Where I am...

Am I coming back to life or finally dying?
Strange lights press upon my nerves
Then darkness comes over me
Am I just newly born, freshly dead or hallucinating?
Is this reality so confused and indistinct?

Chaotic scenes just before my eyes
The Gates of heaven and hell broken down
Upside-down beds / Dead-studded halls
Is this world in my visual field the one I really belong?

By degrees as I crawl on the ground
I rouse from a dormant state
I pace up and down
Total immersion through lights
I take a look out there, outside...

Lights of night suffocate me
Unreal city's attracting me
I can't tear my mind away from her and turn my back on her
Benighted I'm out of my depth
Waves of silence chill my blood and drag me in the waste land
Unreal City

I drop on my knees on a carpet of dust
I raise my face to the pale ashen empty sky
Why am I asking myself if there's someone
Or something elsewhere?
What is that bitter taste in my fucking mouth?

Chaotic skin just before my eyes
Am I this man I don't even recognize
Deathly pale face
Cold flesh and bones
Is this body in my visual field the one I really belong?

By degrees I rediscover myself
As I'm staring at this ravaged landscape
Distorting mirrors and fragmented windows
Reflect the same degeneration

Lights of night suffocate me
Unreal city's consuming me
I can't tear my mind away from her and turn my back on her
Benighted I'm out of my depth
Waves of silence chill my blood and drag me in the waste land
Unreal City

Silent City's calling me
I can hear his voices
The Silent City's calling me
I can hear his voices
I'm coming...

A deathly hush reigns as I walk the streets
A total absence of outside noise pollution
Only seeming quiet places, I'm speechless
Illusory silence
My trembling voice inside echoes like a creeping sound drowned into the abyss
Fighting against my stillness to resurface

Fixed stare on darkness of a stationary world
Reduced to a silent and eerie contemplation
Nothing emerging from dust
I can't breathe a single word
And call this bloody shambles a bloody shambles
Desolation, devastation before my very eyes
I can't break the silence and come out of my muted shell
I'm wandering the streets like a lost soul
I'm assailed with inner noises of the ancient world
Intermingling sounds emerging in the depths of my being
Funeral laments, Nuptial songs invade me and deafen me

Millions of voices resound in my hollow body
Resonant memories of my humanity
Despairing, popular songs
Sirens hymns emerging from dark

What is that sound bursting out of myself
A life instinct taking flight high in the air
Endless moans escaping from me
Brutal and deafening like the cry of a newborn dead
But who are those hooded hordes screaming over and over inside my head
I can't get rid of this cacophony
I'm wandering the streets like a lost soul
I'm assailed with inner noises of the ancient world
Intermingling sounds emerging in the depths of my being

Millions of voices resound in my hollow body
Resonant memories of my humanity
Despairing, popular songs
Sirens hymns emerging from dark

Voices bemoaning in my ears
I can hear all these screams in my head

Subdued voices deafening me, deafening me

The town crier:

Partisan of wait-and-see or mental masturbation
Humanity has reached the point of no return
Years of abuses
We went too far
We crossed the limits but the worse is yet to come
We can't reverse now
We can't stop the spread of evil
It's time to ? Fall! Who'll be the next to contract the virus?
Fall! Epidemic is rising and threatening us with a gun on our temple
Fall! It's time to be judged!
Fall ! We're just germ carriers!
Fall! Delighting self-destruction!
The harder we fall...

We went too far away
Helpless to ease the pain
Virus-infected cells
Benighted crowds, tons of people collapsing
Infected
Helpless to ease the fate

Headlines:

Pandemic phase declared
State of crisis
Alarm systems overheating
Panic-stricken people wondering who's infected
Cities gripped by violence
Human tolerance explodes
Media and governments overtaken by events renounce
We can't stop the spread of evil
It's time to... Fall! Who'll be the next to die cuz of the virus?
Fall! Epidemic is here now and killing us in thousands every seconds
Fall! It's time to be judged!
Fall ! We're just germ carriers!
Fall! Delighting self-destruction!
The harder we fall...

We went too far away
Helpless to ease the pain
Virus-infected cells
Benighted crowds, tons of people collapsing
Infected
Helpless to ease the fate
We give ourselves away beneath the weight of misery
The final judgement is near
Enlightened towns fall into decline and ruin
This is the end of humanity...

