craiglist rough draft.

dear girl sitting next to onry/cape in the club scene of the sleestack payback dark time sunshine video at 1:05 and 1:24,

i am enamored with you. had i actually been lucky enough to occupy the same space as you, and not just your beautified likeness captured and broadcast across the internet, i think i would've worked up the nerve to speak to you. i would have said something subtle, but noteworthy, quelling the obvious, inevitable and often times just plain fucking annoying tattoo talk icebreakers that our generation seems to think they discovered, which you undoubtedly hear every day you leave the house in anything less than a turtleneck or a parka.

i don't know what i would've said, but it would've certainly led to us partaking in our respective preferred whiskey drinks together (whiskey and ginger ale for me) and discussing our respective preferred spooning positions (i'm perfectly fine with either, but definitely willing to accept the stereotypically male role of the big spoon). i don't know exactly what would've happened between that conversation and our happily ever after. but i do know that i would've insisted on taking things slow and waiting 'til the morning to discuss what to name the kids. the rest we can figure out after we actually meet. deal?

-lfm

willie manuel (verse one)

it goes papa burn his face off so i don't wanna work a day job
purged a third of his nerves and all i learned was fuck a day job
slight gap between our likeness rained ash and turned my collar black
so i laugh when i get mistaken for a college grad
he was glass brass and grease stains three siblings to divide us
and a wife health slipped schlitz pissing convenient pious
every newport was a lit prayer wrenched 'til cysts were timeless
golden days eighties baby raised by an arthritic midas'

thousand tongues carping "hey eight-year-old, you'll never be shit!"
tucked away agape when he sees the women that i sleep with
'cause sons fuck antoine's got five my proof is past due
i'm carrion for vultures my brother's a gang tattoo
anchored anger in his passed blues blooms and he sees it
clip and scale in the closet turned marine willie beaming
so the shadow that i sleep in is nine years my elder
(my) conception spawned the lock jaw on his bed of nails and failures

it was 2:22 grandfather clocked past me
second hands overlapped the day my father stopped laughing
frame shot cropped collapsing still the wake holds breaths
taught me tip toe around the casket-shaped hole left
house was rarely a home just two stories of callous men
where broken mirrors shape the face that we were fashioned in
given the time i'd crack the cracks and name them after him
the will to wrath convinced his fracturing is what my back's against

this might surprise you. you're all being lied to.