St. Lamberti

On this cursed day I am in Münster, above me the black clouds lining the sky with their bellies silver from the sun they hide. Away from my native Rheydt the city feels so familiar, yet so foreign. I am not at home here. Yet here, cornered by the most ridiculous gesture of fate, the past weighing down on my ankles and the present tight around my wrists I am myself as ever – for now the future gives me wings, and for the first time in my life I know what I want – what I covet. Der Tod. It is München itself that wraps her coils around my mind in her vigour bold as ever, the days and nights raging in my thoughts like the eye of a storm. 

There is one single candle in the laced darkness of St. Lamberti, pouring its shaky, tired light through the stained glass on the streets of the city – without the shame of its size.

I know I want him with the eternity of that daring, shivering flame. Der Tod ist ein Meister. Like a cheap wine circling in my veins and churning my stomach in the frosty, muddy paths of Rheydt, a craving echoes in my body wave after wave and I sway, sway, sway… I know what he wants – to hold a thousand men and their thousand sons in the palm of his hand. And I want him with the grandeur of the words he drips on the paper, slithering across his skin like the black ink, trickling down the folds of his fingers. I want all of him – zeitlos, unbegrenzt – until it goes through me like an endless spring, like a white-hot knife through the snow. Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland. 

A fire grows and rains on the ruins with ash and cinder. The scorched air rises to the sky, and the fresh wind oozes into the heart of flames, birthing them anew. How cruel! The beauty of the sight betrays the carnage – until the flames exhaust all there was to stand. One day in time shall Hamburg burn like that. 

Yet my death already casts its shadow on today – like St. Lamberti on the tiles I walk upon. The whispers tell of my fate, a tale now more known to me than the word of God. Evangel! I am to share the same end, but remain thrilled, fervent, elated. I have found God!

Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau. Vater vergib!