Sophomore year—or maybe it was junior/ A business club and I went to tour/ This company in Houston/ Called Constellation Energy/ They trade oil futures—whatever those are/ And a few tour-guides showed us around the office/ "Here is the break room, here is the kitchen/ "And the bullpen/ "There's Tracey/ "Wave hi to Tracey—keep your eye on her"/ And at the end of the tour, we all reconvened/ In the conference room with all of our guides/ For a Q&A/ And someone asked an obvious question/ Of which I couldn't have foreseen the impact/ "How did you come to Constellation Energy?/ "Tell us about your journey briefly, if you wouldn't mind"/ They asked, perfunctorily/ But what happened next has always haunted me/ Everyone told slight variations/ On the same exact story/ They all ended up here from a tour like this one/ From a school like ours/ And took the internship at the end of the tour/ And the people were nice/ And the pay was fine/ And it wasn't too far away/ All in all, it was not too bad/ Though they admittedly weren't in love with oil futures/ At the end of the stories, though—/ Four or five stories—/ Everyone at some point used the same phrase verbatim/ And by the third time I was panicking/ They said/ "Yep, that's how I ended up here/ "I used to be just like you/ "And now, here I am—thirty years later/ "I've been here ever since/ "I've been here ever since/ "I've been here ever since/ "I've been here ever since"/ This is One Last Job!/ And ever since then, I'm haunted by inertia/ The idea the next choice you make/ Could be your last/ And you wouldn't even feel it happening/ But hey, wait a second/ If that's how it works, then/ On what grounds can you assert/ That you're even choosing?/ What does that word mean?/ By my wits, I'm far less likely/ To exist than to be frightfully/ Misconceiving my own verbal/ Narrative for things external/ And by the numbers, I/ Will follow, unconvinced/ I'll live and work and die/ I'll be here ever since/ And by the numbers, I/ Will follow, unconvinced/ I'll live and work and die/ I'll be here ever since//

With every intake of my breath/ I wonder how many more I have left/ Putting a tie on and shaving in the mirror/ Why isn't my future looking any clearer?/ I keep a calendar now/ I take my vitamins/ Look at me now, Mom/ I'm all grown up/ But every morning when I'm wincing through my coffee/ I wanna put something sinister in my cup/ And I'm not so sure/ What I'm working toward/ I'm just going through the motions when I'm told/ And it makes me sick/ To think that this is it/ And I'll just fall in line until I'm weak and old/ All my friends are elevator-pitching/ ("Lemme tell ya about my friend's biotech startup/) Subscribing to "The New Yorker"/ ("You might have heard mentioned in the New Yorker'"/) I'm not sure I'm buying all the hype/ (I'm not sure I'm buying all the hype/) A working member of a dismal system/ With too many regrets to list 'em/ Is that what's coming down the pike?/ And I'm not so sure/ What I'm working toward/ I'm just going through the motions when I’m told/ But does it scare me more/ To walk out the door/ When the bird in hand is shelter from the cold?/ Well maybe I'm just kidding myself/ Thinking I'll ever be/ More than the stupid kid I am tonight/ And maybe trying move beyond [those high-school, chimp-shit status-games/(Is it power? Is that really all there is?)]/ Was throwing away the one thing I [did right/(had at least understood)]/ There's lots of things I should be learning, but/ While this cigarette's still burning/ (Per the wheel's unyielding turning/) I'm just a guy content with what he's got/ Maybe who I am right now's enough to last forever/ But, then again, well/ Maybe not/ I wrote this song when I was 19/ That was eight years ago/ As of this recording/ And I'm equal parts satis- and petrified/ Just how well this still describes me/ How little has changed/ I still can't cope with stasis/ Still don’t know what my place is/ I haven't even tied my shoes yet/ I don't know where the race is/ I can't explain/ What's happening inside my brain/ Is all of this the buildup to a glimmering redemption arc/ Or is it meaningless and then I die?/ If it doesn't get remembered/ It isn't true/ Did you make an impact/ Or didn't you?/ I hope it's not that/ To see the truth/ You have to spend/ Your ability to inhabit it/ And I'm not so sure/ What I'm working toward/ I'm just going through the motions when I'm told/ And it's laid me low/ Being dragged in tow/ Behind the memory of what I've bought and sold//

