My baseline is nostalgia But trauma got my brain more confused than algebra My soul's stuck being ghost man on third Playing ball with my Dad before Mom would have dinner served Makes it hard to swallow all my just desserts 'Cause in my head I'm just a kid, just trying to learn How to follow through with a swing just right Or how to fist fight, or flirt with a girl I like And juxtaposed against what I know Like memories of nosebleeds after doing blow Weird flashbacks of ejaculating too young My mind goes black to protect where they're coming from In my inner life it's still July of 99 I'm catching fireflies in a cup and feeling guilty when they die Despite the fact they had twigs and grass But dad says not to feel bad nothing lasts But one thing does and that's the past I still remember every time my Dad beat my ass The time he woke me up at a quarter past Midnight to tell me he thought he was having a heart attack Put me in charge of calling 9-11 In case he passed out and needed a medic to come Don't know why he picked me to see he survived I was ten with a brother old enough to drive The only time he made me feel like a man On the verge of a panic attack wringing my hands And sometimes I still am My baseline is a church kid Digging through snot rags to get pens from Mom's purses So I could fill out outlines for pastor's sermons And learn about how Moses turned his staff into a serpent It's to extrapolate that from the person That I was stealing pills while my girl made diversions But somehow being devote had lost its purpose When I found out God only works within rich circuits Poor kids grew up like a carney in a circus Every girl I loved had been abandoned like they're worthless God became another father figure to have words with And once my hands were old enough to go to war with I swore I'd throw them with God for being morbid Became a thing the kid within me wasn't on board with The kid was still swinging for the fences Catching fly balls and vying for his pops attention I was caught up somewhere in between Looked at days like catching glimpses of dream Didn't believe that it all was real I need pain now and again to pinch myself and see if I can feel None of my childhood heroes could die Even Micky Mouse is kicking at 105 I think about it when I'm vulnerable inside Real men don't cry or ever face their demise It's half the reason why Church is ever on my mind Mamma please call my soul in for supper Let go of my hand and let me feel all that I've suffered I stuffed it down and acted like it's alright But all night every night I see demons from another life Haven't had a good dream since I was 14 Only ever have dreams where I'm loosing teeth Looking in the mirror wondering who the fuck is he? These days it's so bad that I'm always losing sleep I just want to breath in some relief And exhale the missteps that I've put under my feet Instead I'm making sense of them by acting like they're me And acting out every bad memory on repeat Putting myself in the same positions that defined Looking for different outcomes swinging the bat blindly Hearing Dad say I gotta square up with the plate Holding onto false hope that home runs could change fates

She was a RAD kid As in reactive attachment 'Cause Mom and Dad did drugs So she was taken by the government A foster kid at the age of 5 In this bitch they call life Just trying to skirt by With clipped wings that couldn't fly I was 15 in love for the first time With my teenage dream an all American cherry pie Her tits were the first that I ever touched I think about it now, I didn't even know what love was But my gut we were gonna outlast earth Never break up there'd be an apocalypse first In a lot of ways I was right about that A lot of folks were right when they said that we were too attached Most of which were the parents that adopted her Over protective hovered like a helicopter Still found time to cop my feels First handful of anything in life that felt real But we were steady, we were in it for the long haul Never gave a fuck about who said it was the wrong call Five hours at home on these phone calls 6 people at my house pissed when dial up stalle Just puppy love doing what it does It's puppy love baby just puppy love They telling us it's just puppy love Puppy love baby just puppy love I was in math class, probably dyslexic It was kicking my ass the way I'd never get shit Had a brick phone and back then you never texted Every month you only had a set amount of messages When it off priority felt high This time it was pictures of my girl with two black eyes She told me her Mom would hit her sometimes It was summer the room was filled with sunshine I said "what the fuck you mean sometimes? One time is already too many times And two black eyes is one call to the cops" She said I didn't know who her Mom was She had influence and mingled with mayors Used to fuck a judge who probably wouldn't even care For the first time in life I knew what I was born for Why the world could never knock me down to the floor See I was in a comic hero origin plot With justice on my side I could never be stopped Rode my bike to that big house on that nice block Told her folks that we probably ought to talk It's puppy love doing what it does It's puppy love baby just puppy love They telling me I'm not old enough I thought… I was ready to swing, ready for anything Felt like Superman with the red cape and everything But I was powerless and they wanted a PFA They told me I didn't know how hard she was to raise