Now, we don't know anything, but we plan to learn and see everything there is to see because we haven't been anywhere yet. We're going to have to forget every piece of wisdom we've heard if we're ever going to learn that we'll never be the same people we were before we could drink our parents under the table and before we knew evil. When the biggest mysteries we knew were how boys could ever hang out with girls, and that strange trick where your friends fingers formed a church and steeple; we are not those same people. Never will be again, yet we spend some days with some of the same friends finding out that the greatest mystery is not with boys and girls, but between women and men. When we drink now, we pair paper with pen, and the only trick we play is on ourselves, testing how long the candle lasts when you burn it at both ends. We cannot be what we were back then. Because we learned; we grew. Children make the most of mud, and we're still dumb kids mixing water with something stronger than dirt just to try something new. We count stars for the sake of counting them, fall in love for the sake of falling, laughing as we do. We have done nothing, we've been nowhere but goddammit it we are going to. Give us blank maps and we'll draw in our own path, and that's where we'll meet the rest of you. .

Oh, we are young, looking for a semblance of hope in our aspirations so there's a lack of sensation when our dreams fall apart. But when the beat moves every pair of feet all at once, it keeps the truth of our nightmare lucid: the one where we turn chasing tornadoes into a form of art if only to avoid being another kind of family that disasters can still tear apart, to confuse the sound of breaking windows with the cheers of the crowd. So let's write a song that the wind can't steal. You look for words inside of wooden walls. Set them ablaze to hear the way the stories call your name. But you’ve built your home from brick and so the labors of the flame are fruitless. Oh, there are few things stronger than stone. Why couldn't you have built it from fragile bone? Let's see you write a song that the wind can't steal. They tell me chaos is my friend, it paints a pretty perfect image in my mind. The brushes bend behind my eyes and turn the lines to curves and shapes I never learned; ever-moving, picturesque, like stars about to burst. (We are ever-moving, picturesque, like stars about to burst.) This life puts fifteen hands on every hour. That ticking riddle made the spit we shared turn sour. The artist starves, pleads for rest, begs for death, yet pushes on to feel more than just the sting. His skin will be the page: his blood, the ink.

A silent show of teeth, in bush and beast. The killing joke of progress has brought it to it’s knees, oh. Growth for the sake of growth, this wild reclamation has put me on my feet. This standstill place in which we live was built on movements. The frontier, it isn't closed: not the one we carry with us. Northward, skybound, I try my hand at dying. Southward, I found a life of many moving parts. Chasing the sound of fabled footsteps. Westward, always forward, moving on. (I am nothing but footprints, hanging there in the still air like every single sunset, trying to burn up before I disappear.) We burn the forest just to get a lay of the land. We pray to be saved while we grease the palms of the reapers hands. A silent show of teeth, a broken-boy rebellion. Binding bodies to the trees to dull the blades that fell them. We storm the juggernaut! Surrender flesh to sate the flood. The frontier, it isn't closed; not the one we carry with us. Fists raised like mountains towards the cancer cloud And still the thumb of god points down.

Say hello to the other side for us. A dozen hearts still beat for the golden one. We lost a lifetime with the way you were running 'cause nothing lasts for long in the hands of spiders. The silence of old dreams, a dull roar. It stayed quiet when the music stopped, but long before the record skipped—years before our friends died—there were still spaces in the clamor and the outcry. I am incapable of love on the quiet nights. All the kids were still dancing and they all look tired from pulling their smiles up through the mire and muck and it's fucked up that they're even trying when the brightest minds they meet just keep on dying. Maybe they’d have saved them all with better timing. It's not for lack of love that they're lying to themselves: The sharpest love comes from needles and not from the warmth in hands we've held. We are incapable of quiet when the music swells. The heaven split, the skin tears apart. Sing those blissful, blackout blues to the ebbing edge of stars. Did you find it? A place to sleep off the dark. Sing those blissful, blackout blues for all the kids with golden hearts. The heaven split, it all fell apart. It's a shame there's so much death in the pursuit of love and art.

We are lost, We are found in this Waste, And inside Her arms find such perfect release. O, the heat, how it drinks from our bodies, Tugs out the heart through the pores. Welcome to Desolation, and everything we're living for. I think I'll stand on my head and watch the night rise. Let the picture-perfect framework settle in between the eyes. Sun beat down on my head, The lows they eat at my highs, Wish I could just get a little closer. Let the air lift me up, I'd walk the moon if I could, But not like our fathers before us. I think I'll stand on my head and watch the night rise. Let the picture-perfect framework settle in between the eyes. We all see the same sunshine in solidarity. Hanging colors lead us to the place I've found beneath my feet. We are found in the places we roam, This is Desolation, our home away from home. And if I have to bury Her bones, I'll dig the grave with a wrench and this old piece of stone.

When I was little, I found that in a certain frame or light, snow can look an awful lot like shooting stars, so maybe the cold months aren't so bad and I hope you'll stay with me through the winter. It's likely you'll seek a safer place in the storm outside in order to escape how cold I've grown to be. It's not my fault. Sometimes, I'll want to drive in the middle of the night and watch the snowflakes rush at me like so many misled embers and try to remember save as many kisses for when it's warmer, disregarding the fact that shooting stars are not stars, that if I turned off my headlights, I couldn't see what I'm headed for, and that you do not love me. I want you strapped in beside me so I can remember to keep my eyes on the road and you can count every frozen anomaly for me as they melt on the windshield. Remind me later, and I will quietly wish for each of them to have the same mass as a car or maybe that we're traveling through space like they do in the movies. It depends on the day. It's not my fault. But please, don't speak. Don't speak of god or the infinite space between us or ponder if they are one and the same. Or say something clever about the snow, how all these kisses are wasted on glass. Don't think of how terribly romantic it would be if our law of lips and tongues caused us to crash. Don't try to get to know me better when it's too cold to get out of bed. It's not your fault I don't want to let you in, because I bargained for a savior when we first traded smiles and what I saw scared me half to death..

