An Ode To The Nite Ratz Club

(album: It Never Goes Out - 2011)

The gas inside the combustion engine
Took away all of the mystery and adventure
From the walk to your house
In the dark, so that we could stay out all night long
And be king of all the roads,
And the woods, and the lake, or anything we chose,

Because everything was ours.
And we would spraypaint 'NRC' so everyone would know.

We would break into the factory. Our childhood autonomy
Had no respect for authority, or property,
Or your asshole neighbors' complaints.
And I still have all the keys
To the forklifts that we never got a chance to drive around
Or tear the building down ourselves.

From the top of the water tower,
We spilled our guts on one another,
And we compiled them together,
And we all shared the same heart.
And we hated all construction,
But we loved all their machines,
And they hated our destruction,
And we picked their locks apart.

And we thought we were damn clever,
Cause they never kept us out,
And we thought we'd live forever.

Until the night when it got way too serious,
And you showed me your damaged wrists,
And you broke down and we embraced
And nothing at that time meant more to me.
And if I had only known
That it would be the last time
We'd be on that level with one another
I would have never let you go.

I still walk those paths at night, but now just on my own.
I recite to myself every story in hopes that I will never let them go.

And I'll hold on to every polaroid from France and Rome,
And remember the nights at the Alamo as if it were my second home.
And I know that we had no idea what we were doing,
But an artist's first work can be his greatest under a different set of lenses.

And our ideas of staying close together for all time;
I wish I still had that same state of mind.