My good friend Chris wrote this poem semi-biographically for a friend of his.
When all the shit blows over
I’ll always remember.
I Was There.
It’s like all our wasted youth followed us in the breeze passing by,
We were all trying to understand why,
and we saw you from between her legs
smoking a cigarette in the back,
bitter to the last smoke in the pack
believe me,
we dont like it when one of us is cuffed
but we’re wasted,
and we can’t tell
when enough is enough
because i was there,
contagiously impaired
and i felt and saw through the rings under your eyes
somewhere along the way,
your head passed you by
because I know she had no time to look you up
she’d let you hold her,
and you fell and couldnt get up,
broken by your favorite poison in a cup.
It really was a desperate thing
when you’re locked out of your second home
with a smoke so you don’t feel alone,
yeah, we would all get drunk and stoned,
but thats not why you can’t find your key.
The chemicals that should kill us would just set us free,
not locked up like the pain that I saw in your face
when you realized you never really had a key in the first place.
I was there when we fell through the cracks
I was there by the blood on the tracks,
lonely kids, growing up too fast
we were throwing up our insides and the smoke idly went past
lined up and eyed by the foreigners
just numbers on the street corners
only looking like we were bad and it’s killing me,
all the times we had.
How a distant friend will act like we’ve never met
But a brother, fuck no,
he’ll never forget because its all there in the melted photographs,
colored wrath,
dripping wet.
Stuck in debt,
in the rain,
in what you became
look back in the album and find the polaroid pain
the things that saved you before will save you from being sane.
And I know I can say I was there
when we fell through the cracks
I was there by the blood on the tracks
and all those old, cheap and sentimental packs
you can’t help but look back
but when you do maybe you’ll finally care
because the whole time you looked away I was always waiting there
you’ll understand because you’ve looked the distance
and saw when we were falling over drunk
in a lunatic’s trunk
we lost the concept of time
we can laugh, but my fingers still bleed black
this paper with rhymes because you knew better,
but you weren’t able to tell,
while you were high on the top floor,
the other floors fell.
But bleeding and screaming
and the lives that we’re leading
is the only way my numb self shows.
We both know man,
that thats just the way things go we know,
we can’t cry,
because our drug of choice chose
that when you fly around glass,
you’ll fly right out the window
and when your falling down and see where the shame went
you’re just dust on the pavement.
broken down, thrown around.
On that familiar breeze
we’ll all get down on our knees
because our names screamed fame,
we we’re shit blessed.
And we all cried witness!
Because now we can all say we were there
and we all fell through the cracks
Yes, we were all there
and it’s our blood on the tracks
and the train’s not coming because we derailed it,
as entertainment as it strayed apart
and as much as it breaks my heart
we can say,
yeah we were there,
we got fucked up
and we really didn’t care
but those melted pictures will always strip us bare
because it’s our blood on the tracks,
it’s our story,
we chose to ignore the warning
we won’t even remember in the morning.
That it’s a trainwreck that we all shared
we know that the blood kept the nails
racked with the things we knew as facts,
we’ll always remember it was our day
it was our blood on those tracks.