I asked your roots to grow into my flesh, to use my veins as maps You let them dig into my skin, but your hatred drew them back. So still I stand between their bodies and I look east for winters end. I urge the dirt to drink my blood and let the Tall Trees grow again. Young wicked boys, we dance through dust. Drunk on death and mad with song. My fading laughter showed the truth, one pair of footsteps all along. So still I sit with dying giants. Their leaves will fall by end of June. My hero's eyes burned holes in me, I dug holes here for me and you. So still I stand between their bodies and I look east for winters end. I urge the dirt to drink my blood and let the Tall Trees grow again. The Tall Trees died when we were 10, they seemed to shrink as we grew up. We walked the forest one last time just before the clear cut..

There was no safety in survival for all his friends in black and red. We need to remember the words of the fighter: “We're all born dead.” If I'd have known I’d shared my breath with a martyr, I'd have held it in my chest 'til it hurt. Instead I let it free 'cause laughter won't be held back any longer. Neither would the rum that he had tucked inside a faded shirt. Born dead.

Feed me to the sea and I will take the rest down with me. They shot arrows at the sun in vain, Said goodbye to everything and anything. Cause everything we've seen is ours for the taking And anything we touch is quickly, quickly fading It's all wasted It's time to face Goliath, Stones, and slings, and bags of sand. "Cry Havoc!" And let slip the bones that hold the land. All that glitters is wasted on the Young & the Beautiful. So, plant your feet, kiss the weeds, Pray to god we move what is immovable. We were only kids when the window came crashing in, raining glass on our skin, and the voice of the world outside filled our heads for the first time. It was the words we heard on the wind that drove us to cower under covers; Not the mouth in the wall vomiting water & debris on the hardwood, Not our fathers frantic attempts to dull the roar. It was the words we plucked from the air, the ones we never could make out, that keeps me crawling on bloodied limbs back to the places I've found beneath my feet, to listen for the word or phrase we missed so long ago. Now, I sift through concrete walls and solid steel, open a new mouth in the walls of my home and let the hanging colors bleed in, hold my ear to jagged lips and listen closely this time, Let air and color lead me where they will. 'Step Outside, face Goliath, say goodbye to everything.”

A friend whispered past his drink, I heard the words, "We all grew up here" and I felt it in my chest like thunder. Understand that he did not mean “growing up” as “growing older.” The days are numbered small and it makes the rain seem so much colder. Makes it so hard to remember that he was not speaking of the passing of time, because some of us only learned how to wait,while others learned how not to hate themselves, that if we use each other's hands to ease each other's pain, then a living hell can be a hell of a place. We started a fire but if we can stare into the glow of the embers, we'll remember that fire fades, new things grow, and more often than not that means escape. Move on and forget the stench of youth, the stain of feigned innocence we wore like a badge of honor and truth, the times we beat our brothers half to death because we thought we were supposed to, only to laugh about it later and ignore all the growing up we had to do. But I'm not ready. Not ready to face it all on unfamiliar ground, the flames we built from nothing are fading faster, more like a funeral pyre for the quiet kids who learned how to speak loud. Now I'm racing against the last few weeks just to write it all down, to tell anyone and everyone that somehow, we found one another. Following countless invisible lines like string on a madman's map, searching for some greater truth or secret, drawn across distances rivaling oceans and by the strength of our backs, we collided like glass planets, like drunk drivers, certain no one would miss us. Yet as we crashed and did our best to imitate the way that thunder claps, the way that windows shatter, broken boys and girls found a warmer place to rest, that madman's point of origin was our destination, our home-base, hovel of a headquarters, a good head to keep above our freshly wounded shoulders. We picked up our ugly little pieces and put them back in place as best we could, not realizing that we were working with the hands of children, no one to tell us to wait a few years, that the strong fingers of soldiers and survivors know how to mend souls. In our ignorance of proper placement, we never quite patched all the holes, but found we had built a home, and every tired old board would find its time to bend and groan. We were the things that went bump in the dark, celebrating that we still had some skin on our bones. And those hellish skeleton screams that kept the neighbors up at night were only friendly fire-fights, subtly discussing the finer points of what we would never miss about being alone. Doing everything but caring that some of us wouldn't even make it out without giving up the ghost; that maybe all we had left was hope. These boys of summer and the girls we loved, we waged a war in raw throats and untimely sunrises, trying our best to bury the end of our rope. A place where we found living proof of Nowhere. A place where we called Silence out by name. Where we choked on bitter smoke, and forced ourselves to go insane and fall in love, for when we spoke aloud we found that they were very much the same. And so we're letting go, But never going away, Retelling our story without a single missing page. Break down every year into months and every month into days, to never forget the smell of Summers wasted or the way that the music played over our cries as we dug our brother's graves, creating harmonies much sweeter than the ones we tried to make. We'll never forget that anything can be a song if enough of us are singing. Never forget the strangers who knew us best. We found the true worth of our memories because we'll never forget the cost, of years spent, and not a moment lost..