2026 · 7 tracks · 36 minutes
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"Thou shalt" is the name of the great dragon — the spirit of the lion says: "I will"
Seven Chapters — One Journey
The weight was waiting at my birth
They laid it on my back
I learned to smile beneath the load
And never answer back
I knelt to every heavy word
Each "must" and each "you should"
I made my back a place to load
And bore more than I could
Whose life is this
Whose life is this
The one I'm dragging on
Every yes they took from me
Became another stone
"'Thou shalt' is the name of the great dragon.
But the spirit of the lion says: 'I will'"
There came a morning, one word rose
It tasted like a flame
The smallest word I ever spoke
And nothing stayed the same
I gave them back each borrowed dream
I tore each "you must be"
The thunder in my chest was mine
The first thing that was me
This life is mine
This life is mine
The weight is not my own
Every no I dared to say
Broke another stone
With empty hands I stand today
Like children lost in play
Forgetting what I had to be
Beginning my first day
Last night I sat to count my days
The way the misers count their gold
Twelve thousand mornings bore my name
Twelve thousand evenings, bought and sold
I called them in to stand before me
To testify that I had been
A hundred came. A hundred only.
The rest had never entered in.
And where is Tuesday of last week
Not lost to memory. Just gone.
I was not sleeping, was not sick,
I walked and spoke from dawn to dawn
It held my breathing and my heartbeats
It heard me laugh at something small
And it will never be recovered
It left no shadow on the wall
I was there for everyone.
Not one of them is here.
I laughed that Tuesday. That is all I kept.
Not why. Not what. Just that I did.
I would pay one of my remaining days
To hear that reason once again.
Nobody robbed me in the night
No hand was ever at my throat
The days were lost with my consent
I walked them smiling to the door
I spent each morning buying evening
I spent each evening buying dawn
And all a day has ever purchased
Is one more day already gone
Time does not archive.
Time is not a library that loses books.
Time is the fire.
And we keep calling it a shelf.
The days I have not lived are waiting
Stacked up like firewood for the flame
By midnight every man has lost one
And no one asks where his day went
So, take the twelve thousand. They were spent.
But this one day I am standing in —
I will walk it slowly.
I will look at every hour like a face.
And if it hands me one small laughing thing,
I will carry the reason out alive.
Nobody robbed me in the night
No hand was ever at my throat
The days were lost with my consent
I walked them smiling to the door
But this one day will not slip over
This day will burn against my eyes
It will be gone like all the others
But it goes witnessed. That is mine.
Twelve thousand days.
A hundred kept.
One
watched.
This table used to creak and strain
Beneath the weight of sound
The chairs were never cold too long
And every seat was crowned
One chair went chasing better skies
And faded call by call
One vanished into busy years
And sent no word at all
One chair I always called my brother's
Until he saw a price
He weighed our years against the coin
The coin outweighed us twice
Taken or sold, taken or sold
The chair is just as cold
The years take theirs, the silver takes more
And no chair remembers what it was for
An absent friend can break your heart
A living one can burn
For his two feet still know the road
And choose not to return
Tonight I laid the table full
For no one but the air
I tried to seat the memories
Each ghost behind its chair
But grief and treason wear one face
When no one's sitting there
Taken or sold, taken or sold
The chair is just as cold
The years take theirs, the silver takes more
And no chair remembers what it was for
And somewhere a table is missing a guest
And my chair is cooling like all of the rest
I pulled my own chair to the head
And ate before the ghosts
Whoever leaves, whoever stays
The living one still hosts
The universe is mostly empty
The matter in it barely counts
And you are matter, briefly gathered
And gathering was the accident
Not one atom in your body
Was ever asked to hold this shape
They loaned it out for eighty summers
And every one is being reclaimed
We named the emptiness to shrink it
We built a heaven at its edge
We drew a face onto the silence
Because a face can be addressed
Not one of us has ever managed
To hold the true scale in the mind
So we shrank the sky down to a ceiling
And called the ceiling
the sky
The void was never watching —
the watching was always ours.