We skipped school to phone the cops the next day Probably the last time I ever prayed Shit would happen in the weeks to come That wreaked havoc on my life I'd never recover from Every love I've had since feels like a warzone I'm on the frontlines watching bodies get blow Meanwhile I was at home with the horse shit That molded a kid into an ironclad warship She went back into foster care I tried to have her back, tried to always be there I Didn't know I had issues of my own Would've been best just to best just to leave her alone Later on we both got into drugs But she was born if two addicts and I know what that does I think about her now, I hope that she's loved Hope she's mending her wings and she hovers up above This life as the angel that I thought she was When puppy love was doing what it does It's puppy love doing what it does Its puppy love baby just puppy love They telling us it's just puppy love Puppy love baby just puppy love Puppy love doing what it does It's puppy love baby just puppy love They telling me I'm not old enough They telling me it's just puppy love Puppy love doing what it does Puppy love doing what it does Puppy love baby just puppy love Puppy love It's just puppy love

Had this friend 6th grade back in private academy Used get cuss words and dirty jokes out of me We came up in the church but we broke all the rules On all those porn sites we would visit after school I cited it as the start of my addiction to porn Even now it makes the dance of love hard to perform Used to love his neighborhood cause mine was no good Used to build forts out behind his house in the woods Little hideouts from my life back on Churchview Where neighbors smoked crack and I thought the world would hurt Mamma always said patience was a virtue But I was ready to fuck and for pussy to burn through Used to talk about girls in the class Especially the ones whose tits grew fast Looking back it seems kinda strange I thought that's how boys were meant to talk at that age Thought he had a good life, much better than mine They had money, cable, HBO and Showtime But sometimes it would be late in the night This kid would get real sad and he would talk about life Said that he was depressed thought about slitting his wrists Said he didn't even know if God could exist And this was the first male that I'd ever seen cry Made think he might be gay at the time What the fuck did he ever have to cry about With every new game console in that big ass house One day we were playing smash on 64 When an older kid with a shovel pounded on the door Said it was something we should probably ignore Until he pounded so loud you could feel it through the floor Then my man stepped out on his roof with a longbow Drew it back with a real ass arrow Told this kid he'd put it through his bone marrow Dead serious eyes all narrowed I was pretty scared so my memories impaired But in my head he put it through his leg right there Can't remember what his folks told mine or what they said they'd do I'm pretty sure both kids got 302'd Was waiting for my Mom up in his room Had this feeling in my gut like the world was doomed A black poster with a red S hung over his bed White print in quotes read "SUPERMAN'S DEAD" It's faster than a speeding bullet Can't look back Stronger than a locomotive Leaves a lip fat Able to keep buildings in a single bound While able to keep angel wings tethered to the ground Look up in the sky It's a bird, it's a plane It's life leaving superman's cape blood stained My best friend coming up was an addict We'd only ever kick it when he was kicking his habits I was kinda straight edge, I wasn't about it My girl's folks had habits that had left her skied clouded My family lore stated we were alcoholics So I stayed away from all that 'till my friends went off to college Picked him up from parties when he was off the wagon Did everything I could to keep my man from chasing dragons We were family and I was most happy When I lived down in Shadewell with his Nunny and his Pappy Our passion was music and we made a couple albums Probably wouldn't do what I do today without him We were chasing life and we had it by the horns Played a couple gigs I'll probably never outperform I was running from bad nights when Mom and Dad would fight He was running from a future on the streets with a pipe Felt like we were running shit and everything felt right Like our traumas couldn't ever resurface for a fight But life had me fucked up and before I knew it I was the addict, I was the one that blew it I recall a time when our habits overlapped He was off his rocker on a bender talking facts That he was Jesus Christ and that he'd come back For all of his apostles to take them to land that Flowed with milk and honey for all who follow God's tracks Had to tell him that it all sounded wack We should call his Aunt we should dial this all back I joked that he was racist 'cause Jesus is black He said after all those years we made music Thought you were my brother James, but you were just my Judas His Aunt was worried that he might be schizophrenic I felt shame over how our friendship ended Life's a lot shame that you gotta deal with Life's a lot of pain that would push you to your limits In a lot of ways he didn't sound so crazy Kind of been wishing I was Jesus Christ lately We all want the power to keep fam out the red But everybody's beat since SUPERMAN'S DEAD It's faster than a speeding bullet can't look back Stronger than a locomotive Leaves a lip fat Able to leap buildings in a