Vicious Cousins (for JT)

The words that live inside our minds are often cruel and sometimes kind.  And sometimes life if rife with ifs and cigarette butts...sometimes we're all just goddamn nuts. That's the deal you make and maybe it's fair. Seems to me that in my years round here, fair never meant a goddamn thing. Whether three ring circus or telephone ring. Three in the morning and without a warning the whole damn table gets turned around and you find yourself lying upside down. Lying left and no one can tell if you're doing it right. But in these brambles we find ourselves in shambles, shaking like leaves of that turnaround table and trying to choose, come Cain cum Abel. It's all a joke but no one knows the punch line. Lost in the thicket of forgotten promises, hits and misses just collide and you just ride cause what else is there to do. You got your socks, but forgot your shoes. If they fit, wear em, if they don't then keep on faking it until it works your way. I'm not proud and I'm not noble, I'm angry at the whole damn mess of hate and self-indulgent stress. And I know someday it will all come back. One more train down that railroad track, but the track marks the rhythm and the track marks fade if you'll just let em. I preach a lot for a malcontent, the irony ain't lost on me. Omnipotent don't mean shit if that shit's not potent, I won't promote it, I'll buy three more hours of feeling human...trade ya six for a bubblegum card. It's not easy and it's not hard, it's a deal you made, it's a marked card. It was all fun and it was games, you met the greats and forgot their names, you take the praise and run with it for all you're worth, cause they think you're worth something...cause they ain't heard the punch line. You've heard it coming, you've heard it going...you knew it all when it weren't worth knowing. I sit behind my gilded cage choking on cheap songs and boy scout rage. The time has finally come when I can't stand the night time for the sun, I can't get up to get it all done. And I grasp and clasp the necklace shut. It's around my neck and it's getting tough. I've given too little and given too much. I try to do right by the people who do right by me and I even get that wrong. It's worth more than a cheap joke and a song, but that's all I got. That's who I am, and in five minutes I won't give a damn, but I wish I would. I wish I could be the reflection I see when I'm feeling sanguine and feeling fine like the first hot sip of summer whine. Shit, nowadays I can't see the line. I write from the heart and no one cares, I throw up a shot, get nothing but air, and the things I value don't get noticed and the things I don't they get important and I shake my head and wonder at the strangeness of it all. I wonder if that's what happens to us all, why Rhymin' Simon dropped the ball. Lost perspective, lost objectivity, trying to write a tribute but it's all about me. And I should feel shamed and I should just chuckle and I should hitch one notch on the old belt buckle cause lately things don't taste right to me and lately I'm chasing apathy. Or it's chasing me. So, this is what I wrote, and I know it's a shitty thank you note, but the sun's hanging on the last night cloud and the day is done and I don't know if I'm allowed to feel good about it. I don't know what I said or did. I know it should have been more and could have been less and in the end it's myself I kid. But if it means something, hell, let it mean something. And if it doesn't it doesn't, cause me and Antrobus know. Hate and love. Drunk or not. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. The world's full of vicious cousins.