Kilimanjaro

[Verse 1] [Low male baritone] Don’t lose your minds, don’t ask me to go with you now, Long ago I broke the cathedral my fragile soul allowed. As I set it alight, I was laughing, “Burn, my shrine, Burn bright tonight.” And the sacramental wine Scorched the hollow in my chest Like a fire running wild, And it cut into my throat Like smoke in a haunted child. Like Kilimanjaro Spitting out its buried pain, I danced a slow cha-cha On my own soul’s grave again. But graves never answer, No matter how hard you sway, No matter how long you dance, They never give you a name. [Verse 2] Now all I have left Is an obelisk of ash, It won’t be replaced, It won’t ever come clean of black. I should have stopped to think Before I tore myself apart, But now they run from me Like sailors from a dying bark. From the hold of a lost ship Everybody flees the flame Of my burning emotions, My ruin, my wreck, my name. Wait, my friends, don’t leave me, The heat is not gone yet. Drink down the final sparks Of the words I haven’t said. Everything here’s a lottery, You just have to choose a number. If luck leans your way, You might leave with a souvenir. [Chorus] And my road will be dark, It’ll be painful, thorned, severe. I never knew the builder Could become the one who tears. Under that bending dome, My soul kept beating hard. What have I done? I poured gasoline straight into its heart. [Verse 3] That spring wore funeral black, And elder death filled the air. Now all my feelings have burned me Down to nothing there. You can’t replace them, Can’t patch them up in haste, This mortal body suddenly hollow, An abandoned, empty place. So all that burned away I will carry until I die, And I’ll lock the gates forever Of that charred-out church inside. I don’t want anyone To know the deepest truth I hide. [Bridge] When the smoke was gnawing at me, When the fire fed within, When the flames were eating through me, Under flesh and under skin, I felt life so fiercely, So painfully, so clear, More than I had ever felt it, More than ever in my years. [Outro] When the smoke was gnawing at me, And the fire lived inside, I felt life like never before, Like never in my life. Like never before, Like never in my life.