single bound While able to keep angel wings tethered to the ground Look up in the sky It's a bird, it's a plane It's life leaving Superman's cape blood stained Both of these kids ended up good One works with schizophrenics the other impoverished neighborhoods So I wonder how I ended where I'm at A marriage in the can with dreams that never come back Still wonder who the fuck I can blame I'm still stuck with the fear and the shame Still got those beer muscles when I drink Still tussle with the thought that I could change everything Still rustle through the closet for that old red cape Want to sacrifice myself for everybody's sake But every time I ever want to give I only take And that's because I've always been the one who needs saved Until then I'm really no good to anyone Until then I'm only as good as a loaded gun In a toddler's hand thinking that it'd probably be fun To let off a couple rounds in the yellow sun It's high time I spit out what I was fed About being a man who saw through anything but led Gotta quit fighting the world Fight my demons instead Gotta save myself 'cause SUPERMAN'S DEAD It's faster than a speeding bullet Can't look back Stronger than a locomotive Leaves a lip fat Able to leap buildings in a single bound While able to keep angel wings tethered to the ground Look up in the sky It's a bird, it's a plane It's life leaving superman's cape blood stained

One shot for the kid in my psyche Two shots for the kids that never liked me Three shots to rock my true chakra Four for vibrato like a well performed opera Always topped off, never top shelf Never taught shit ever but I always talked well Enough dodge all the inevitability Of weekdays, hangovers, general futility Of silly me in a tizzy over dreams While I'm drunk seeing double of the fizzling of means To the ends that I fiend for since I was teen Green lights changing to the color of my teeth Fuck it though I'm feeling good for the night And I could feel this way every night for my whole life All it's gonna take is s tool on my liver But I'm paying for that in years I don't want to live for Living for these weekends Hoping means don't give way to weak ends Shots Baby getting shots Forgetting what I brought Its credit for the cost So we getting Shots Baby get shots 'Till we getting sloshed Maybe getting tossed Still we getting Shots Baby get shots Maybe get lost Lately in my thoughts So we getting Shots Baby get shots Smack them off the bar top And throw them back 'till we drop Five shots for the old college try Six shots for the bags under my eyes Seven shots for the heaven that I gave up Eight shots for a God who never gave a fuck Fuck that I'm the God of my own path Laughing in the face of the cold hard facts That I could never self actualize in this mold that I've been told could turn copper into gold and back Propping my lean against the bar counter Shots for the rabble by the hour Sour faced taking my licks with no chaser No pace set, no gauge for my nature Made by the creator to be a creature of habit Like Alice I can't help chasing my rabbits It's the savage in my DNA ravaging the replay Seeing black outs on the weekdays All because of the fucks I never gave For a bar set low with weights I could never raise Shots Baby getting shots Forgetting what I brought Its credit for the cost So we getting Shots Baby get shots 'Till we getting sloshed Maybe getting tossed Still we getting Shots Baby get shots Maybe get lost Lately in my thoughts So we getting Shots Baby get shots Smack them off the bar top And throw them back 'till we drop Nine shots for my foresight's blind spots Ten shots for the end shots time slot Eleven shots for the revenue I'm lacking Twelve shots for way way back when I was down wind of the towns pretense That tall fences kept out all confoundment Still found myself peeking through the posts Of white pickets wondering where highways go Ghosting the reality presented to my mental Kissing sanity goodbye without feeling sentimental My temperament is not meant for feeling shit though So I take this body as a rental to the shit show Rain sleet or snow I'm gonna get my glow 'Cause I never really know if this set will be my last show Fuck it though I'm feeling good with this life I never think twice about vibrating my wind pipe Speaking of which, I better speak up for last call Shots for the house and a six pack and that's all Shots Baby getting shots Forgetting what I brought Its credit for the cost So we getting Shots Baby get shots 'Till we getting sloshed Maybe getting tossed Still we getting Shots Baby get shots Maybe get lost Lately in my thoughts So we getting Shots Baby get shots Smack them off the bar top And throw them back 'till we drop

