So there he stood, the King who laid down his hands over a broken guitar, a King who laid down his guitar, because it could play the song he was taught no more. And the broken winds surrounded him; his cries reached the Heaven he didn't want to believe in.
Now I've heard there was a secret chord
that David played, and it pleased the Lord
He couldn't please the being he once wanted to please. It tore his soul into two parts. One was old, the other new, and the new one was weaker than the old one. He tore up the old guitar, broke it and left it in the room. A girl began to weep for him.
But you don't really care for music, do you?
He told her how life went on, where sometimes not a song could let him sing again. She listened, letting tears fall, but then again she heard him call, and they didn't say a thing.
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
And they might have been confused, but it didn't matter right now. It mattered that they were together, and the guitar was slowly singing an old song, a melody of bittersweet sorrows.
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
He walks away, feeling ashamed. He now has no one to blame but himself. He slowly remembers when they were young, were barely eight, and the song begun with the sweetest little thing he'd ever heard.
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
He called to her, and they played till it was time to go. He kissed her cheek, and she giggled, like the little girl he never knew. They played for the summer, but when school came, they didn't say a word.
You saw her bathing on the roof
her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
A few years later, something changed, and he found him vulnerable, and at her will. She didn't glance over at him, not anymore, because he broke her.
She tied you
to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
Shaved and gone was the thing that kept him from crumbling. His reputation that kept him on top. He found himself in a church, not a synagogue, and simply said, "Amen."
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
And now with a new guitar, he sings to the audience that isn't there, and he sings just to keep him from opening the pills, and taking a sip of the bottle that is making the world go round and round, and keeping him from falling, but making him stay there all the same.
"Maybe there's a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you,"
The chords grew somber, as he began to take more and more of the pills, and of the whiskey that was keeping him from dropping, and making him stay there all the same.
"And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah."
He takes more pills.
Hallelujah
Drinks the bottle dry.
Hallelujah
And he stares up into the Heaven he doesn't believe in and dies.
Hallelujah
And she finds him, and cries over the boy who can't cry any more. She smashes his guitar. The music can't be played anymore.
Hallelujah
And on his grave they marked a single:
Hallelujah