When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone

When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with

When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured

As by a shining brainless beacon

Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world

When you are calm and joyful

And finally entirely alone

Then in a great new darkness

You will finally execute your special plan



One needs to have a plan someone said who was turned away into the shadows

And who I had believed was sleeping or dead

Imagine he said all the flesh that is eaten

The teeth tearing into it

The tongue tasting its savour

And the hunger for that taste

Now take away that flesh he said

Take away the teeth and the tongue

The taste and the hunger

Take away everything as it is

That was my plan

My own special plan for this world

I listened to these words and yet I did not wonder

If this creature whom I had thought sleeping or dead would ever approach his vision

Even in his deepest dreams

Or his most lasting death

Because I had heard of such plans such visions

And I knew they did not see far enough

But what was demanded in a way of a plan

Needed to go beyond tongue and teeth and hunger and flesh

Beyond the bones and the very dust of bones and the wind that would come to blow the dust away

And so I began to envision a darkness that was long before the dark of night

And a strangely shining light

That owed nothing to the light of day



That day may seem like other days

Once more we feel the tiny legged trepidations

Once more we are mangled by a great grinding fear

But that day will have no others after

No more worlds like this will follow

Because I have a plan

A very special plan

No more worlds like this

No more days like that



There are but four ways to die a sardonic spirit might have said to me

There is dying that occurs relatively suddenly

There is dying that occurs relatively gradually

There is dying that occurs relatively painlessly

There is the death that is full of pain

Thus by various means they are combined

The sudden and the gradual

The painless and the painful

To yield but four ways to die

And there are no others

Even after the voice stopped speaking

I listened for it to speak again

After hours and day and years have passed

I listened for some further words

Yet all I heard were the faintest echoes reminding me

There are no others

There are no others

Was it then that I began to conceive for this world

A special plan?



There are no means for escaping this world

It penetrates even into your sleep

And is his substance

You are caught in your own dreaming

Where there is no space

And a hell forever where there is no time

You can't do nothing you aren't told to do

There is no hope for escape from this dream

That was never yours

The very words you speak are only its very words

And you talk like a traitor

Under its incessant torture



There are many who have designs upon this world 

And dream of wild and vast reformations

I have heard them talking in their sleep

Of elegant mutations

And cunning annihilations

I have heard them whispering in the corners of crooked houses

And in the alleys and narrow back streets of this crooked creaking universe

Which they with their new designs were made straight and sound

But each of these new and ill conceived designs

Is deranged in its heart

For they see this world as if it were alone and original

And not as only one of count with others

Whose nightmares all precede

Like a hideous garden grown from a single seed

I have heard these dreamers talking in their sleep

And I stand waiting for them 

As at the top of a darkened flight of stairs

They know nothing of me

And none of the secrets of my special plan

While I know every crooked creaking step of theirs



It was the voice of someone who was waiting in the shadows

Who was looking at the moon and waiting for me to turn the corner

And enter a narrow street

And stand with him in the dull glaze of moonlight

Then he said to me

He whispered

That my plan was misconceived

That my special plan for this world was a terrible mistake

Because, he said, there is nothing to do and there is no where to go

There is nothing to be and there is no one to know

Your plan is a mistake, he repeated

This world is a mistake, I replied



The children always followed him

When they saw him hopping by

A funny walk

A funny man

A funny, funny, funny man

He made them laugh sometimes

He made them laugh oh yes he did

He did he did he did he did

Oh how he made them roll

One day he took them to a place 

He knew a special place

And told them things about this world

This funny, funny, funny world

Which made them laugh sometimes

He made them laugh oh yes he did

He did he did he did he did

Oh how he made them roll

Then the funny man who made them laugh

Sometimes he did

Revealed to them his special plan

His very special funny plan

Knowing they would understand

And maybe laugh sometimes

He made them laugh

Oh yes he did

He did he did he did he did

Their eyes grew wide beneath there lids

And how he made them roll



I first learned the facts from a lunatic

In a dark and quiet room that smelled of stale time and space

There are no people

Nothing at all like that

The human phenomenon is but the sum of densely coiled layers of illusion

Each of which winds itself upon the supreme insanity

But there are persons of any kind

When all that can be is mindless mirrors

Laughing and screaming as they parade about

In an endless dream

But when I asked the lunatic what it was

It swore itself within these mirrors

As they marched endlessly in stale time and space

He only looked and smiled

Then he laughed and screamed

And in his black and empty eyes

I saw for a moment as in a mirror

A form the shade of divinity

In flight from its stale infinity

Of time and space and the worst of all

Of this world dreams

My special plan for the laughter

And the screams



We went to see some little show

That was staged in an old shed

Past the edge of town

And in its beginnings all seemed well

The miniature curtain stage glowed in the darkness

While those dolls bounced along on their strings before our eyes

And in its beginnings all seemed well

But then there came a suttle turning point which some have noticed

And I was one 

Who quietly left the show

No I did not

Because I could see where things were going

As the antics of those dolls grew strange

And the fragile strings grew taut

With their tiny pullings, tiny limbs

The others around me became appalled

And turned away and abandoned the show

That was staged in an old shed

Past the edge of town

But I wanted to witness what could never be

I wanted to see what could not be seen

But the moment of consummate disaster

My puppets turned to face the puppet master



It was twilight and I stood in a greyish haze of the vast empty building

When the silence was enriched by a reverberant voice

All the things of this world it said

Are of but one essence

For which there are no words

This is the greater part which has no beginning or end

And the one essence of this world for which there can be no words

Is that all the things of this world

This is the lesser part which had a beginning and shall have an end

And for which words were conceived solely to speak of

The tiny broken beings of this world it said

The beginnings and endings of this world it said

For which words were conceived solely to speak of

Now remove these words and what remains it asks me

As I stood in the twilight of that vast empty building

But I did not answer

The question echoed over and over

But I remained silent until the echoes died

And as twilight passed into the evening I felt my

Special plan for which there are no words

Moving towards a greater darkness



There are some who have no voices

Or none that will ever speak

Because of the things they know about this world

And the things they feel about this world

Because the thoughts that fill a brain

That is a damaged brain

Because the pain that fills a body

That is a damaged body

Exists in other worlds

Countless other worlds

Each of which stands alone in an infinite empty blackness

For which no words are being conceived

And where no voices are able to speak

When a brain is filled only with damaged thoughts

When a damaged body is filled only with pain

And stands alone in a world surrounded by infinite empty blackness

And exists in a world for which there is no special plan



When everyone you have ever loved is finally gone

When everything you have ever wanted is finally done with

When all of your nightmares are for a time obscured

As by a shining brainless beacon

Or a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world

When you are calm and joyful

And finally entirely alone

Then in a great new darkness

You will finally execute your special plan