Armour

The void between us is small
Yet we don’t dare to cross it
Tonight I’ll risk it all
I’ll let you into my closet

I’ll let you bathe in my dreams
I’ll let you moan at the ceiling
Until it’s veiled by the steam

I’ll let you know what it means
To open up the armour
Love without looking back at
The scraps of sanity we’ve left
Never to return

A hesitating breath
Your eyes will be your deposit
You’re no longer a guest

I’ll take you into my closet
I’ll make you see all the skulls
Tie a rope to the ceiling
My charm was only a gull

So that you’d know what it means
To open up the armour …

If you dare to linger
You must drop your shell
All you can bring there
Are the splinters that are mine aswell

Between the seams

I bathe in wealth; I’ve pawned the horizon
And thus the last limit of my reach
A rich view to pillow my eyes on:
A thriving island without a beach

Colours fade
Shapes erode
I wouldn’t want my spirit to implode

A surge dilates my veins:
Did the clouds call your name?
I’ll wait for the sky to drain
For the revealing

Sweet ecstasy bound to be broken
As damp air refills my lungs
No names are meant to be spoken:
My soul returns to the tip of my tongue

Between the seams
Behind the masks
A melting track of spacetime shrinking back

Breath

These are not palace halls, but damp caverns
Whose rough granite walls make a tavern
You’ll be bathed, clothed and fed; you’ll be flattered
To amplify the pain, when you’re battered, robbed and chained

Did you call it a temple? It’s a brothel
You should pack silver bullets and a shovel
There’s a tree in its yard that is dying
And it’s stealing the air and light
From the young, helpless crops, desperately trying
To reach for their breath in a town that’s just about to drown

Corners of our minds

A steady stream of caustic silence
Was leaking down her throat
Blocked the airway, flushed her words down
But set her heart afloat
Oh the beauty of her violence
The truth of every blow
As her demons turned to brushes
She used to paint the snow
But her drawings won’t outlive the thaw

“Without bloodshed there can be no art
Raise your axes and unchain your roman hearts
We don’t need distant shores, for white patches to explore
Who knows what creatures dwell, and spring what wells
in the corners of our minds”

We have bodies
Do we matter?
May we take up space?
And we have feet
But how could they
Leave a concrete trace?
In divine light, who’d bother
With that which could come forth?
And who would search the skyline
To find a new true north
But the orbits are waiting for your call

Cunning

The golden gaze of Nike
Run, rabbit, run
She’ll frisk my psyche
She’ll find the gun
In the waste where nothing can be hidden

The grass is rustling
Like a pile of bones
As my feet pad through
Its pent-up groans:
An aching sea trying to touch me;
Like waves against the Dutchman

By the shoreline she’s summoned
Her champions and shamans – the believers
Her priests and fortune weavers

How could she unmask me?
(I am the mask)
Reveal my purpose?
(I am the task)
A blunt body in an orbit
Homeless and limbless if you ignore it

And when my pillow
Is wet with tears
She pours her venom
Into my ears:
“Take me however you want to”

I won’t just kill her
I’ll melt her down
I’ll forge a scepter
I’ll wear her crown
I’m dead tired of running
A victim of her cunning

And in your hearts I’ll summon
My champions and shamans – my believers
My priests and fortune weavers

How could you unmask me?
I am the mask
Reveal my purpose?
I am the task
A metallic gaze that will disarm
The swinging blades and hand grenades of your minds

The crash of my silence
Will echo in your dreams

Deadly white

Boiling concrete
Meeting dirty feet
A mother’s yelling
Ringing through deaf streets
And in an alley
A boy’s collecting screws

This very monkey
Without a shirt that fits
Would get a beating
And would get to see tits
All in a summer
That would ignite his fuse

These are the trails of an aching pen
As blood turns to ink and to blood again
It’s the current that remains

Yellowed paper
Drunken ramblings of youth
Lit by panic
Fuelled by stolen vermouth
Never put out
Just darkening with the wood

