I plan to major in architecture.

William Hayes was a gray, young man

With a long, gaunt face,

Pewter eyes,

And hair the color of moonlight.

Each day he gazed outside his window,

Beyond the rose bushes,

The neatly trimmed grass,

The stone fountain,

And the black iron gate.

His eyes followed the pitiable, ant-like humans

That scurried throughout the town,

Leading their secretly torturous lives;

William yearned to walk among them,

To be seen as one of them,

To suffer as they do,

But he knew that none of these things were possible.

William Hayes only interacted with the rich, unfortunate souls

Whom his parents invited to frequent parties.

Sometimes his parents’ friends brought their children:

Equally rich,

Equally unfortunate,

Some younger than William,

Some older,

Some about the same age.

Young maids found William attractive;

His permanent stoic expression,

Tall, lanky body,

And apparent loneliness

All made the young maids flock to him.

They desired to keep him company,

And they offered him kisses on the cheek

As “friendly” greetings when they met;

William accepted them out of courtesy.

He did not return them,

He did not smile,

He hardly even winced.

There was not a single aristocrat

Who ambled around his ornamental house

That could feed him satisfaction;

So he spent each day,
Gazing outside his window,

Beyond the rose bushes,

The neatly trimmed grass,

The stone fountain,

And the black iron gate,

Yearning to walk among the tortured ant-like humans,

To be seen as one of them,

To suffer as they do.

Not only in our hearts,
But in the desolate streets of our minds,
We wander like homeless men--
Not the kind that stand on street corners
With cardboard signs,
But the ones who push treasure-filled carts,
The truly disturbed ones,
The ones with the voices in their heads,
The ones who are as lonely as stars,
We're not that different from them,
We share our disturbances
And our fear of being lonely forever--
Donnie, you're not the only one who is afraid;

We're just Joel,
Who fall in love with anyone
Who shows us the least bit of attention;
But where is our Clementine?
Oh, we forgot, we scared her away
With our irrational panic.
(You see, we fear love, but we search for it,
When people love us,
We push them away because we're terrified
That we can't give them enough--
That we're just not good enough.)

Maybe that's why we spend time
With ourselves at 6 a.m. in the backyard
Under the overcast sky,
Bound by spotty, wooden fences
But not our heads,
We talk to ourselves,
Verbalizing the lines of a play we made up
By ourselves--
That's all we ever are;
Maybe that's why we're trying to escape
Ourselves
By attempting to fly--
Pasting craft featers to our arms;
Our attempts never work,
But we don't know why,
We never know why;
Maybe that's why we're wandering
The streets of our minds like homeless men
For--
For what? Love? Yes, we almost forgot.