Foggy memories of high beams and side swipes Are all I got left over from last night Plus this hangover so flip the light switch I'm trying to sober up for a double work shift Taking trash out, bags sounding like a wind chime bottles rattling around like ghosts of a good time My cigarette smoke in an autumn breeze Dances in a whirlwind of dead leaves and dry heaves As I recall fumbling for car keys In the dark getting hollered at by the bar keep And stars spinning in the sky above me Was thinking 'bout does my ex still love me? I go to check the phone for text messages But it was one with the void lost to the messiness Of last night, burning cigarettes like an effigy Protesting the absurdity of everything And now it's something like a bad dream Clear recollection washed out in the moon beams Leaving me with nothing but the bad vibes Of last night's rowdy crowd's hive mind It's probably high time I get my shit straight Or maybe later on I'll get shit faced On a bit of the hair of the K-9 That's got me hacking fur balls in the daylight Trying to stay right Trying to stay lit It's one or the other I'm gonna have to quit Trying to stay right Trying to stay lit It's one or the other It's one or the other Foggy reminiscence of pissing out on a dumpster Double frosting drinks, kissing smokes 'till my tongue hurt Comic strips with no dialogue bubbles Are all that's left after last nights scuffle With the roughian drinking White Russians like a stunt double Who sat at the bar sat at the barstool making life trouble Making nice with the demons in my psyche That might be me, but ain't quite just like me This is me trying to gather my faculties Or maybe I am the stunt double actually I'll never know I just go with the flow Dumping water down my gullet like Poseidon gone broke And my spigot is the last of his inventory Check the moral bank and it's the same story Empty like the glass still sticky from the rum Makes me sick from the smell that's the taste on my tongue Makes the bubble guts swell and shits all run That makes another Smell I'm gonna get sick from Sick of myself, sick of not feeling well Sick of the choices that I pick and how they trickle down Swigging pickle juice for the nausea Trying to recall any truth that I'm conscious of Like how the fuck much was the bar tab Did I pay up or give a hard pass Did I make conversation to befriend Or did my slurred words all condescend Did I fuck up with my friends And what the fucks up with my car's front end Trying to stay right Trying to stay lit It's one or the other I'm gonna have to quit Trying to stay right Trying to stay lit It's one or the other I'm gonna have to quit Trying to stay right Trying to stay lit It's one or the other It's one or the other Trying to stay right Trying to stay lit It's one or the other I'm gonna have to quit I'm gonna have to quit

I'm 21 struggling to function Young and dumb drunk causing a commotion In my all American Americana band With a bunch of alcoholic blue collar problematic friends It's me and my sweethearts anniversary The first one since she permanently turned from me I woke up and I didn't even think I hit the kitchen for a tall liquor drink Knew well I was ticking time bomb The first sip of liquor switched the timer on I called off from my job flipping burgers Called off a lot I was a piss poor worker Spent the day with a bong and an anime Ignoring phone calls from my family Hit this post girl up I kind of loved Always thought of my girl left she would be the one Later on they were gonna drink some At this girl's house that my other buddy loved I showed up on my bike with a buzz I don't even think they noticed the fresh cut We were putting crystal light right into the gin Rocking Rocky Racoon and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds Talked plans for my rock band to blow up Poet girl said I probably ought to grow up She was right, and even then being too nice I drank liquor from the bottle like I'm Shoe Nice She told me we could toke her northern lights Just me and her later on tonight Strange how it was my favorite strain Told myself later on I'd get brain But nothing ever goes like you want it too When you're letting demons slip out from under you Sends thunder rolling like an overture Skies get overcast, sane minds overturned At the same time there is a sane voice you overhear Same voice your Mamma used to get you over tears You respond the same way you have for many years I'm gonna be man Momma grown without any fears We stopped up at the Get Go for grub I was obviously publicly drunk Three cops in the store made me nervous as fuck So much so I didn't pay for my stuff Made a commotion so my friends could run Didn't want to be the one to ruin everybody's fun The cops asked how I paid for my shit I said i didn't even know if I did They could smell all the booze on my breath I was under arrest, drunk in public and a petty theft Swept my feet and slammed me onto the car They put the cuffs on my wrists too hard Any sense that I had left had vanished When I saw it was the cop who had killed Johnny Gamage Said fuck you, you don't know what I've been through If either one of us is a criminal it's you Down inside I subliminally knew It'd be a long night with the boys in blue They said I was resisting and I really had to stop I spit right in the face of that cop Told him if I wasn't white I'd be dead I was fucked up, but there's truth in what I said I said a lot of shit I'd later regret It's a lot of slurs on my record of arrest They forced my drunk ass in the back seat I knew my hopes of getting head were beat I took a peek in the squad car next to me And there was poet girl, as mad as could fucking be They took me over to the Brentwood jail I talked shit the whole way into my cell I was blacking out here and there But I recall hands through bars, birds in the air I said verbatim, fuck you pigs fight me Feeling like Bronson played by Tom Hardy They came into the cell and the pigs had a party Taking me down and they barely tried hardly Said fuck it this kid's going to county Can't listen to this shit all night my heads pounding They got my ass back into the car Took me for a ride up Sawmill Run Blvd Took a tunnel right into the city I was in the back still yelling and spitting The killer cop said that I might need help He said