Empty Head.

If we were damned to survive And make it through Another shit faced night Would our plaster masks Begin to corrode and collapse? There's only so much ugliness we can take Before all mirrors begin to break And our skin would bubble and boil Wrapped tight in obsessions coil

Now that I’m a little Less fogged, confoundedly clear I wonder what other secrets You hid in plain view You know what Fuck it, I don’t I’d rather forget about you.

I give.

I dragged you Through my skin In midnight veins Pulling and pulling Tugging and tugging Until I couldn't feel You, or anything, Much of anything, Nothing much, Anything, anymore, Running and running Endlessly running They circled themselves On the floor In neat Serpentine coils Sadly spelling Lonely lustful lyrics Of a present futures Screaming, here lies "Love long lost" They Drip crude oil Onto fake white floors That do little to conceal Cracked and corroded concrete Proof of the faulted foundation We tried to build this city on And underneath were those same veins But these knew not your name But read this time: "Here lies lust long lost Forever Bled dry of burning black blood" -Jared Rodriguez

"Remind myself to focus" Remind yourself to focus Tapping on the table Checking the clock The tick of the minute Drilling holes in your brain Attempting to relieve pressure Remind yourself to focus Jingling chain in your pocket Flipping each coin Between your knuckles And checking it's weight Silver dollar or nickel It feels the same Remind yourself to focus Drawing dark circles Over and over again Dark circles Blotting out your boredom And burning out your sun Dark circles Drawing blood under your eyes Reminding yourself to focus Takes far too much attention And I can barely sit still What's the time? -Jared Rodriguez

Resist contact You are Phoenix incarnate Beauty in flame And I'm worried ill disintegrate

Fix it, Impossible. Past in a grave Gone for good. Am I dead? Am I dreaming? Sometimes I wish Others I don’t Pernicious love Grasping a ghost.

The World Wide Web It's supposed to connect Each one of our encased pods But it's just tied us up With "Hey, how you doin?" "What's your status?" "Who're you with? Here's your world Everything is in Hi-Fucking-Def And it's left us all with Hearts that are dead And as we store our life On a 1080p page We watched our humanity Slip away And deleted each other crash on the information highway the cleanup is Fast, exacting, it left us used Permanently deleted hidden in miscues Relationships and statuses change At the blink of an eye Pictures once saved Damn us in ways We'd never understand So instead of dealing With our problems First fucking hand We bury our heads in our screens Internet made us disposable again.

I should've written something today But my anger got in my way See I'm figuring my shit out And it's cool if you don't wanna be around But don't expect me to be waiting I ain't a dog in your pound.

I’m on the other Side of the door I forgot my key In the cab You all eat, Drink, laugh And I watch A voyeur Viciously obsessed With what’s on the other side Stuffed mouths And belly laughs And love It’s the love That pushes my nose to the glass Until it cracks And I smell You on everything But I’m still on the other side