It has no need
of your defeat —
it has no need
of anything
That is the part
that breaks the mind
it does not even
know you came
Not indifference
Not disdain —
no observer
in the frame
There is no scale on which we register
No ledger where the loss is weighed
The mountain does not mourn the pebble
The ocean does not count the wave
A hundred billion suns have perished
With no witness, no lament
And every one of them was larger
Than everything we ever meant
The void was never watching —
and it was never blind.
It has no need
of your defeat —
it has no need
of anything
That is the part
that breaks the mind
it does not even
know you came
Not indifference
Not disdain —
no observer
in the frame
The void
is not
against
you
Against
is a word
from the small
warm
middle
The void
is not
your enemy
Enemy
is still
a word
for things
that
notice
Somewhere out past the last of it
where no light ever formed —
nothing is happening.
Nothing has ever happened.
No stillness.
No motion.
No place.
And that is not a punishment.
That is simply
the larger share.
We were the exception.
We were the —
We were —
I did not set out cruel or cold
I set out to survive
They taught me every trick they held
I studied to stay alive
I learned to read a face for lies
I learned to strike them first
I called it wisdom, called it care
I never called it worse
The thing I fought became my hands
The armor grew my skin
I won the war I said I'd win
And lost the man within
There was no morning I turned wrong
No hour I could name
I moved one careful step each year
And ended somewhere strange
The kindness that I used to spend
I ration now like bread
I hear my voice inside a room
And do not know the head
"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.
And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."
I stared into the empty years
To understand the cold
I understood it perfectly
And now the cold is old
It does not visit me at night
It does not come and go
It answers when they call my name
It speaks the words I know
The thing I fought became my hands
The armor grew my skin
I won the war I said I'd win
And lost the man within
I did not lose him in a fight
He simply thinned away
I looked into the dark too long
The dark looked back to stay
So, this is what the winning cost
No blood, no wound, no scar
Just this — a man who understands
Exactly what we are
your birth there was a stillness
It stretched further than the stars go
You were inside it for forever
And it never hurt you once
You do not mourn those missing ages
You have never even counted them
So, tell me why the coming stillness
Frightens what the first one didn't touch
We fill the little hour with engines
With banners, mirrors, wars and noise
We shout across the only bridge we're given
Because both endings stand in dark
Not one of us was ever brave enough
To look too long at either shore
So, we dance exactly in the middle
And call the dancing a life
The stillness held you long before
And holds the longer share
This little light between the two
Is all you'll ever wear
No one asked you at the door
No one asks you when you leave
And every fear a man has carried
Was always just one fear, disguised
The clock that turns, the friend that scatters
The face that ages in the glass
The hands that weaken, year by year
The years that leave without a sound
All rivers of the single darkness
That nothing standing can outrun
The stillness held you long before
And holds the longer share
This little light between the two
Is all you'll ever wear
No one asked you at the door
No one asks you when you leave
The stillness does not win
Winning is a word from the loud little middle
The stillness is not eternal
Eternal is a word for things inside of time
And when the final ember of the final world burns low
There will not even be a dark
Dark is still a show
No absence, no emptiness, no cold
Just what was always here beneath the noise we briefly were
The noise was ours for a moment
The noise was ours
The noise
Was
A demon came at dead of night
And asked me one thing more
Would I relive this life outright
The same as once before
With every wound and every tear
Returning without end
Would I go down in cold despair
Or call this fate my friend
Amor fati
Amor fati
I will live it all again
Every wound and every flame
Every loss and every gain
I love this fate
And call it amen
My formula for what is great
Is love for what must be
To want no other path or fate
Through all eternity
What breaks me only feeds the fire
That forges who I am
I did not fall, I did not tire
I rose and said amen
Amor fati
Amor fati
I will live it all again
Every wound and every flame
Every loss and every gain
I love this fate
And call it amen
If the great wheel comes back around
And drops me here again
The same wound, the same year, same ground
I won't beg for less pain
Not because I have no choice
But because I chose this voice
a single microtonal violin phrase
bent and brief
appears once
then vanishes back into the strings
not a theme
just a glimpse
Amor fati
Amor fati, hear me now
Not one step forward
Nor step back through eternity
I am this fate
And I am the flame
Every road was my own
Say yes, say yes again
[outro]
Say yes
Say yes
Say yes again
