That summer we finally escaped, we took our bicycles down to the beach at Cap-Aux-Os where the ocean was nobody’s friend but I made her mine in the smell of the surf and the taste of beer and brine. Once, the bones of the dead filled the cape and the edge of the world was a place that someone named; now, my heart is the heart of a slave and yours is too and we fuck like there’s somebody paying us to fuck. The last war we’ll fight is our own. What use is pretending when you’ve got all of this cash? We’re not hiding from you, love, you can just take what you want. Over and over, Our bodies distorted, Our choices perverted, Our homes set on fire.

Where’d you have to go to get so broken hearted? cuz they don’t fuck you up for free. they take you like they want you cuz they know they’ve got you terrified and underpaid. all my life I’ve been a sweetheart, baby, all my life I’ve been a saint. if they want me, let them come and find me. all my life I’ve been afraid. You’ve got the kinda flesh that takes to bruisin’ easy and you know these bitches like it rough. Don’t you let em near you when they get to talkin, they’ll rip the skin right off your bones. All your life you’ve been a sweetheart baby, I know you’re spoilin’ for a fight They don’t wanna tell you that they think you’re worthless; they just wanna tell you that you’re sick I know you feel surrounded.

God gave me teeth God gave me teeth God gave me teeth, oh lord, oh lord, what am I to eat? I know my sisters ain’t free I got the blood of the lamb, the skin of my teeth, and a dick that dont work when it should you gotta do what you can with the things you weren’t given, but God gave me teeth God gave me teeth God gave me teeth, oh lord, oh lord, what am I to eat? I know you fuckers can’t feel, but the love of my life’s got the best of diseases and if you can’t live for yourself, you’re obligated to die just like everyone else god gave me teeth

don’t make it who you are don’t make it where you came from don’t make it what you know don’t make it like you don’t know don’t make it what you love don’t make it what you live for don’t make it what you need just shake it like you love me (We don’t get lost in other countries Where our signal blurs and dissipates Like the beating of a far off metronome Losing time against the space Our bodies burn atomic fire Firing off electromagnetic waves There’s nothing foreign left Except the way that we all age There’s a trauma to being inside the concrete The highway’s full of DNA Our lungs weren’t made to process asphalt So we mostly end up full of tar)

if it ever sounded like something needed being said it’s what i’ll say when i’m paying the last of my debts and i’m so far away, gorgeous, i’m so far away all of the time and all the sentiment we used to summon at will will dry up like our sense there was ever anything worth saying but i can’t find the words, darling; i can’t get the words out of my head. so be mine and in the back of my terrified mind, i know you’re the something i never believed i would find but i’m so far away gorgeous, i’m so far away out of my mind so be mine just be mine

Someday I’ll be exactly what I keep saying I’ll be and, finally, I’ll be what you need! I’ll be what you need! I think you don’t understand what you do to me! I know you never became who you thought you’d be, and I’ve got the look of a man who could set you free, but my heart is full of pus and it keeps blaming you for everything and I know that you don’t understand what you do to me! And oooh, you look so good in that wedding ring! Who gave it to you? I know he won’t understand what i have to do but don’t you run from me. I think you don’t understand what you do to me.

I dowloaded some sabbath, like we had imagined; (just like we had imagined) nothing too new or familiar, nothing ronnie james dio, nothing too bloody, or dark, or removed. you pulled up in a Charger; i’d just made my first record, i was smoking but trying to quit (again), You said Montreal was on fire, that we needed to vacate, you shook the keys and I jumped in (and I quit after that, and I quit til you died, and I couldn’t hold on anymore). There's things i can't remember, i admit i gloss over, I admit that I fill in the gaps, the Jays would lose until august but I’m glad that you saw them (I’m glad that I saw you), the 401 runs until Windsor, where the world ends and I’m new, where I could never forget you (I’d been running away from just about everything i was childish and angry and small) but there was nothing so endless as the sky over Toronto in the middle of that summer. Just like we always imagined it “You won’t change me” comes on and we run out of gas and maybe those songs never meant what we wanted them to maybe the words are simplistic and the context is wrong we still gotta get out and walk before it really gets dark But now the sunset’s forgiving and I’d want you to know I feel better than ever but I still don’t feel right but somedays i don't feel like i'm stretching, and you know i never stopped pushing, (you know i’ll never stop pushing), but if i remember you silent, like that night on the highway, back when everything mattered It's cuz I figured it out like we always imagined, like we always imagined I would

Who knows who swung first? But i was always the slowest and worst, i was always the boy with the wrong kind of words, always fumbling after myself; always staying in too long, never giving up when i should. they don’t make fighters like me anymore, who hide their savagery under their breath. But i can imagine us older, and finally alright, but its not like the wildfire dreams that we shared and no one could tell us were lies. my best and my only friend, i’ll love you til nobody dies. i’ll love you like i’m not afraid anymore, even if i can’t open my eyes. bareknuckled, i’m here somewhere there’s a fight that could settle our debts but i’m no longer that much a fighter; i just throw punches til one of them hits. my best and my only friend, i’ll love you til i don’t exist. i’ll love you like i’m not afraid anymore, even if i can’t open my fists bareknuckled, i’m here

If you wanted to hurt me, like this you’d have to cut off my hands, like this so there’d be no one to hold you, like this and take you like I took you, like this, and if I’m going to miss you, I’m going to miss you like this: with my arms open fully, until they tire out completely, and it will feel like i’m starving cuz no one else will feed me there are no gods in this country, only riddles that keep mounting. And I, and I. And when no one else completes me, like you did, I’ll take to running til my legs give out, like you did, and when the fuckers finally find me out, like you did, I’ll get as many as I can and die, like you did. And I, and I And I’ll keep on moving like I’m on my own (and we all are) There’s nothing I can do but try to be what you weren’t.