2007

It's 2007, I'm sitting in the back of Lupo's
About to play a show
I don't know
I'm 28 years old and it feels like a lifetime has passed—worse than that
It feels like I did the whole thing backwards

The girl kept saying she got us Gatorade and crackers
But that's just a tactic meant to distract us
We'll get so juiced up on the crackers
That we won't notice the Grand Buffet she laid out for the headlining act
Not hungry anyway; I'm sick to my stomach from the music that the opener played
I sneak a sandwich from the giant buffet, though
As some kind of justice for after when we don't get paid
There's a punk rock kid on the couch, all sweaty cause he just finished up on stage
He keeps nodding at me like we were both thieves on a heist
As if I couldn't see that he was half my age
He asked me how it sounded
I told him "Amazing!"
Too tired or bored to put the sarcasm in
He thanked me and then spilled some beer on my shirt
Everything was ruined but I told him it was nothing

Keta says I'm down on my luck
But when you have no luck to start with, you've nothing to part with
And I'm not mad that I don't have it
I'm mad that luck should have anything to do with being an artist
And now going to a show makes me wanna quit
Not because I'm not good enough but 'cause I love it too much
To watch it squirm while its bones get picked
And all that I can offer is a bit more traffic

There was a time when I thought that I could change the country
With a few choice raps and some odd time beats, But noise + noise = noise
And the only way that noise can make silence is defeat
I'm not hard of hearing; it just all sounds heartless
I wanna leave the state but I've been five years car-less
Fame is a club that I'm not a part of, so why am I obsessed with success, regardless?
All my friends getting back on the high horse of college
Moms breathe a sigh of financial relief
With each new year that I stay the course there's a new tax bracket that I fall beneath
My sisters play along like I was dating a convict
Not sold on the vision that I conned my mom with
No one wants to come out and say what they see
A man with no plan and no college degree
But I could still turn!
I've only wasted a third of my life, I could still do it right!
How many nights does a man need to fail
Before he can say that he fought the good fight?
Tonight—naw, RIGHT NOW I'm gonna change things!
This is not how I wanna spend the rest of my life
Because I got it in my head that I had to stand for something?
Once you get passed that the future actually looks bright
Man, all these years that I've starved and hustled
Convinced myself that the struggle was cool
I lacked the foresight that I was oh so proud of
But not anymore
Tomorrow I'm going back to school