I've been sleeping on the floor, 'cause I/ Found it more efficient than the air-bed/ And I've been trying not to recognize/ Just how dismal an assessment/ That is/ I am/ Content to operate in safe mode/ I am/ I have been/ Wrecking my brain so I can stay home/ I feel, most mornings/ Like a five-car pileup/ The kind you call in HAZMAT for/ And "I'll never feel like this again"/ Was what I said the night before/ So/ It's a poorly kept conspiracy/ An open secret between me and my shadow/ But when I look, it's pretty clear to see/ I stay opaque to obfuscate a shallow/ Fear of/ Exposure/ And any unplanned disclosure/ At least/ Within these walls/ I can pretend I'm passing for composure/ I find myself/ Struggling with the simplest of questions/ This sound's a searing/ Incoherent din to me/ And I just don't want to hear it/ Because/ I feel, most mornings/ Like a five-car pileup/ The kind you call in HAZMAT for/ And "I'll never feel like this again"/ Was what I said the night before/ So/ I am/ Content/ To operate in safe mode/ I am hell-bent/ On sticking with the same code/ But there's a bug in the mainframe/ Of this lame game/ And I'm too scared of a new scene/ So one of these days/ I'm gonna blue-screen/ I'm gonna blue-screen/ I'm gonna blue-screen/ For good//

I've found myself/ Marking the passing time/ With alarming insouciance/ I'm here again/ Another night/ Another Friday night/ "It's fall."/ That's all I have to say/ A gift, adrift/ And sifting through my days/ They melt/ Away/ And I'm caught between not breaking up/ The present that I've come to clutch/ And reaching for a vision I don't possess/ But indecision has a cost/ And when I count the days I've lost/ In thought, I'm not composed/ I must confess/ Going nowhere's going somewhere/ Just not anywhere good/ I get why people hate their birthdays now/ I've joined the ranks/ I look back on the year like a report card/ And I muster meager thanks/ Amid my shuffling/ I fixed a couple things/ I guess/ But every time/ I turn my eye/ To if I've earned my life/ I digress/ And I'm not without gratitude/ But I need a change of platitudes/ The ones I have are concrete on my feet/ Miscalculating massively/ I'm finally stymied passively/ A forfeit by refusal to compete/ Will I be here next year?/ Who's gonna be next to me?/ Another night/ Another night/ Another year of another nights/ It's all a blur/ But I've begun to stir/ I've gotta learn to sight-read/ And I might/ Another night/ Another night/ Another night/ Another night//

Do you ever get mad at everything/ And want to run off to Thailand or something?/ Where nobody knows you/ And nobody owes you a thing/ What a blessed vice-versa/ This is one of those days/ When I feel like throwing it all away/ And honestly/ There's been a lot of these/ Recently/ I'll throw my phone in a riverbed/ I'll burn the stack of books I've never read/ Away from duty and propensity/ I want to carve myself a new identity/ Thus spoke Zarathustra/ There are some things you shouldn't get used 'ta/ I'm hoping/ I'm groping for/ The end of 'why's/ Will I be wise?/ Glance, by chance, the infinite, but/ What if I'm not into it? Oh/ Who can meet the urge to merge/ Who can't withstand the intimate?/ I'm digging bleedingly, pleading this/ Twilit pit admit its treasure, or/ I'll dig too far/ And stand crammed and stranded/ By all that I scrambled to measure/ All/ All who seek shall find/ God, I hope that's good/ I've fallen behind/ And I'm afraid of personhood/ I've made my clamoring, stammering/ Camp within the gaping maw, and/ I'll scream a lucid dream/ Until I still my aching jaw/ In awe/ Thus spoke Zarathustra/ I'll place my hands on new stuff/ I'm hoping/ I'm going forth/ To end my 'why's/ In my demise//

