Apocryphon of Cowards [I. Introitus] You never called me by my name, yet every “no” you ever spoke forged me a throne inside the cathedral of imagination. You fashioned music out of iron, made darkness an ornament, but when the night ceased to be decoration, you fled toward two intersecting beams, as though geometry could save a man from himself. I do not blaspheme your God. That would be far too easy. I merely ask why you remember Him only when you remember me. [II. Psalm of the Fugitives] Run beneath your crosses. Closer still. Let the wood impress its mark upon your brow. Call it faith, though beneath every word I hear the small animal of fear scratching at its cage. I shall wait. I possess the patience of things that need not exist to govern human lives. [Chorus] Do not fear Hell. Hell would be the mercy of simplicity: fire, judgment, gate, conclusion. Fear instead the question no amplifier can drown: Do you kneel before God for love of the light, or only because someone taught you to fear the dark? [III. Homily Without a Priest] You wore death upon your shirts until death ceased to be an image. You wore the pentagram like punctuation for rebellion, until the symbol stared back with a gravity you had never anticipated. Then the metal fell silent. Only the human remained. Naked not in flesh, but stripped of every pose once used to conceal his metaphysical panic. And that is where I meet you. Not in the grave. Not in the flame. Not at some blackened altar. But in the second between: “I do not believe” and “God, if You are there.” [IV. The Devil’s Credo] I have no need of your worship. Worship is the currency of gods. I have no need even of your belief. It is enough that when the light expires, my absence feels to you like presence. Behold my most perfect temple: a mind that fashioned its own monster and then spent an entire lifetime searching for sanctuary from it. [Chorus II] So run beneath your crosses. Kiss the wood. Build barricades from prayer. But before you name your terror faith, answer me: If I did not exist, would you still love God? If yes, I have lost. If not... I never needed to win. [V. Antigospel] The strangest secret of Hell is not who shall enter it. It is this: how many built it for themselves beforehand from doctrines, suspicions, and fear, then signed my name beneath their own creation. How generous you are. You attribute every darkness to me so that I might never ask how much of it belongs to you. [Outro: Whisper / Choir] I am not behind you. I am not before you. I am not even certain I stand anywhere at all. And still you run. You run. You run. And that is precisely why it becomes so difficult to decide which one of us is your devil.
