Duende, the wild, magical soul of Spanish Flamenco, is present only as an absence in our dreadfully serious songs. This is our attempt to find soul of our own: to seize our desperation and disillusion and brandish them so fiercely at the cruel and heedless cosmos that we too can transcend—and brush against beauty through the most passionate of ugliness, if that is indeed all we have left to offer in this slaughtered world.

Black, bitter milk we drink in toast to the dawn
In huddled silence as a long night falls
We write of love upon the bodies of our dead
Swallow pride and venom for our daily bread
Duende
Wash your conscience in the tears of men who raped
Trace your pleasures in the outlines of pain
You speak of laws and rights in this day and age?
I don’t believe in anything I can’t taste
Duende
And tonight the losers sleep, or lie awake and gnaw their wrists
Crippled dancers, beaten heroes, squandered artists
Refugees from those wretched lands
Where our dreams died like lovers in our hands
While outside in that new age
Lost children and devils play
On the very doorsteps of our homes
New deities sworn in,
Consuming from without and from within
Cleanse the land down to bare and blackened bones
Make ready ten billion beds in hell
For we’re all coming soon

And in this noise, the dreadful silence of tongues
Tied by words never spoken, songs left unsung
Vows that were bent rather than broken
Locked chambers that will never open
And none on this earth will ever get what they want
And that is beautiful, or close enough
And we’ll clutch our regrets
Shut out the rest
Cut out the hearts from our chests
And we move
Eyes shut, silent, hand in hand
Towards a broken promised land

When those before you lost their heads upon the block
Or sold themselves into the service of the
Snakes as new gods
Reshape the world in their own image
And all the others turn their eyes away
We will set out with a fire in our hearts
With a desire that cannot be bought
To snatch the morning from the jaws of the night
To take the dead and bring them back to life
Duende
No words
No touch
No sleep
No trust
No hope
No faith
No resting place
From childhood schemes on strangers’ floors
To sickbeds, cells
And foreign shores
(We push on)
Homeless
Heartless
Restless
Selfless
Lifeless
Loveless
Less and
Less and
Less
And if the morning comes late this time
That fickle sun will rise to find
My fingers clutched tight around the husks
Of dreams I built from dust
Finally dead
Dead in the land of the dead
And they will call it suicide
As I scream for just one finger of dawn
And it’s coming...
On all horizons, like gathering clouds
Bar the doors to shut it out
But put your ear to your chest
You will hear
In your own breast
Hoofbeats
Closing in

and there’s nothing pure in this place
and there’s nothing clean in this place
and there’s nothing sure in this place
and there’s nothing free in this place
and in this world there’s nothing safe
and in this world there’s nothing fair
and nothing in this world is true
this world that I can’t bear
and the morning came late!

I’ll spit it back in your face
Last-born of an evil (dying) race
We’re all evil in this place
JUST FUCKING GIVE ME A TASTE