Jude
The foundationof my hopes and dreams was built on smoky bars and drunken college students who didn’t give a shit.
Shaky at best.
The song I was about to sing was written on the back of a fast food receipt gotten after the funeral of three of my high school friends who were killed in a drunk driving accident. I’d sat in my car, Ben silent for once in the passenger seat, overcome with the need to take the maelstrom from inside me and commit it to paper.
Every slash of ink had given me a drop of relief. Each syllable meant a second for me to breathe without knives in my lungs.
I wrote it in twenty minutes, then handed it over to Ben and sobbed for the first time since I’d gotten the phone call.
I’d sung this song a thousand times since that day in my car, and I swear, Ben had been there every time. The words never lost their meaning and releasing them meant opening that wound that should’ve healed a long time ago. But I had always spilled my blood on stage. I didn’t know how else to do it.
Maybe that was why I’d become so disillusioned with it all. Spilling my blood in front of an audience who’d rather me be singing the latest Green Day single was soul-sucking.
Cupping the microphone between my hands, I gave them everything. I had no choice in the matter. They could take my everything and toss it in the trash, or laugh over it, or ignore it like background noise, but I was going to do it anyway.
were we ever young
or did our youth get swept aside
for the loneliness of growing up
on the highest wrung
we were given it all
except what we needed
to survive this hard knock life
and brace for the fall
can’t stop the madness
drifting past sadness
falling into lonely
sinking below slowly
slept but still tired
fighting the muck and get mired
never going to be okay
again now that we are certain
this shit we never wanted
will all be stripped away
wounds dressed with strands of gold
suckled in the lap of luxury
fed with a silver spoon