Is it real?/ Did I lose?/ Did I win?/ Did I choose?/ I feel irrelevant/ Irreverent/ Ahead of it/ Discredited/ I snooze/ It's Saturday/ It's beautiful/ I snooze/ Wake in the day to a soundless crash/ I lay in the shade of Texas ash, and/ Ponder a phrase that I didn't catch while/ Whittling down my remaining stash of/ Goodwill/ I don't know where I get the nerve/ To be still, still/ "You seem like/ "A nice enough guy"/ What do you know?/ Admittedly/ What do I?/ 3rd and ten/ Here again/ Burn a bridge/ Phone a friend, I hope/ That I convert/ What I have heard/ Velocity/ Heisenberg/ I'm all/ Too aware/ That I am still/ Still where?/ Wake in the day to a flameless smoke/ I lay in the shade of a lacey oak/ And savor the taste of a hasty joke/ While whiling away my remaining hope of/ Could, or will/ I don't know where I get the nerve/ To be where, still//

You said, "'Memento mori'/ "Means 'a reminder of death'"/ And that you like to say and see it/ As I struggle to catch my breath/ Bronze head sculpture/ We're so cultured/ Bone sepulcher room/ Ancient sewing/ Comments slowing/ Let's get going soon/ We walk/ Around/ But nothing doesn't remind me/ There's not a sound/ Are you still there behind me?/ You said some fancy French term/ Means "a trick of the eye"/ And one of the artist's greatest tools/ Is an expectation defied/ Neon stanza/ Diorama/ Romans when in Rome/ X-ray boxes/ I feel nauseous/ Can I take you home? I squint and squirm/ But nothing doesn't confuse me/ My mint concern/ Is there anyone left to excuse me? Memento mori/ Is that what this has all been about?/ It's every story/ But I don't think I can figure it out/ Come see me sometime/ 12 bucks or free for students/ Encased in half-ass drafts/ Of what I thought could pass for prudence/ Memento/ Memento/ Memento/ Memento/ Memento mori/ Memento mori/ Memento mori/ Memento mori/ Memento (x16)//

It's a drag to be/ An actuality/ It's a trade that's hardly free/ There's a part of me/ Crystallized in amber/ A fragile timbre ringing/ Individually/ I could turn a page/ Or I could really spiral/ I feel a viral trace/ A place awakening/ I'm afraid to engage/ I'm afraid to evolve/ I'm afraid to decide/ I'm afraid to dissolve/ There are parts you gotta cover over/ To make room/ There's only so much room/ To build a layer on top of this one/ What happens to this one?/ Is it consumed?/ I don't find it so captivating/ To repent, lament, and reinvent/ The sacramental present tense, but/ That's not so practical/ I care what's down there/ I wonder what's down there/ All the quiet things you're not supposed to wonder/ All the monsters kept at bay/ By the rock you're hiding under/ All the things you used to lean on/ That you shouldn't have/ All in you that is/ Incompatible/ But who do you become to be acceptable?/ Do you forfeit that in you which was exceptional?/ There's a part of me/ That wants to stay/ Incompatible/ At dawn among the fossils/ Of ammonites encased in limestone/ Drawn, the breath exhaled by you and I/ Still in your nostrils/ Perched above and constituted of/ Everything before/ There's nothing lost/ Maybe I could be/ An inconsistency/ Maybe there is no such thing/ Every part of you's/ Etched in something solid/ I never saw it/ But if you hold your breath, it--//

Maybe someday I'll look back/ And see the purpose of my actions/ And refracted through the present tense/ My hesitance was necessary/ But now I'm only standing in the waves/ The days lap at my/ Ankles, shins and knees and thighs/ The water's rising/ An enterprising start/ What happens/ What happens/ What happens/ What happens/ What happens/ What happens/ What happens/ What happens to the time?/ Would it be self-serving/ To say *should*'s a kind of hubris?/ Is it wrong to be demagnetized/ If iron's irony?/ Play the film back frame-by-frame/ And movement's imperceptible/ Is it better to be honest/ Or be free?/ Boundaries/ Are bound to be/ Our ground and sea/ Our gravity/ But what if there/ Behind the air/ Is something more than/ Words can snare/ I can't express/ What's in my chest/ I breathe and seethe/ Like all the rest/ But in between/ *Definitely*s/ There hops and gleams/ An unspeakable *maybe*/ That everything is fine/ That you are not your own/ That even this is fine/ That love is all there is/ That you only must remember/ That you only must remember/ That you only must remember/ That you only must remember/ Maybe I'm naïve or maybe all is as it should be/ Maybe gratitude's a cop-out/ To sit back and waste away/ But from what I can tell/ There's a whole world beneath the ocean/ I would rather learn to swim/ Than burn to speak/ Than burn to speak//