A sword swung by the moonlight:
The stripes of a tyger burning bright
And through an orb of threadless screws
Its lines are blazing through
Deadly white

Granite

Warm, as last night’s drunken bosom
Peaceful, as a storm that’s calmed
Stunning, as the pistol in your palm
A breeze caresses you each day
Dependable as a cliché
Loving as the needle in your arm

You can dodge their punches, but their eyes will always hit
You could run away, but in the end the eyes make sure you exist

We created a world
And we made it our own
We created a world
We clad it in stone
But even granite must yield
And back to earth we’re thrown
We created a world
But we’re still alone

A starving cry for juissance
Was sent without hope for response
On airwaves buried centuries ago
And hopelessly you kiss your cell mate
The rouse of one more passing soul mate
But every heartbeat slightly pales your glow

Lilies

Where others see circumstance
I see a world at my hands
Where others see accidents
I see the substance of Man
Oh Lord, where do I begin?
So much flesh, so little skin
My eyes could never satiate
The fettered Titan within

You are the salt of the earth
You are the light of the world
You are the fishers of men

But avert the world I’ve made
And the daylight in my glade;
If the lilies chose to sink
Who would blame the lake?
Plough your barren lands
And fill your plates with sand
If the apples chose to rot
Who would blame me?

You see learned citizens
I see a nameless horde
Whose world I’ll put to an end
With my flaming sword

Lion’s Mouth

Into the Neckar a rose I threw,
Stabbed its surface with a tear
But the lake rippled in laughter
Still echoing in my ear

When you witnessed the sacred grove
Become desertified and maimed
You just stood on its highest stumps
To get nearer…

To the ungrateful sky that despised and abandoned you,
Never took your praise or your reached out hands,
Abjected you and forever shut its gates

So strongly the sun has shone,
yet we’re dying for some light
Knee-deep in the dirt with spades
Trying to force some to leak out

We’ve named this age irony
And filled up our mugs with air
Raised them into the bracing smog
In hail of

The ungrateful sky that despised and abandoned us
Never took our praise or our reached out hands,
Abjected us and forever shut its gates

Libera eas
de ore leonis,
ne absorbeat
eas tartarus

Let Michael raise his sword
Let his banner lead us through the dark
We are all from the same seed
And we all have the same wish

My beaches are low

Arms stretched into the shadows beyond my glade
To reach new abodes as my pastures begin to fade

Longing tides and my beaches are low

Arms stretched into the darkness beyond my walls
For something to cling to as brick after brick dissolves
Your touch is the thread and the nightly sphere its gleaming blade
I’d stand ground in pride like a titan, but I’m too afraid

Longing tides and my beaches are low

Will the creaking of our fetters
One day drown the city alarm
Will the stars turn out to be letters
Spelling out a call to arms
And will I dare to leave your arms again

Pebbles

The stars are cursed
To ache and thirst
For blood to flow
To fuel their glow

But you: are you blameless?
Free from lust?
Could you die nameless
To do what’s just?
What if it turns out you must?

The sun is damned
To light our deeds
That’s why it bleeds
Itself to sleep

But you: Are you blameless?
Free from lust?
Is your soul stainless?
Desires hushed?
Do you sometimes let them gush?

We’ve emptied every wine
Prayed in every shrine
Turned over every pebble for a sign
Brought down every throne
But no kings were overthrown
And the auguries were never genuine

The moon is doomed
To quietly loom
As swords and screams
Spread its beams

May the stakes and gallows
Fertilized with woe
Turn into meadows
Where new life grows

When my world collapsed
No god was intervening
My mirror has been smashed
And the splinter in my eye
Is the only source of meaning

The rock, the vulture, and the chain

These lifeless fields of dirt
We’re so unwilling to desert
Are drenched in blood and venom, yet we’re fighting to be king

But beneath the crust
There is naked lust
The underground is bubbling of geysers waiting to spring

Obey the drive that’s waking your senses
Levelling walls, melting down fences
Obey the ache that’s waking our powers
To smile at their sins, and to commit ours
What night but tonight?