I turned my senses inside out to fight the sixth one
I strive with myself
I strive against it
Extrasensory perception
Sight, Smell, Taste, Hearing, Touch overwhelmed by the new shit

I walk alone through burned sensations /Material world escapes me
Nothing seems to move in the ravaged landscape of my eyes but I have a strange sensation
There is another reality, tangible
A strange multiplicity of sensations seizes me now but it has nothing to do with what I can see, smell, taste, hear or touch.

My conscience distorts
I'm overcome by something stronger, something I can't control
I can't kick it out
Inside/outside conflicts
I can't let it come inside through me
I see myself lying on my back as cold as marble

Wounded outside, Burst inside, I'm beside myself just contemplating
How I'm lost inside me, dead inside, I'm beside myself just contemplating how he's lost

How I'm lonely in this world
Staring at myself, staring at the void
My nerves electrified
Shocked by the undefined
They try to revive myself in vain
Spasms shake my body
Spasms ? I'm alive ? I breathe ?
I regain my strength
I breathe
I regain consciousness

I remember first the unpleasant noise of medical machines becoming distant and unreal
Pleasant and frightening emotions sweeping through me while I detached from myself and floated above my own body
I 've never met deceased relatives or spiritual figures, nor walked through a tunnel to reach a strong and bright light
I was just watching myself dying as a witness of my own ending... I'm just a watcher...

I travelled too far
I took too much time to come back home, come back to my fragile life
"I could not speak and my eyes failed
I was neither living nor dead
And I knew nothing
Looking into the heart of light
the silence..."

Wounded outside, Burst inside, I'm beside myself just contemplating
How I'm lost inside me, dead inside, I'm beside myself eyes open staring at the void

Where are the people who saved my life and abandoned me in this hospital?
Where is civilization?
What are these empty places?
These devastated rooms
I can't say anything or put a word on things
I feel so lonely in my waste world...

So I was dead to the world, disconnected
I was sleeping soundly
Completely out of touch with reality
I'm going round in circles to the beat of my memories
Fragments of violent events, obvious and visible discordance
A heap of broken images, nothing in its proper place
I feel like I'm an outsider, I'm a stranger
How can I still be standing there in this disorder
How can I be someone where everyone has fallen
Remnants of an old newspaper predicting the end of humanity
Appeals for aid are constantly broadcast on ghostly radio and unreal TV
I'm just a listener and a watcher
There's nothing I can do
I'm powerless, I'm powerless to silence all of these cries which constantly pound through my head
Voices bemoaning
Maternal lamentations
Constantly tear me away...

So I'm there in the world, reconnected, but I'm roaming soundly
Completely out of touch with reality
I'm going round in circles to the beat of my memories
Fragments of ancient events, unfamiliar and uncommon memories
A heap of broken images, nothing in its proper place
I feel like I'm an outsider
I'm a stranger
How can I still be standing there in this disorder
How can I be someone where everyone has fallen

I'm lost, completely lost, who I am?
How can I rebuild myself in loneliness on a heap of broken images
I'm lost, completely lost,where I am?
I'm just a collector, my body a container of a heap of broken images

Here a child has fallen down
His father's prayed god for his soul
His mother's rose her face to the sky
But the sky is pale and faceless
Here a thousand men died
Carried away by insanity
Here falls the empire
Earth turned into a huge scene of crimes
Here falls my entire hope of eternal life

Nothing remains but these sloughs of skin
I can't put the pieces of the jigsaw together again
There's something still missing
I'm sick of all these scenes emerging from the depth of the ashes
Together again
It still doesn't mean anything to me

"April is the cruelest month
Breeding lilacs out of the dead land
Mixing memory and desire
Stirring dull roots with spring rain
What are the roots that clutch
What branches grow
Son of man
You cannot say or guess for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats
And the dead tree give no shelter, the cricket no relief
And the dry stone no sound of water
I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing
Looking into the heart of light, the silence"

This is the dead land
My final destination
I'm walking through the ashen air
The cold and silence, the blackening
I can't make out my own skin
Through this obscurity
But I can see fragments of my past in a handful of dust
Strange images come far from the ashes
Life-flashing-before-my-eyes through this heap of remains
Mirrors of some old memories