There's a pile of books on my coffee table/ I'm pretty sure I'll never read/ Each a life some guy/ Hunched over a desk by candle- or lamp-light/ To conceive/ Over countless pin-drop quiet nights alone/ And I can't read them all/ No I can't read them all/ But if you're hearing this, you're made of/ The same carbon as the dinosaurs/ You've been a million things/ And you'll be a million more/ What will you leave behind/ To prove you existed?/ And will it sit on a coffee table?/ There was a time when I thought I'd watch "The Wire"/ I thought it'd happen on its own/ I thought there was a law of nature which stated/ That you will be acknowledged/ If only you're original/ And I wanted to believe that/ What am I writing into otherwise?/ What am I writing into otherwise?/ But as I'm writing this, I'm made of/ Iron manufactured in stars/ I'm a million nothings-at-all/ And I'm something/ I'm one of them now/ This song will fade away, but/ You and I will stay/ We'll both be reborn as/ Coffee tables/ I'll be a shoe/ A tub a' glue/ A new cigar/ A blue guitar/ A favorite mug/ The family pug/ A winter coat/ A fishing boat/ I'll be a spoon/ A million moons/ A box of loot/ A parachute/ The book you read/ The growing seed/ And see, it's true/ You're me/ I'm you//

What can I say?/ I'm drinking canned wine/ In a parking lot/ On Christmas Day/ But I'm really not/ Able to articulate/ This sense I've had of late/ That makes me feel like/ Nothing is out of place/ Nothing's ever out of place/ Nothing's ever out of place/ Nothing's ever out of place/ I am becoming/ What it is I am becoming/ So are you/ It can be no other way/ And we are all partaking in/ What it is we're all becoming/ And it can be no other way/ It's cause and effect/ And nothing is out of place/ Nothing is out of place/ Nothing is out of place/ There's no place to be out of/ There is no you/ There's no me, there is/ No prisoner aching to be free, there is/ No boundary to be found, there's only/ Everything becoming everything that will be/ And isn't that spectacular?/ You are not out of place/ It's spectacular/ Nothing's ever out of place/ Merry Christmas/ Merry Christmas/ Merry Christmas/ Nothing is out of place/ Nothing is out of place//

Wednesday night, I hailed a ride in Vegas/ Trent pulls up in discontinued Chrysler/ And we pull out/ On Howard Hughes Parkway/ I ask, "Do you know who Howard Hughes was?/ "I'm on here all the time and have no clue"/ He says, "Sir, he was the richest man/ "On Earth 'til he went insane"/ Trent's been in Vegas since 2009/ I ask what brought him here/ He laughs and says, "Drugs and hookers./ "I used to party pretty hard."/ I laugh, too, disarmed by the candor/ I ask, "Are there any drugs you'd especially recommend?"/ He says, "I'd recommend living your life."/ As it turns out Trent is formerly homeless/ Says he used to wake up from blackouts in ditches/ And he nearly died/ I am such an unbelievable dick/ I'm sure he can sense me regretting the question/ But he thinks for a second and says,/ "You know, it's funny though./ "I wouldn't take anything back."/ He says, "Though I wouldn't tell someone else to do the same,/ "Everything that's happened to me/ "Built the character that only I have./ "It was all supposed to happen."/ I sit up in my seat/ As we turn off Sands to the boulevard/ I said, "You know, I've been thinking the same thing lately--/ "That maybe fate is perfect."/ We arrived and said goodnight/ I went up to my room/ Wherever I am is heaven/ And I've been here ever since/ I've been here ever since/ I've been here ever since/ I've been here ever since//