Come dance in the water

Come bleach your skin

We’ve lined up the planets in a row

For you to begin

Rinse every fracture

Anoint with cement

Sweet and dark like molasses

You’re dripping sin

 

Looks like your father

Could tame the wind

He punched the carotid

You enslaved the Jinn

Your faith was martyred

And you lost all your friends

They draped you with a noose

You arabesqued and (stoically) grinned

 

Leech out the ulcers

Squeeze them and wring

This slump is a mortar

And the tears, they sting

This is a painful rapture

But we’re close to the end

The silk of your wisdom

Is wearing thin

 

Mote it be

Mote it be

As it was before

It shall never be

Here comes the part

Where you go insane

Not knowing yourself

But it tastes the same.

 
Listen to the Song Version (Demo) at https://on.soundcloud.com/7shQv

Notes on The Poem and Song
My Kafka and biology-inspired Metamorphosis is an autobiographical poem that transformed into a song. The work is meant to be soothing. In essence, it is a dance and the invitation to that dance. The dance is a cleansing ritual inspired by paganism, Sufism, and mysticism. I am invited to moult at the altar of something grander than myself that can accept me for who I am. In the song, I have used metaphors, similes, personification, and metonymy to allude to my father’s physical abuse, psychosis, skin-picking, suicide, people-pleasing, seeking validation, and spiritual healing, and change, whether premeditated or tumultuous through turmoil, to ultimately end up at the same place. Hence, the song starts in G major, then modulates through F# natural minor, A natural minor, A dominant Phrygian, and A major and finally arrives at G major again.

Foley: Arabic prayers and waterfalls. I imagined the setting as an oasis, a magnificent respite in a windy desert.

Empathy, love, and hope,
Elias Wild | إِلْيَاسْ سُلَيّمَانْ
https://linktr.ee/eliaswild