The Closest Thing to Truth.
The cigarette smoke seems to
Lull around in my stomach
But I smoke it anyway,
Knowing how it'll make me feel
When I'm done.
That's how most of my life
Seems to play out:
I do the stupid things I do
Knowing that later I'll have the feeling
That maybe it wasn't such a good idea
Usually within moments of
Finishing up.
Why, you ask?
I can give you the stock answers
"I'm confused,
I don't know what I want,
Life is too short to second-guess,
It seemed like the right thing to do at the time,
You weren't there, you'd left me, we were done."
I'll give you all of those answers in time,
To be certain, and then the real words will come out,
The ones that speak closer to the truth
Than all of my standard answers.
Closer to the truth, yes.
It's hard to figure out just what it is
That really motivates you
Without working through all the issues
With what doesn't motivate you.
That involves long conversations,
Arguments, nearly making up,
Fucking it all up again, and long
awkward
silences
Scattered here and there
For effect.
Then you can get to the places you didn't want to talk about.
Push through the cliche arguments and get to the grit
The original territory, the frontier.
The scary bits.
All of that is like the cigarette, too.
It fills a need, like the smoke dragging down my lungs.
Makes us both wonder why just knocking all this shit off
Seems like such a difficult proposition.
The closest thing to truth I can give anyone
Is that, taking everything obviously good and evil about me
There's a whole lot more evil
Than anyone wants to know.
That's why I'll keep smoking,
That's why I'll keep fucking up,
That's why I'll put myself through this shit over and over.
It's a fucked up sort of penance,
On all fronts, for all the liberties
I'll eventually take with existence.
I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. I'm sorry that I'm not sorry.
It's time for another cigarette.
Lull around in my stomach
But I smoke it anyway,
Knowing how it'll make me feel
When I'm done.
That's how most of my life
Seems to play out:
I do the stupid things I do
Knowing that later I'll have the feeling
That maybe it wasn't such a good idea
Usually within moments of
Finishing up.
Why, you ask?
I can give you the stock answers
"I'm confused,
I don't know what I want,
Life is too short to second-guess,
It seemed like the right thing to do at the time,
You weren't there, you'd left me, we were done."
I'll give you all of those answers in time,
To be certain, and then the real words will come out,
The ones that speak closer to the truth
Than all of my standard answers.
Closer to the truth, yes.
It's hard to figure out just what it is
That really motivates you
Without working through all the issues
With what doesn't motivate you.
That involves long conversations,
Arguments, nearly making up,
Fucking it all up again, and long
awkward
silences
Scattered here and there
For effect.
Then you can get to the places you didn't want to talk about.
Push through the cliche arguments and get to the grit
The original territory, the frontier.
The scary bits.
All of that is like the cigarette, too.
It fills a need, like the smoke dragging down my lungs.
Makes us both wonder why just knocking all this shit off
Seems like such a difficult proposition.
The closest thing to truth I can give anyone
Is that, taking everything obviously good and evil about me
There's a whole lot more evil
Than anyone wants to know.
That's why I'll keep smoking,
That's why I'll keep fucking up,
That's why I'll put myself through this shit over and over.
It's a fucked up sort of penance,
On all fronts, for all the liberties
I'll eventually take with existence.
I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. I'm sorry that I'm not sorry.
It's time for another cigarette.