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With my face drained of colour |
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And my brain of blood |
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Like Billy Budd |
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I'm lashed to the grating; |
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With senses growing duller |
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And with quaking heart |
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I make a start |
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At temperature equating |
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And my lungs suck useless air. |
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Like paraplegic dancers |
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In formation team |
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My understanding seems |
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Hiidebound in its movements, |
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Contemplating answers |
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That could break my bonds-- |
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To be half wrong |
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Would be, in me, improvement... |
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But my comprehensive faculties are impaired. |
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And it seems absurd, but now all I've heard |
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Fades in empty words and is worthless |
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As the Human Laugh rocks the cenotaph |
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But the joke is half-true, and mirthless. |
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Trying to trace a reason |
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From the spinning words |
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But all I've heard |
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Seem at odds with their meanings, |
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Phonetically pleasing |
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But delivered in such haste |
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That in their place |
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My mind commences screaming. |
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On the verge of belief I crash onto the reef |
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And a cynical thief steals my senses, |
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So I cling to the pew with dimensions askew, |
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And recognition refuses present tenses. |
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All the lives of the saints demonstrate that my faint |
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Is a minor complaint, but the end is |
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Nowhere in sight, |
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Why can't I find me a way to go? |
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I don't want to die in the nave, |
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But I know it may be with me some day |
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So I've got to find a way I can save up |
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My evergies, and find a cause to pray |
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So something for something |
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To which I can give my creed... |
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I'd gladly succumb to the wave, |
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If I thought the water taught a way to light; |
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I'd gladly succumb--I'm not brave, |
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And it's easy to believe what the preacher says |
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Except for the conflict raging between my head |
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And my brain. |
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I don't want to die, but just the same-- |
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Some day.... |
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Waiting for that moment |
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That I know will come |
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When I'll have to run |
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And find another sermon... |
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Everyman and Norman |
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And the talking priest-- |
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Still, I am at least |
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Holding all the doors open. |
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Inside me all outside is shared. |
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As the cracked bells peal it all seems unreal |
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But the seventh seal stays unbroken |
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And the Offertory plate tenders no escape-- |
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Still I refuse to scrape up a token |
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Of esteem for these false |
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Alleyways of the course; |
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I must try to divorce sense from sensing. |
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Tell me again, |
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Tell me the way to go. |
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So when I talk to myself |
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Although I take good care to listen |
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My heart grows ever more faint-- |
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There's something missing? |