The Writing Of My Life

i planned for everything
and you knew me, you knew i had scripted
everything out accordingly
you knew i was a writer
you knew i was a poet
you even knew i was starting my novel

did you even know that i used
your mother's maiden name
as a last name for the
scottish lab technician in my book?

well, as i was saying,
i've worked it out over the years
and i've figured out how to take care of myself
and i've figured out how to get ahead in the game
and you know, I did pretty well
i had scripted my life out

i was an open book

but i was careful, i know
that at the beginning of the page
some things made my pen swirl
and i started to write on an angle
and sometimes i'd curl around on the page
or write upside-down

but as i figure out how i wanted my life to be
i was quite meticulous in my writing
and the page actually looked quite graceful

and i've still got room left on that page
for more writing, for more living
but i think so far it was looking pretty good
i figured out how i wanted the page to look
and i did just the right things
with the writing on the page
and, well, the writing of my life
was looking pretty good

and after meeting you,
you were a nice edition
to the writing of my life
you saw me play at my last live chicago concert
and, well,
you enriched my life

even though sometimes you'd piss me off
you were vibrant, and you
helped that page look better

and then

and then you had to go die
i don't even want to talk about you
not taking care of yourself enough
i know you worked out,
but scottish or not
you were diabetic
you should have checked your blood sugar levels more
you shouldn't have drank so much

i know you wanted to work on the writing of your life
but you must have known
you couldn't cram all that living into your body

you should have known that

but you know, you weren't a writer
i don't know if you ever looked at the writing of your life
or if you just relied on what you painted
to show how you felt
but you knew i was a writer
and you knew how i watched
over everything in my life

you knew i was the one in charge
you knew i had a plan for everything
you knew i worked my ass off
you knew i succeeded at everything i did

you knew

you knew and you had to go off and die
and mess up my whole page

because right at that point that god-damned pen
started scribbling all over the place
and it made a real mess out of part of my life

yeah, you know i cried for days for you
who am i kidding, i cried for months
and years later i still cried for you
and yeah, no one wanted anything to ever happen to you
but sometimes, you know,
like in the stages of recovery,
anger is one of them
blame is one of them
and right now all i can do
is be angry at you for dying
because i haven't gone through all the recovery steps yet
but i have to blame someone
for making me feel this way
don't i