to the nightly house band's singer squeezing drops of ecstasy from the words she's worn out long ago but still can't bear to leave like a drip-drop through a needle to the burnt-out shells of veins it drains her but it dulls her mental pain to the would-be novel writer coming steadily off his hinge as he's pouring out his soul amidst a coke-and-caffeine binge with hands that shake so violent tick-a-tapping on the keys weaving webs to catch his quickly-fading dreams so take my hand and walk a little longer if you can cuz your beauty and your smile they'll all fade after a while to a strangely introspective point of view now each ring of smoke, each firestick each empty bottle fills a poorly-chose vocation's cheap obligatory thrills we may think it's just a temporary moonlight cabaret but it always plays the same the following day the characters in stories they all seem to have it made each tragedy they meet still brings them closer to the day when everything is reckoned and when everyone is saved and the valleys and the mountains rise and fall to become the same so take my hand and walk a little farther if you can cuz your beauty and your smile will all fade after a while to a strangely introspective point of view now the coldest calculation gives the most extraordinary buzz and the worst habit to break is just what everybody does but the best rationalization gets us farther than we'd think it's at least enough to keep us from the brink so the myth of one's own goodness satisfices for a while like a poorly-polished surface with a bowtie and a smile but each existential crisis brings us closer to the truth that everything around us, when it dies is born anew