| (In her eyes tonight
|
| There’s a glow tonight
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| They’re so bright they could light
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| Fountainbleu tonight
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| She’s so gracious
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| So vivacious
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| She is not thinking of me
|
| Bless her little heart
|
| Crooked to the core
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| Acting out a part
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| What a rollicking, frollicking bore!
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| She’s such fun tonight
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| She’s a treat tonight
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| You could spread her on bread
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| She’s so sweet tonight)
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| When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
|
| When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
|
| When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
|
| As by a shining brainless beacon
|
| Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
|
| When you are calm and joyful
|
| And finally entirely alone
|
| Then in a great new darkness
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| You will finally execute your special plan
|
| One needs to have a plan, someone said who was turned away into the shadows
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| And who I had believed was sleeping or dead
|
| Imagine, he said, all the flesh that is eaten
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| The teeth tearing into it
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| The tongue tasting its savour
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| And the hunger for that taste
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| Now take away that flesh, he said
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| Take away the teeth and the tongue
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| The taste and the hunger
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| Take away everything as it is
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| That was my plan
|
| My own special plan for this world
|
| I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder
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| If this creature whom I had thought sleeping or dead would ever approach his
|
| vision
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| Even in his deepest dreams
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| Or his most lasting death
|
| Because I had heard of such plans, such visions
|
| And I knew they did not see far enough
|
| But what was demanded in a way of a plan
|
| Needed to go beyond tongue and teeth and hunger and flesh
|
| Beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to
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| blow the dust away
|
| And so I began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night
|
| And a strangely shining light
|
| That owed nothing to the light of day
|
| That day may seem like other days
|
| Once more we feel the tiny-legged trepidations
|
| Once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear
|
| But that day will have no others after
|
| No more worlds like this will follow
|
| Because I have a plan
|
| A very special plan
|
| No more worlds like this
|
| No more days like that
|
| There are but four ways to die, a sardonic spirit might have said to me
|
| There is dying that occurs relatively suddenly
|
| There is dying that occurs relatively gradually
|
| There is dying that occurs relatively painlessly
|
| There is the death that is full of pain
|
| Thus by various means they are combined
|
| The sudden and the gradual
|
| The painless and the painful
|
| To yield but four ways to die
|
| And there are no others
|
| Even after the voice stopped speaking
|
| I listened for it to speak again
|
| After hours and day and years had passed
|
| I listened for some further words
|
| Yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me
|
| There are no others
|
| There are no others
|
| Was it then that I began to conceive for this world
|
| A special plan?
|
| There are no means for escaping this world
|
| It penetrates even into your sleep
|
| And is its substance
|
| You are caught in your own dreaming
|
| Where there is no space
|
| And are held forever where there is no time
|
| You can do nothing you are not told to do
|
| There is no hope for escape from this dream
|
| That was never yours
|
| The very words you speak are only its very words
|
| And you talk like a traitor
|
| Under its incessant torture
|
| There are many who have designs upon this world
|
| And dream of wild and vast reformations
|
| I have heard them talking in their sleep
|
| Of elegant mutations
|
| And cunning annihilations
|
| I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses
|
| And in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe
|
| Which they, with their new designs, would make straight and sound
|
| But each of these new and ill-conceived designs
|
| Is deranged in its heart
|
| For they see this world as if it were alone and original
|
| And not as only one of countless others
|
| Whose nightmares all proceed
|
| Like a hideous garden grown from a single seed
|
| I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep
|
| And I stand waiting for them
|
| As at the top of a darkened flight of stairs
|
| They know nothing of me
|
| And none of the secrets of my special plan |
| While I know every crooked creaking step of theirs
|
| It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows
|
| Who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner
|
