There’s no revolting face
Taking the place of a macabre mask.
There are no deep-seated scars
Scratched into the gnarled veins of my Psyche.
There’s no empowering emotion
Eating away at my internal organs.
There’s no discernible reason
For me to purposely exceed the speed limit of my voice.
I’m just
That guy.
That guy
Who’s a slave to his own routine.
That guy
Who you see on the street every morning.
That guy
Who grew up like the everychild.
That plain, old, ordinary guy.

I was born and raised on 514 Boyd,
Playing with toys
Like every other little boy on the block.
There wasn’t a time I wasn’t doing something.
I was always moving a mile a minute.
This made the basis of my imagination
Burst into a beautiful landscape,
Laced with luminescent details.

I grew up on Ghostbusters and graveyards,
Always wondering what was buried beneath,
Bequeathing my ideas of the supernatural
To the confines of my mind.
Hey, ghost hunting isn’t exactly
A popular topic of conversation.

I loved to try to desecrate
The foundation of “truth,”
Losing myself in an abyss
Of conspiracy theories
And government-planned chaos,
Poking and prodding
Until I found the real deal.
The actual answers.

I picked up a pencil when I was five,
And since have strived
To not just touch the sky,
But to climb to the heavens,
Pluck away a cloud,
And paint it with my words,
Only releasing it
When I felt my cumulous canvas
Was truly the best it could be.

Pikachu was my best friend in Elementary,
But by the time I hit Middle,
I was fiddling with words
Most people had never heard.
And whenever I did,
I was king of the nerds.
Ruling with a staff of knowledge and know-how.
I used to be the guy
You’d only talk to
‘cause you forgot your homework was due.
I used to be the guy
With a pocket protector
And a bad stutter.
I used to be the guy
Who would ululate useless nothings
In a vacant attempt at comedy.
But then I hit High,
And I traded in the glitz and grammar
So I could be that guy.

I wrote my first song when I was ten,
But back then,
I couldn’t comprehend
What metaphors and imagery were.
I used to think synonyms
Were something you put on your toast.
I used to think a stanza
Was like a rare type of Egyptian insect.
I used to think onomatopoeia
Was a deadly nerve disease.

By age thirteen,
I was swimming in the sea of songwriting.
Pumping out piece after piece,
Like a factory-issue machine,
Releasing my demons onto the page,
Hoping one day
I could dance the musical fiasco
With the greats,
Like Avenged Sevenfold,
The masters of music
Who implanted the demons in the first place.

I love to listen to hard rock
With harder lyrics.
The way you can make a guitar screech
And words bleed
Gets my body moving faster
Than a Nascar driver.
Deep, throaty vocals
Dancing on the edge
Of disharmonic beats,
And rhythms that can shatter
The very barriers of
Modern music.
That’s what this guy lives for.
That’s what’s permeating
My eardrums twenty four-seven.
The forgotten children
Of a chillingly beautiful art.

Now, that’s not to say
My life was apple pies
And picket fences.
We weren’t exactly
The classic Americana
Type family.
We had our rough patches,
But luckily, we had the shears of willpower.
We’d bump into walls of discomfort
Every now and then,
But we realized
We could just walk around them.
Whenever we were on the firing line,
We dodged the bullets Matrix-style.

Let’s move to the present day.
You could say
I’m that guy who blends
With the walls in the hallway.
That guy who seems
To slip through the seams unnoticed.
That guy who walks like a shadow
And talks like one too.
Because it’s true.
I’m just that guy.
That guy who,
When he comes up to present a project, you think,
“Does he even go to this school?”

I’m that guy.

“That Guy” may not seem glorious,
Or have much to him.
“That Guy” may not seem great,
Or stand out amongst the rabble.
But I’m sure it was meant to be.
Deep down, I know that’s me.
The Average Joe.
The Common Man.
That guy who’s as plain and ordinary
As the Mini-Wheat’s he eats every morning.
That guy who’s as regular
As your respiratory rate.
Week-old bread can’t compete
With my staleness.
A chunk of Oak wood
Is not as dull as me.
Dead dogs have a better sense of humor.
But I’m okay with all that.
Why?
Because.
I’m just
That guy.