The rock, the vulture, and the chain;
All that the proud can feel of pain
We’ll triumph where we dare defy

Tonight the earth will glow
Oh what a feast we’ll throw
Rob Charon of his silver and drink nectar with the poor

This is no carnival
Tonight the stars will fall
Sharpen your steel, string your bow, and prepare yourself for war

Ruins of Mesolonghi

A rhythm of cogs
Backing the dancing smog
The black steely sky
Is turning the colours shy
A crude swarm of ants
Whose reason the night enchants
A nocturnal breath
Of the cooling embrace of death

Images pale turn thirsty hearts ablaze
A poor man’s symphony for gloomy days
Envision the ugly brush that paints our dreams
and spells our screams

A rhythm of clocks
Backing the dancing chalk
A black steely pen
Writing the fates of men
No God need exist
For its anti-Laplacean twist:
Avoiding the lies
Truth is the best disguise

Images pale turn thirsty hearts ablaze
A poor man’s symphony for gloomy days
Lances of passion desperately hurled
into the world

Their spirits are torn
Their harnesses worn
The last zealots’ red tears
Running from the spears:
History’s thorns

A rhythm of drops
Backing the dancing fog
Arms stretched in a grin
As the teeth cut into their skin
What good is a crown?
A head cannot fall but down
In the eye of the storm
It all seems to suit the norm

It’s time to leave the tower
We are wolves
And this is our hour
We’ll assail when the sun’s asleep
And by this sea
No poplars will weep

Sarabande

Strewn fragments of a promise
A spirit foundered, chafed and left to bleed
The grand naivety of Thomas;
Or a reckless test to see where all paths lead

To batter through the egg shell
We must first destroy a world
And its rustic ways to rebel
Don’t even say a word

Just come along
This bold folie a deux will keep us strong
This is a sarabande, not a song
So trip the light fantastic
In a spastic brawl

Dunes of long forgotten lament
Now thriving hills that cover the beyond
Can you sense the waking ferment
Crawling through the pores of our monde

On the endless fields of bone meal
New palaces will stand
I don’t expect you to condone me
Or even understand

Just come along …

Still

One torch is for the world
Another for my eyes
In case the first one doesn’t do the job

This is what we want
To get a fresh, new start
We’re halfway there, and it’s too late to stop

Carry on, carry on, there are still many maps to burn
Carry on, carry on, there are still many doors to mark

Run, my comrade, run
Don’t argue, there’s no time
The old world’s gaining on us every day

And this is what we want
To get a fresh new start
We’re halfway there, and it’s too late to stop

Carry on, carry on, there are still many graves to rob
Carry on, carry on, many monuments left to raze

‘til we can calm the storm of time
Let the angel turn around
Our ghosts rest in the ground

Return the golden bough
Realize our vow
Commit the final crime

Consider yourselves warned
Your bodies won’t be mourned
Your souls do not suffice to be reborn

And this is what we want
To get a fresh new start
We’re halfway there, and it’s too late to stop

Carry on, carry on, there are still many doors to mark
Carry on, carry on, there are still many flags to burn

The unknown

In the middle of our cloth
There’s a frightful, yawning hole
Once a symbol’s home
It reminds of what they stole

We are the mob
We’ll come for the throne
When the owl awakes from the unknown

In the middle of our hearts
There’s a frightful, yawning void
Our light and moral chart
Has forever been destroyed

We are the mob
We’ll come for the throne
War-drums will growl and horns be blown
When the owl awakes from the unknown and the new world is shown

So, we have mapped our cells
Even painted stars on their empty walls
So, we know every smell
Yet we’ll never tell what’s between the bars
Oh, relieve us
Oh, believe us
Oh, we’ll believe in you
Uncast the spell