Never let the acoustics of a bathroom
fool you into thinking you can keep time and tune.
I tell you, I can kill it on the shampoo bottle
and I call it murder in Apartment 30
because I decimate the soap-scum stage.
Whims and wishes walk on the promenades of our minds,
reinforced and Kevlar after incessant mullings,
yet they come out as gossamer shawls when we open our mouths;
the greatest conversations I’ve ever had have been in my head,
the best comebacks, the surest arguments, the softest nothings
whispered by ghosts with faces I know, I desire,
but those conversations just don’t happen outside of Apartment 30.
Yeah, I could let adolescent life punch itself tired
as I hug the ropes, sweating and grinning at the coming opportunity,
but you can’t sign record deals and own the stage
if you don’t step out there in the first place.
But my voice outside of Apartment 30 gets lost in the wind,
I stand in line with people whose hands are shoved in pockets
and shoulders hunched to combat that frigid breath
forced out from a god who begs us to bask in the stimulus
and sing outside of the bathroom but we deny it
and deny it
and I want so badly for someone to begin the song
because somewhere along the way I’ll pick up the second verse
that’ll turn into a duetted chorus and we’ll murder it
inside and out of Apartment 30.