Iesu from mattoroso

Place my white skull high above my City
So that I can forever see
Come all the cleansing desert nights
Come all the silent clarity

Let me look down upon all the swollen saviours
All the prophet flesh lined up along the dry roads
All the sweet crosses and failed resurrections
All the sun gods grinded to dust like bugs

I will have a legion other gods
Lead them forth into this world
Soak them up from the grit in the backyards
On to the streets of all our Babylon

I will succumb to your lukewarm Providence
Only after the desert has been paying its due
Only after the rain has stirred the Sleepers
And their voices will rise like a buzzing wonderous sea

I will throw myself in the Pit
And await your rain of stones
For I alone have seen the Truth
And hollered out the Name
And the Name has heeded me
And broken all the bonds
And Harlots will wake up by my bed
As my wounds will heal
As they dance in the smoke
Of inscense, hashish and myrrh

Oh Lord, if my hands have offended you
Oh Lord, if my hands have offended you
Then I'll cut them off
Just not today

Burn skin, burn away
Behind the veil
Filled with new life
When the rains come
I find my flesh feasted upon
'Till all is white and clean

Pearl white bone tools left in the wild
Scar tissue on the hands of thieves

This dove is just a rat with wings
This lion just a sack with maggots within

But I am your King
Oh I've come to be your righteous King

But I will be King
Oh I will be King

Why is my City a grave?
Why do the lepers I cure
Keep wearing their wounds with such pride?
Why is my City so hungry?
Why do the man-children starve
When I have shown them all there is to eat?

All my skin is peeling now
All the other lives
I nurtured with me
Are ready to fly
Pushing out through me
My blistered surface
To dry their pretty wings
In the sun and fly

Why does my City refuse
The Gospel I sung for seven years?
The marriage of man and locust, under my rule?
Why is my City so strange?
Filled with strangers and foreign blood?
Why do they mock their King
And why must I leave?

And walk with no skin between me and the desert
Walk with no skin between me and the Swarm
Bone to bone, marrow to marrow
Hollow soul to hollow soul
Spine to spine. Fever to fever
Broken shell to broken shell
Salt to salt. Hunger to hunger
Trembling flesh to tremling flesh
Walk with no skin into the Swarm
Walk with no skin into the Swarm