excuses pour out so easily and i ve never had a trouble with the frequency it needs a mate to calm me down postcards and phones calls to a long distance small town and i ve never been good with secrets to keep but i can lie white right through my teeth that current takes us and we breathe it in mistakes in old friends to a short coming quick end an empty eyed blank stare at an atlas i m lost without a map or compass and i revise and i rewrite i m drowning in long nights late drives with old ghosts i m an index of footnotes and i m sick sick sick of my complaining that rhetoric that i ve been writing that blood red bled from ink to pen i m blue black backwards i am paper thin