THE FIRST FIRE CHAPTER II: ONE YEAR IN MISERY (/) One day I had enough of it, on that day I made a list, A list of pros, a list of all the things I should be glad to have, a list to remind me And at the end of that list I wrote: “Note to self: Others would kill for less” On that day I fed my feet to the worms as an appetizer for what they won’t get alive. I fed them my feet so I had to stop running away, So I had to sit still and be content with what I have, until the walls started caving in. But fuck walls and all the other clichés, I’m not afraid of walls: I’m afraid of people, I’m not afraid of what they might do, I’m afraid of what they won’t do, I’m not afraid of walls, I’ve never been, I’m afraid of people, (I’m not afraid of what they might think,) I’m afraid of what will never come to their minds, (I’m not afraid of walls, I’ve never been I’m not afraid of what’s done, I’m afraid of what just happens) and so I sat in fear. And for one year I sat there and watched history play rise and fall, Watched it save kings and sacrifice pawns But today I don’t need to see more, it’s enough, Enough “being” not “becoming”, enough contentedness, enough sleepwalking, Enough friends, enough grinning suits, enough I don’t need to see more to stand on new feet and to set fire To all the things I should be glad to have. CHAPTER III: I FOUND YOU KEEPING STRAIGHT ON (\) If I had a cent for every empty word I heard I’d buy myself a church and nail myself to a cross. So let it rain disappointment, let it fill every hole Until the streets drown in it. Wading through it we’ll line them up, (all the plans we made,) Line them up and bury them without eulogy or praise Write “irony” across their tombstones, the saints cry for them in vain, They should cry for us, we’ll never earn our goddamn haloes. We meet at the deathbed of ambition (call them liars, telling it fought the good fight, I was there, naked skin and commercials were all I saw). No heroes left and I’m pretty sure we missed the chance to die young. So I’ll draw a circle of black humour big enough to call it our own. This is where we’ll rest while the world just passes by. CHAPTER IV: PIANOMAN Part I (\): A room (painted with get-well cards) and a box of the things we (yet) don’t understand, Buried underneath the old mall at the marketplace And the handful of hope you brought back home from your one year in misery. All these songs that lightened up our days, There’s more beauty in them than I see in us. (They’re) haunting this empty palace, (the orchestra of emptied bottles,) we found shelter here. “It gets better before it gets worse and then it gets worse (again) and then it gets even worse”, That’s the deal we signed, no one forced our hands. (We signed it with the last bit of gasoline which we had used to burn the memories, A fire that brought us through this winter.) Part II (/): We need more, more dreams, more memories, more bottles; the fire’s almost gone out, So throw another penny in the wishing well and poison down your throats. Fate gave us plenty of time and what did we do with it? We blackmailed the piano-man with pictures we took of him and elderly women Playing doctors and nurses, We blackmailed him not to sing us another song but to pour us another drink, For a song we could sing ourselves: Part III (/\): “(We’re) glad that you all made it out from where the lions used to roam, (We’re) glad that you all made it but we’re still in this alone, (We’re) glad that you all made it out from where the tigers sharpen teeth, (We’re) glad that you all made it but we announce defeat.” THE SECOND FIRE: CHAPTER V: THE FINE ART OF HATING WHAT YOU DO (/) We praise, we kneel, we repeat, we stand still, we find beauty and paint it black (Until it’s down to nothing all over again), We strip the skin from it till it’s only flesh and bones And wonder why it’s just “defeat” that the banners read Hung on every empty building we didn’t care for. This circle you had drawn grew way too small for us, too small to hold us in. So we got lost somewhere in the crowd That’s trying so hard to be different. We can’t hear our own excuses whispered desperately. (For all this whining and begging for better days makes quite a noise.) Tired of mourning till our throats go sore while better days are knocking on the doors Of our empty buildings we didn’t care for. So, here’s to “blinders on”, a salute to “gone astray”. So, here’s to never knowing what we’re for only what we trying to avoid. No more waiting on the rooftops with lights, sounds and banners To guide the way for the “good life” just in case it ever makes its way. Tonight they’ll know we’re here.

Oh bitterness, my dear, would you please marry me? We’ll have children we’ll name them “vermin” and “disease” and become like those before us. We met at the deathbed of ambition and this is where it led us (to). We’re the copy-cats of our own lives and the lines were drawn way before us And I’m/we’re just walking them. Wiser men than me claim That human existence takes place inbetween of what was and what will be, So it’s not really there at all, by looking around you can tell they’re right. We’re doing nothing better, we just know how to wait it out. Disappearing, the invisible generation without a name. Class-war is over (and all the individuality money can buy won it), Eternal boredom (that’s eating us alive. So line up for the big parade!) We’re the best informed virgins there ever were.

Mad eyes, torn face and a gallon of gasoline. Done less sleeping and more dreaming for the last couple of days, his eyes tell the story. (These worn-out clothes hang on his emaciated body like flags on half-mast.) Nervous hands are caressing torn pieces of paper in pockets full of matches. He won’t need these scribbled pages, he knows his speech by heart by now but just in case, just in case. (Feels) like the man of steel building his own kryptonite (as he raises his voice:)

Dear committee of plastic bags, listen to my words! I won’t distract you long enough from the impending doom Of dirty numbers on clean white paper, (I just demand the one thing you’re really good at:) Silence amongst the herd. (So please mark my words for we’re singing from the same sheet, you just don’t know it yet.) Oh, I only came to ask: Are you happy here? Pills and healers and holy men, did they save your soul today? Did the holy men give you a reason to stay here? When was the last time you felt like changing weather? Oh, Machiavelli would be so proud of you while Debord is turning in his grave. Replace “they” with “we”. It’s almost as if your god and your devil came to an understanding to lay down their weapons And leave you lost and alone. Nothing matters unless you want it to. Nothing’s pointless unless you want it to. So please let us not hope, let us know, let us know for sure (that): Everything we do is politics, every move is a dance, every word is poetry, every sound is a song. These are my famous last words (this is my farewell), I’ll see you all in hell if we’re not already there.* *Nur um Missverständnissen vorzubeugen: Es gibt nichts wofür es sich lohnt zu sterben. Genauso wenig löst der Tod irgendwelche Probleme.

So this is how it ends, this is what’s left after the last sad song is sung, we’ve come full circle. Now the joke’s been told, have your laugh now, Laugh as hard as you want to, this one’s on me. But the story’s always sadder after I told it, So burn these notes. So forget these words you heard from me Because I forgot what I wanted to say in the first place about five songs ago. But remember that pity-parties are best held when you’re alone. So if cynicism really is the loneliest kind of anger, You can have your laugh now because the human animal is not nature’s favored son, Put that out of your mind, We’re more like peace and doubt, like her wedding dress and the rain, We’re more like the desperate dreamer and the joyful pessimist, Like the sad guy and his funny shirt. We’re more like… (We’re more like marvelous plans and the missing link between our words and our actions) We’re more like the tragic death of humor and the stone-cold irony of it all, We’re more like… We’re more like…

But don’t believe the words you heard from me, the story’s always sadder after I told it. I’m hiding behind characters I brought to life, characters who tattle behind my back, They say I wasted your time and I see their point, not my only but my biggest crime. What’s a joke without a moral to the story? If you got it all figured out Then come for me and tell me what this is all about. We’ll meet each other again with disbelief, quietly, No more worthless words, no more cryptic metaphors. We’ll light up a candle for the dead only to blow it out and inhale the smoke, Repeat after me: “I am an island”