In My Lifetime

Everybody knows

They’re scared.

Scared you won't be, and that you’ll find out why. They greet you, hostile, to help the rising fall. introducing lessons-but

Everybody knows ego, and they say “you’re trippin"

Everybody knows what I'm saying, but say I translate different. The words I pick, were not meant for their type of ill-spread lies, to make the dumb literate.

Cursed in failure. They raise hell and bail, for a crime they caused but I pay for. In this place Everybody knows. They want me to go.

When I decide to leave, tired from fighting for what everybody knows is mine. I gotta mind, and it makes everybody lose theirs.

Everybody acts surprised, my body seizes when flares fly from hands. I just want to go-home-to my family. I am celebrating birth today.

I'm everybody's favorite holiday, lit up every night, somewhere shadowing my color and vivacity.

They say "don't you dare."

I say, "I have to."

I ask everybody " what would you do?

YOU ALL KNOW.

Everybody pretends they don't.

Like that pain of the family junkie, you cross the street to avoid helping, moving away you don’t have to see proof.

Everybody knows. They see you.