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