Run, and never come back. The hour is upon you. Never come back. The measure of your failures is the sum of what you are. Where will you fly, child? Far beyond my reach? How will you fly, child, so fast and so far that you might outpace the sun? Who in his right mind would go on with this pathetic labor, long after hope and beauty are gone? You've lost everything. Go, break your back. Grind your face in the dirt. You asked and you'll receive. Here is watered wine, given to you in scorn. Swallow it down until you choke, and die in a corner, a martyr without a god. Who in his right mind would go on with this pathetic labor, after everything? Come, come, surrender to the weakness of the moment. Bow down and become empty. I'll give you all you need, and take everything you are. Raise your head up high. Close your searching eyes, and open your mouth wide. You're nothing but a slave. Who in his right mind would cast off his every dream to go on with this pathetic labor, after everything?

Are you suffocating? I heard a voice calling out from the street last night, but it wasn't you. You were laying in a cold white bed with a tube shoved into your throat. This is not the way that it should have ended between you and me: faint voices fading down the wire. Everything in the room is so quiet. They close your mouth and take you off the machine. Consider this a moment of reason, from the abyss into which you're about to fall. You are not strong enough. It's not murder, but it feels like it when I let go. It's far too late, too late to bring you back for long, too late for this weak indulgence. See how I have learned! My mouth is shut like a lock. It's far too late. No penitence or labor will bring you back after the harshest judge has spoken. Are you conscious? Your eyes move, but they don't track anything here inside the room. They're focused on a great white light or a face from long ago. I try, but I can't see a thing and I promise, nothing's there. If you can breathe at all, respond. Or, better by far, just give in, like we had asked. Any moment now you will find, on your back with your eyes wide open, that everything is revealed, every wrong has been forgiven, and you'll never be alone, ever again, ever again. I owe you this: to release you from this husk, with no hope of better days, but only an end to pain.

What sense do you lack, that you cannot hear this song, that you turn away from this warmth into your unlit world, and crawl, naked and afraid? Thank you for this sweet communion, that rolls like a ghost on my tongue, empty if not for your name, silent except for your song. I can remember your face. I taste you whenever I breathe. If you would come back to me, shining, I would lay my head at your feet. I can't believe that you're gone. Here, on my back I lay here, foul-tongued, working to build a cage of bitter words to trap revelations. You, you bought the fucking scripture whole, and your soul is fed hand to mouth on another's words, starving, soon gone without a trace. You have one chance left to accept absolution: dance like a madman to the demanding beat in your blood, no matter it's bleeding from your feet wherever you step. Dance like a whirlwind, or you'll be lost; and if the pressure is too strong, if the desire to rest fills you with joy, then you must leave this sacred room. You don't belong here, and you might as well be dead. How I wish, how I yearn after stars, when all I can see is this light from a fire that died years ago. If I excise the root, the rest of this sick longing might disappear. Child, oh child, can you hear me? You weren't worth the price after all. If your heart had truly been open, you would have come back when I called. You won't ever see me again.

Hands of stone close the door. Eyes of stone watch without sight. I must be stone - I feel nothing. Saint of hope and kindness, raise your head. Who among us will recall that you are human, in neither form nor power like a god? I build a monument in your name to obscure my weakness, then search for hope in vain from its highest point. The sun here is cruel and revealing. Be kind now - turn away from my scars. The place where I was born is filled with strangers. I've become a slave in its deepest room. Maybe if I hide for long enough, I can die right here. I should lock myself behind this door, and press the gun into my waiting mouth, break the teeth, burn the tongue, rip the skin, shatter bone, spill the blood out, never find the heart. How could you remain in silence, and cast your eyes down? How could you remain in silence? I have found the sacred truth: you shine like heaven, but you're scum. Saint of what's dead and gone, you're killing us all with your disease. This is not a dance of celebration, but something poor men do in hungry years. I had everything once, and then I lost it. I wish I was dead, because my body's given up.