When I look through these windows
I can see clearly my face in these mountains of dust
But I feel like I'm uncoupled from my own story
When I look though these mirrors
I can see clearly the ghosts of my past
A woman I loved, The Father I lost

This is the waste land
The death's other kingdom
My final resting place
The cold and silence, the blackening
I can't figure my way out
Through this reality
I remember the day I scattered my father's ashes
His flesh and bones merge into the soil
If only my heart were stone I would contain my tears
And look in the eye of my destiny

When I look through these mirrors
The dark and violet hours occur to me
But I feel like I'm uncoupled from my whole story
When I look though these mirrors
I can see clearly the ghosts of my past
A woman I loved, A father I lost

All things remain through the ashes

After all those years of wandering, After going round the world
I'm still following in a ghost humanity tracks
In this valley of dying stars
I'm ruining myself on this broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
Sightless, shapeless
Monsters' voices coming out the soil
Auditory, olfactory, tactile, taste and visual hallucinations
Blurred reality, zero-gravity, this no-man's land is a deadlock
Here on the road
I'm walking dead in a film without scenario

I'm that "shape without form, shade without colour
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion"

I'm no longer even a presence
I'm the shade of nothing
This semblance of life underneath my eyes
Is the last ghost of an extinct humanity
This vision of paradise can't be here into my eyes
All this decor is a fake or a liar
This piece of Eden can't be a part of my burden
This whole repeated performance was to make me believe that I'm back to square one
But it's just an illusion
On the road again
I'm walking dead in a film without scenario

I'm that "shape without form, shade without colour
Paralyzed force, gesture without motion"

If only I was someone I would feel myself
I don't even know my name and the Where of my origin
I'm growing away from you

I'm on the road but I can't explain the how and why of it
The meaning of this life is still going away from me
While death is so close to me
I do not hope to hope again that I could understand the essence of my loneliness
I walk alone through burned sensations
The entire world escapes me
Why should I mourn the loss of my faith in a happy ending
I do not hope to turn the page again of this tragic story
Oh I don't even know my name
How I could understand the essence of my loneliness
Where are the people who saved my life
And abandoned me in this oblivion
Where is civilization
What are these empty places
These devastated lands
I can't say anything or put a word on things
I feel so lonely in my waste world

Yeah, all is so confused in my head
I couldn't face the essence of my loneliness
I do not hope to turn the page again on this tragic story
Yeah if only my heart were stone I would kiss my fate
But lips that would kiss form prayers to the broken stone
Please take me
Please bury me
My broken bones
The broken stones
This land is my Bruges-la-Morte
I'm walking dead through this charred land
But I don't know where to go
There is no scenario
I regain my strength I breathe
I regain consciousness
I travelled too far and take too much time to come back home
Come back to my fragile life
"I could not speak and my eyes failed
I was neither living nor dead"

I've never been so close to the end and the beginning
After a lifetime of wandering
I travelled through the ashes to rebuild this disjointed story
And try to understand the meaning of the whole sketches
Back stretch through the stony places
The lines begin to blur
I'm slowly wasting away
I'm walking, incomplete, through this mess
Maybe it's time to reverse and replay the whole story again

I should come back home now where it all started
Unreal city's calling me

When I came to this world
I unfolded like an unconscious flower lost in time
Then I went through these spaces
I set off on my expedition
But I served my time and I failed

I should come back to the origin
The hospital
And plunge me into the coma
Then I would travel through my dreams to relive the whole fantasy
And try to understand the meaning of those fucking sketches
Back straight through the bloody places
My eyes begin to blur
I'm slowly wasting away
I'm walking, incomplete, through this mess
Maybe it's time to reverse and replay the whole story again.

I should face the facts now
I travelled too far and I won't be able to come back home
And find the peace again

Yeah I came through this world
I unfolded but I couldn't bear the weight of signs
Yeah I went through these cities
I wandered about like a lost soul
But now I feel tired and I'm going to die here
Faintness ?

Fainting, Falling
Crouching, Breathless
My conscience distorts
I'm overcome by something stronger, by something I can't control
I'm beside myself again just contemplating
How I'm lost in this waste land
I'm finally dying

When I came to this world
I unfolded like an unconscious flower lost in time
There I'll bury my thoughts
I'll succumb as a faded flower lost in the waste land