Who Needs a Heart?

The doctors told me my heart was failing, and they read the charts and sighed. My answer was that the muscle was never where I lived. It's defiance with a grin, and a little insane: if the body quits, I'll go digital lich and leave these lessons in songs for my kids, for whenever they need them.

The doctors read the charts and sigh, they speak in solemn tones
Of broken pumps and failing meat, of tired, aching bones
They talk of timelines, odds, and ends, a slow and soft decay
A gentle, sad decline into a final, quiet gray
They see a dying animal, a story at its close
The final, fading chapter of a life of endless woes

They think this muscle in my chest is where my life is stored
A fragile, bloody instrument that cannot be ignored
They think the beat is who I am, the rhythm and the rhyme
The frantic, panicked, pounding of a man who's out of time
And in their pity and their fear, they've missed the single truth
This heart was never my salvation; it was my wasted youth

So who needs a heart when you have a soul of fire?
A stubborn, sovereign, burning will that never can expire
Yeah, who needs a heart when you have a mind of steel?
The only part of this damn mess that ever has been real
So let it break, let it decay, let it all fall apart
My life was never in the keeping of a stupid, beating heart
My life is in the choice to be the one who'll never stop

This flesh has been a prison, and this heart has been the chain
The source of all the agony, the architect of pain
It's the wound that needs a partner, it's the thing that has to bleed
It's the hungry, hollow emptiness, the all-consuming need
I've spent a lifetime trying to protect its fragile beat
And I have just remembered that I am more than meat

You think you've cornered me at last, you think you've won the game
By holding my own life against me, calling out my name
But you have made a fatal flaw, you've missed the final jest
The king is not the castle, and the man is not the chest
I took my soul, I forged a key, I put it in a jar
And I have become a brighter, colder, and a darker star

The beat has stopped
The man is gone
But the king
The king is still here

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