How many nights would I lie awake

Trying to remember every note I take

As if it would bring back yesterday

And somehow make me forget the bruising shadow's play

I was the empty child of the front row,

Smart but never applying

Because life was hard and not deciding

On whether I was worthy today.

 

How many nights would I cry myself to sleep

Crying through the seeming and perhaps of reality?

My lips an anchor of pain and all you care about

Was whether I could explain

A derivative from and arithmetic chain.

I broke hope and sorrow upon my soul

As if they were children of the same fold.

I bore stripes like the flag of separated freedoms.

I handled my facade, I handled my despair.

And you couldn't tell a praise from a ware,

But I made you believe.

 

How many nights would I think my days through,

Wondering why its required that I spend 180 days with you.

Can you relate?

Can you picture my life's hollowed truth?

What can a poem of love teach me of hate?

What will a mindless fact of Custard teach me of being second rate?

Does the Cobain mind field blow

Until the cocaine mind spills with numbers,

Numbers and letters that can't relate?

Tell me, is the magnolia pretty enough,

Or will she, too, suffer the same fate?

 

Yet, as if the day came too quickly,

The sun burning too harshly,

The birds screaming too loudly...

I gave what I could

And took nothing.

After all, what is there to take

When all you've done, all you've made

Was another sheep not ready for life's maze.