The Wrote and the Writ - Johnny Flynn

They’re taking pictures of the man from God

I hope his cassock’s clean

The burden of being a holy fella’s

Your halo’d better gleam, better gleam

What of all those wayward priests?

The ones who like to drink

Do you suppose they’d swap their blood for wine

Like you swapped yours for ink, for ink

You wrote me oh-so-many letters

And all of them seemed true

Promises look good on paper

Especially from you, from you

The weight of all those willing words

I carried all alone

You wouldn’t put your pen to bed

When we hadn’t found our own, our own

Your sentences rose high at night

And circled round my head

The circle’s since been broken

Like the priest before me is breaking bread

I’m being asked to drink the blood of Christ

And soon I’ll eat his flesh

I’m alone again before the altar

Shedding all my old regrets

The last of which I’ll tell you now

As it flies down the sink

I never knew a part of you

You didn’t set in ink, in ink

The letters that you left behind

No longer shall I read

Your blood’s between the pages

And I can’t stand to see you bleed

And I’ll soon forget what was never there

Your words are ash and dust

All that’s left is the song I’ve sung

The breath I’ve taken and the one I must

If you’re born with a love for the wrote and the writ

People of letters, your warning stands clear:

Pay heed to your heart and not to your wit

Don’t say in a letter what you can’t in my ear