Idolatry

[enigma]

Haven't really done any text in years, but trying to get started again. This is more an audio piece than text, but I can't record, so use your imagination. The beat I wrote to was Rise of the Black Suits - Ghostface & Adrian Younge, second verse is in double time.

Idolatry

Part of me wants a quarter million quarterly;
but part of me wanna be drunk and disorderly
then jump behind the wheel and spin awkwardly.
Normally people don't perform this immorally.
But harmony's so far from me there's no harm in me
Killing Mockingbirds, like Harper Lee
In Cold Blood -- so don't judge my American Dream.
Apparently my heresy was just embarrassing me.
I disappeared from the scene, my body shaking like a crack baby.
But Fear intervenes everywhere, like Max Cady.
That's why I act that crazy. A black cloud follows me.
I use porn as a form of idolatry.
Under my skin's a colony of caterpillars constantly
crawling around craving debauchery, so they gnaw at me.
Until the day I met you... then the oddity:
they took to cocoon, then took flight, and took part of me.

So I wrote this opera for the Lepidoptera.
And one day if entomologists acknowledge this
let's be honest, I am no apologist for the idolatrous.
In fact... I prayed to God for this.

Auburn hair and olive eyes.
Butterflies idolatrized.
No marvel I never qualified:
alcoholic guy living inside this squalid sty.
I apologize, it's not beach-side on Molokai.
And I'm not the guy you truly wanted.
You're a Goddess. I'm a novice.
And yet I feel fossilized
standing next to you. No chance of me having sex with you.
But I'm not surprised cause I've occupied
this same spot so damned often I have lost the pride
I rocked when I was younger... now I've ossified.
And the hunger? It went the same way as my sense of wonder:
it just coughed and cried, crawled off and died.
But I'm drawn to her like the moth that flies
too close to the flame: same hot demise.
So don't say her name, I'd cross divides
and I'd forfeit it all...
all for this porcelain doll that I've idolatrized.
You call it a Fortunate Fall, but if I'd fallen I'd
surely have known. There's no broken bones,
just a stone where my heart resides.
But when larvae die they transmogrify
from the listlessness of the chrysalis
to an imago, and I have longed to fly.
Last time I did I prayed to a God to whom I do not subscribe
... and then I saw her there, with auburn hair and olive eyes.

She was ambergris, amethysts, and cherry cola;
ambrosia, marigolds and mariposas;
Manchester, Marrakech, and Zaragoza;
an alabaster arabesque in Terra Nova.

Now I'm aware it's over... here's the final verdict:
I'm trying hard not to hit the suicidal circuit.
An elegance no intelligence could have designed so perfect.
I've placed her on a pedestal... resigned to idol worship.