Chad Anderson - Liars, All of Us lyrics

All the poets that you love listening to love lying to you I'm not that egocentric to make you believe that I'm not one of them I lie all the time, mostly up here See, I've been doing this for a little while and I'm starting to understand things Poetry is not about telling you the truth It's about telling you the version of a story that gets the most reaction The one that flows the best on the mic The one that has all the lines that the audience is going to like See, maybe the truth isn't supposed to rhyme so well Maybe it doesn't have to rise to a crescendo The truth never sounded like sound bites and name dropping I promised myself I wouldn't write poems about poetry But I woke up at three a.m. the other morning And started spitting out all these lies that I couldn't roll off my tongue And thought that maybe, at this hour, I could write a poem about honesty Without having to choreograph the hook at the end I woke up at three a.m. And I'm having trouble remembering how to spell the word wouldn't Four years ago, I featured at a youth slam in Jersey City And tried to show some children how poetry is supposed to sound cool Jessica sat in the front row, thinking I could teach her about spoken word I lied to her, in metaphor, for a half hour Only to hear the silence of a fifth grade explosion Jessica explained it to her thirteen year old peers How rough her father's beard stubble felt when her was drinking And how a foster family is just a fresh coat of paint over stucco When you've been running against the wall She didn't actually say all this Not like I can But I could hear the inhalation of truth in between breaths of her poetry Her name is not really Jessica I don't remember what it is But for a moment, I can make you care about her even if she's not real Don't ask me You wouldn't know the difference anyway I don't write poems about honesty I've written three poems this year to make me sound cute to girls But not one about the medication that I'm taking Because there are some things that I don't f**ing talk about Why am I 33 years old and still trying to sound cute to girls? A couple weeks ago, two friends asked me how my roommate is doing I use the word roommate instead of referring to her as the girl I'm afraid of falling in love with Because she is the most beautiful, overturned school bus that I have ever seen And I slow down sometimes to watch the trauma And because she knows me Like how she knows that I look in the mirror too much And I always eat the last peanut bu*ter cup And I f** girls with my poems And use the word roommate too loosely And the poet in me should've told them she's doing just fine But I hadn't memorized all the lines yet My best friend is not doing fine and I can't fix it The students in my cla** like me because I say the word bullsh** during my lectures And let them out early They don't see that fear has me losing focus on the bullet points When I'm thinking about how many slit wrists I'll return home to tonight My roommate's not suicidal But it sounds s**ier than saying that she closes her eyes sometimes When she's changing lanes I lie because it keeps me driving to work instead of holding her all night and crying I need somebody to talk to But poetry helps you meet people who want to f** poets Who do you talk to when your best friend is biting off her cuticles While other girls are sharpening their nails? I need to go to bed now I'm sorry I lied I'll write the rest of this poem tomorrow When I can differentiate what's none of your f**ing business And write poems with hooks that rhyme It doesn't matter what you believe I'm tired of being the strong one all the time