There will come a dawn, you’ll see, during which you may feel the uncontrollable urge to arise, cast off your unbecoming grief, and merge with the surrounding light, and not remember us. With our hands to the sky, we yearn for your ghost. We’d pull you back to us if we could. Somehow, I believe we never will, no matter how we might stretch upwards for miles. No matter. You remain beyond our reach. Why, of all of us, should you alone achieve unity with the divine, while we lie here waiting for words that never come? We’ll die here, waiting for you. Oh, friend, we were far too cautious to return the embrace. So, like a wave, from the center and outwards, into pure calm, you’ll fly like a god, while we claw in vain at the empty air. I’ve heard the eye is a perfect razor. So soon after you’re gone, even we will forget your name, though in my dreams you’re awake, and aware of everything, dancing in the limitless fire. Hello, sunlight. Come consume me whole. I’m tired of waiting for you. Come consume me whole. There’s a fire in heaven. You’ve never seen such fire. Wake up, oh god wake up, wake up, oh please god wake up.

I brought the gift of fire. Doubtless, when you dream, you think of me - or what would be the point of remaining alone? A version of me hides behind every door. The virgin's sense of longing, gone these many years, comes back with a shock - or what would be the point of seeking me? Your silence on this point is answer enough. I have your hidden heart, clenched within my fever grasp, helpless except to return. You lived here as a child, but you're barred from this door. Since you turned from my words, you can't see me anymore. I will be the enemy inside your chest. Fear me now. I promise you will never rest. You were fed by these hands, beloved of kings. You felt nothing at all. Now, a dog in a corner would have more courage. You turned away once. That was your last chance. I have heard your strongest prayers. I have seen your filthy hands. No true son of mine would reject me, and you are not singing loud enough, and you're not trying hard enough, and you've been here for long enough to know better, but still you turned away. Now you're a child of this world, dirt within a weak shell. When you move, it's without direction. When you die, you'll disappear. Like a falling cinder consumed, turning to ash, you'll feel nothing at all. If I was god of this world, I swear to you, you'd suffer like no man, no man ever has. Ingrate! You can't have been more wrong. Everything you love means shit. You can't have been more wrong.

Some say the world will end in violence, or the sea will rise and cover up the land. You said the world was never-ending. When we were young, fate was far more kind, and the sun shone higher and more brightly, and the night was never quite this black. Could we have been so wrong? Where have you been gone? How could you wait so long, only to return, and die at my feet? Now I beg the truth from strangers, on empty streets in decaying towns, but I can't forget your words. You said god was all around us, but I can't find him anywhere, and I've looked behind every tree and stone. No star in the East, to light my path; no voice in the dark; no gentle hands, guiding me back home. And I know you're here no longer, if you were ever here at all, but I feel your eyes upon me, and somehow, I swear you're hiding, behind every tree and stone, behind every tree and stone.

I'm sick to death of your silence. I'll die before you can catch me crying for grace with empty praise. Even after your absence, no-one seems able to believe that you're gone. I believe you were never there. I'd run like hell from a thousand luminous forms that look just like you, but contain nothing of the truth. I'd die to avoid your thousand hands, that pull me down towards any pretension of permanence, and I see you feel the same. You've left me here and hidden in a corner. You would die to escape my touch. Call it an act of love. Call it whatever you like - I know the truth. I was born with a knife in my hand, and no other fitting target, so raise your head, bare your throat. You don't deserve conversations with the beloved. You have a poison tongue. You should be chained to the floor, and left to rot, with all the other dogs. I'll come to you and sing. You'll never wake up from this dream. I see you, finally, I do. Your face is the same as mine: empty of everything but hunger. Why in god's name do you smile? How in god's name can you smile? Look at what you've done with what I gave. I've found the only true meaning of surrender. It was not within your words. I am a stone, this is an ocean, and I will be washed clean, and forgotten, and reduced to sand.

What is this? No breathless abandon; no life-consuming fire. Where is the blood-red song? It was so loud that our veins would overflow. Hang your head down in silence. Your body is a pillar of shame. It's been so long since you came here that you've forgotten why. A single, distant point of light, faint and far. When you were a child, it never would shine so bright as this. Where is that light? (Someone behind us forced it down.) I hear a song. (Child, you were born deaf.) I'll follow it home. (Home is a black and empty thing.) I'll follow it home. (Home is a bitter, broken cage, made of death.) Close your eyes; there's nothing here to see. Lay your white head down. Go to sleep. And until you die, you'll remain here. You opened up your eyes and stared straight into the sun for too long. It turned you pale and white, transparent in the light. Your morning song won't be heard any longer. A wind came from the sea and took it away. Remember, you came from dust, and to that dust you shall return. All your life, you lay down. You're a stranger in a cruel place, a name and a sunken face, and your white heart is empty. You're gone without a prayer. Come back.