he thought I might hurt myself Said I ought to calm down and I ought to act right Or I'd spend a couple weeks up in Western Psych I recalled my middle school friend's faces When he'd talk about how they took his shoe laces The cop said that there were worse places Than county if I kept with the ape shit So I tried to calm down for the night Tried to recall what my Momma's face looked like I fell asleep on the floor in the drunk tank To stories of how much everyone drank I had dreams of my sweetheart coming back But everyone of those dreams faded black But nothing ever goes like you want it too When you're letting demons slip out from under you Sends thunder rolling like an overture Skies get overcast, sane minds overturned At the same time there is a sane voice you overhear Same voice your Mamma used to get you over tears You respond the same way you have for many years I'm gonna be man Momma grown without any fears

I woke up in a cell by myself Not knowing how I got there all foggy as hell A judge read my charges from a little tube TV They were pretty serious but I was good to go free A guard told me to keep my nose clean Once I saw a magistrate they'd all become summaries I walked home in the ninety degree summer heat With a dead phone and a player for mp3s Put on Tallahassee by tMG With See America Right up on repeat Felt like everything in life was catching up to me And I would catch the hands of God before I hit Dewalt st Flinching like I'm 10 and dad's in a bad mood Bobbing and weaving trying not to have an attitude Was only trying to be a man like I was taught to do In fact my old man had once been arrested too He fought six cops, his dad fought ten My brother fought four cops and they were all men And coming up I thought I'd be like them So here I am passing the bridge on 10th Just hacking up my stomach's contents Feeling attacked by shit in my subconscious And little voices in my head are making comments The same shit that I heard so often Be a man The next stop that I made was for smokes I still had bronchitis and a scratchy ass throat But without vices my life was just a joke I spent half of every check getting stoned My next stop was my best friends home He wasn't there but his mom was talking on the phone She put it down when I came through the door She said it's a small town and I heard about the night before I was a good kid who needed new friends Then she made me breakfast and let me vent My next stop was only just around the block To see the girl I got taken by the cops Her mom was on the porch and didn't want me around It's about that time I started breaking down I started crying just asking of she was okay She said a DUI would hurt her ride to Duquesne Her dad was a professor and her mom was a shrink Broke it down on mental illness and its effects when you drink She promised that she didn't really blame me But it's crazy the way that we'd been acting lately Used to be cool kids, a good kind of wild The way we all loved to play music made her smile Said she didn't know what happened to me as a child But get the fuck off my porch and good luck with your trial Be a man And sometimes when I talk about it now I start to get cocky start acting like I'm proud But I'm not, I was young, I was dumb, I was drunk Another angry white boy degenerate punk It's the same reason why I'd make a bad cop I still deal with being toxic from my bottom to my top Used to blame it on my pops, but I really gotta stop It's some shit I gotta drop, you only teach what you were taught Now I'm just trying to unlearn the bad shit Kinda wishing that I had before I had kids I don't want them all to have the life that dad did Or my dad did, or his dad did I just want them all to have some good habits Like asking for help when life gets savage I want them all to have respect for their mamma And learn how to unwrap life's little traumas Be a man

Oh to be good again Like being 10 before the world got in Like being bored in the backyard The swing was an X-Wing and the house was a Deathstar Life felt like it was getting to the best part Still dreamt I'd be SNL's guest star Oh to kiss my mamma with the mouth That never said a single cuss word out loud That never mouthed off to a cop Never smoked a gram out of a can of pop Never said that shit I said to my ex Never got freaky during sex Oh to feel free again To feel alike with the light within me again Before I ever had to wonder what you see in him Before I ever hit the bottle let the demons win Oh to look my mamma in the face With eyes that never seen the shit I'd like to erase That didn't need a joke to hide pain That never seen a needle poke a vein Oh to be good again Oh to be good Oh to be good like me 10 years old lost in the TV To be the very best like no one ever was Wanted to catch 'em all before I ever caught a buzz Wanted to be Superman, Batman Starry eyed day dreaming that I had fans Oh to hold my momma with the hands That never had to reach out for food stamps That never rolled up a twenty dollar bill Never clocked back a fist over drug deals Wish I never had wrists in cuffs Or an STD from a bitch I loved A guest spot on the wall of shame At the gas station with thief under my name Oh to hold my mamma with the arms That never set off a car alarm That never held onto life by a thread over some girl giving some guy head Oh to be good again Like being 10 before the world got in Head resting in my mamma's lap With her hand in my hair and the world to my back Oh to be good again Oh to be good