| And enter a narrow street
|
| And stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight
|
| Then he said to me
|
| He whispered
|
| That my plan was misconceived
|
| That my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake
|
| Because, he said, there is nothing to do and there is no where to go
|
| There is nothing to be and there is no one to know
|
| Your plan is a mistake, he repeated
|
| This world is a mistake, I replied
|
| The children always followed him
|
| When they saw him hopping by
|
| A funny walk
|
| A funny man
|
| A funny, funny, funny man
|
| He made them laugh sometimes
|
| He made them laugh, oh yes he did
|
| He did, he did, he did, he did
|
| Oh how he made them roll
|
| One day he took them to a place he knew, a special place
|
| And told them things about this world
|
| This funny, funny, funny world
|
| Which made them laugh sometimes
|
| He made them laugh, oh yes he did
|
| He did, he did, he did, he did
|
| Oh how he made them roll
|
| Then the funny little man who made them laugh
|
| Sometimes he did
|
| Revealed to them his special plan
|
| His very special funny plan
|
| Knowing they would understand
|
| And maybe laugh sometimes
|
| He made them laugh
|
| Oh yes he did
|
| He did, he did, he did, he did
|
| Their eyes grew wide beneath their lids
|
| And how he made them roll
|
| I first learned the facts from a lunatic
|
| In a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time and space
|
| There are no people
|
| Nothing at all like that
|
| The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion
|
| Each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity
|
| That there are persons of any kind
|
| When all there can be is mindless mirrors
|
| Laughing and screaming as they parade about
|
| In an endless dream
|
| But when I asked the lunatic what it was that saw itself within these mirrors
|
| As they marched endlessly in stale time and space
|
| He only rocked and smiled
|
| Then he laughed and screamed
|
| And in his black and empty eyes
|
| I saw for a moment, as in a mirror
|
| A formless shade of divinity
|
| In flight from its stale infinity
|
| Of time and space and the worst of all
|
| Of this world’s dreams
|
| My special plan for the laughter
|
| And the screams
|
| We went to see some little show
|
| That was staged in an old shed
|
| Past the edge of town
|
| And in its beginnings all seemed well
|
| The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness
|
| While those dolls bounced along on their strings before our eyes
|
| And in its beginnings all seemed well
|
| But then there came a subtle turning point
|
| Which some had noticed (and I was one)
|
| Who quietly left the show (no, I did not)
|
| Because I could see where things were going
|
| As the antics of those dolls grew strange
|
| And the fragile strings grew taut
|
| With the tiny pullings of tiny limbs
|
| The others around me became appalled
|
| And turned away and abandoned the show
|
| That was staged in an old shed
|
| Past the edge of town
|
| But I wanted to witness what could never be
|
| I wanted to see what could not be seen
|
| But the moment of consummate disaster
|
| When puppets turn to face the puppet master
|
| It was twilight and I stood in the greyish haze of a vast empty building
|
| When the silence was enriched by a reverberant voice
|
| All the things of this world, it said
|
| Are of but one essence
|
| For which there are no words
|
| This is the greater part which has no beginning or end
|
| And the one essence of this world for which there can be no words
|
| Is but all the things of this world
|
| This is the lesser part which had a beginning and shall have an end
|
| And for which words were conceived solely to speak of
|
| The tiny broken beings of this world, it said
|
| The beginnings and endings of this world, it said
|
| For which words were conceived solely to speak of
|
| Now remove these words and what remains, it asks me
|
| As I stood in the twilight of that vast empty building
|
| But I did not answer
|
| The question echoed over and over
|
| But I remained silent until the echoes died
|
| And as twilight passed into evening I felt my special plan
|
| For which there are no words
|
| Moving towards a greater darkness |
| There are some who have no voices
|
| Or none that will ever speak
|
| Because of the things they know about this world
|
| And the things they feel about this world
|
| Because the thoughts that fill a brain
|
| That is a damaged brain
|
| Because the pain that fills a body
|
| That is a damaged body
|
| Exist in other worlds
|
| Countless other worlds
|
| Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness
|
| For which no words have been conceived
|
| And where no voices are able to speak
|
| When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts
|
| When a damaged body is filled only with pain
|
| And stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness
|
| And exists in a world for which there is no special plan
|
| (When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone)
|
| When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
|
| When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
|
| When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
|
| As by a shining brainless beacon
|
| Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
|
| When you are calm and joyful
|
| And finally entirely alone
|
| Then in a great new darkness
|
| You will finally execute your special plan
|
| When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone
|
| When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with
|
| When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured
|
| As by a shining brainless beacon
|
| Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world
|
| When you are calm and joyful
|
| And finally entirely alone
|
| Then in a great new darkness
|
| You will finally execute your special plan |