1. |
Dawn Prayer
07:54
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Never one to wonder what my soul is
Coalescing in the dark
Never one to take the toll in promise
I cauterized the mark
Their cross upon my heart
A crown of thorns upon my brow
The cross bars come apart
A buried oath I disavow
There within the hours
I called the names of God
Offer to the owls
I scratched a line across the laws
Underneath the barrows
Shadows in the light of flame
There within the stillness
I rolled at the beheading game
You never answer my questions
You only shuffled hands and tapped your feet
Yours the architecture
Of a smothered land with no breath to breathe
And at the calling of the lark
We take up arms and charge
Underneath the arch
We spread our arms across the tomb
The maqueriles in bloom
Another weaving of the loom
Never one to sleep in silent dreaming
I wake upon the dawn
Never to be unversed in the meaning
I state the denouement
My cross upon my heart
My scars spell out the holy names
The ghost ship disembarks
I disappear into the flames
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2. |
Under Your Control
05:22
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You never knew if you were man enough
To go home with the girl
You never knew if you stood tall enough
To see the flags unfurl
You never knew if you were one of them
Worthy of their cheers
You never knew if you were cold enough
Worthy of her tears
You wouldn't look back at a bleeding corpse
You bought another foal when you shot the horse
You were never one to feel remorse
Now they're under your control
You've paid your fines, you've paid the courts
You've stoked your fires, traded diamond for quarts
You've lined the Rhine with sixty forts
Now they're under your control
Now she's nothing more than a memory
But you didn't ever bother to see
Now she's nothing more than a memory
Locked away in your penitentiary
You wanted to be her Aladdin
To take her away from this misery
But you wish that she hadn't
Caused you such an injury
Time and time again
You pray and say amen
Time and time again
The ink inside your pen
In rivers drawn from them
In streams of rusted red
You lift the infant high
Over bodies of the dead
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3. |
Flowers for the Mass
05:36
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Ten past the midnight bell
The crocus bells are royal
The bulbs like teardrops in the rain
No voices nigh to break the spell
Rivulets flow beneath my feet
They join into a stream
A vein of sapphire through the streets
Swelling as our sins accrete
The moment is within me
The solace and the pain
A captive remnant, a waking dream
A sleeping vengeance, a hollow scream
They cut the throat of promise
The wearers of the mask
The ravagers are planting
Flowers for the mass
Drawn am I into the eye of Saturn
Within I lie asleep
Beneath the ice of Tethys
The frozen angels weep
Their waters have polluted
The pools of Antioch
And scattered among the ruins
Are the feathers of the flock
Ten past the midnight bell
A city drowned beneath the rising tide
Illusions cast aside
The flowers grow like cancer cells
The titans lie in stasis
They dream although they’re dead
Their speech belongs to aphids
Remember what the thunder said
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4. |
Carbon Black
06:47
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A thousand birds
A thousand words
A thousand prayers
Lifted up into the air
To feed the sun
Feed the fire
Feed the ghosts
Who haunt the earth
Haunt the ruins
Of our dreams
And our mirth
Restless in my grave
I felt the sunlight
Dreaming of the birds
I saw the light die
In my hands again
Were the feathers and bones
Of the cormorants
But I can’t let go
Take my hand
We’ll tell the throng
That we won’t be back
We read the names
We sing the songs
Eyes carbon black
Like the ashes
Our words are our passions
And all is given up to God
Take my hand
We’ll tell the stories
Still untold
We read the names
We sing the songs
Our hearts are black
Like the ashes
Forgotten our compassion
And all is given up to God
In the circle’s sands
You spoke the last rights
In the pentagram
By the firelight
In my hands again
Were the pages you wrote
And the diagrams
But I can’t let go
A thousand psalms
A thousand calls
A thousand stares
All the eyes that never cared
We feed the sun
Feed the fire
Feed the ghosts
Who haunt the earth
Haunt the ruins
Of our dreams
And our mirth
In the circle drawn
I sat in silence
Through the night and dawn
I shut my eyes fast
In my hands again
Were the bones of the gods
And a book of ash
But I can’t let go
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5. |
Iris
03:43
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I weigh the broken crown against the starling
Its cries were thin, they echoed across the dark
The balance shifts, the kingdom now discarding
The pages of forgotten hierarchs
I weigh hopes against the stones of sorrow
The balance tips, and thoughts descend anew
A sail into an ocean of tomorrows
I sing the hymn, the words are frail and few
Condemned within the iris of the pain
And there a holy shame
Condemned within the iris of the pain
And then the oceans drain
The smoke is thick, the glow on the horizon
The fires are approaching from the west
The die is cast, the finger screws are tightened
The ceiling falls upon the dispossessed
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6. |
Mortal Skin
05:59
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The winter winds
From summer's sunsets blow
The dew is gone
A sheaf of ash in folds upon the branches and the leaves
And cracks across the ground
The gods are gone
The cowards bear the cross in hiding
You couldn't bear your mortal skin
Your children rising up again
You stuck your claw in the world's throat
You gave up life for immortal hope
Your weeping noise at the hint of sin
Your fathers falling down again
Once again you are gathering up the rope
Once again you are faithless, your god invoked
Beckoning the end
The morning is a respite for the soul
Choir of the damned
We echo songs of angels with burning coal
You sold away
The world that your god had given you
The solar ray
The Aten of our lymphatic tissue
I've danced in the ether
I've stolen from the gods
My molars grind with scarlet fever
Consumption of the gastropods
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7. |
Famine
09:48
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Among the stars, there in the fading sunlight
The mountains tall, reflections on the snow
The forest calls, the nightingales are singing for the moon
I smile, I’m lost among the trees
Among the walls, the doors, the silence at the windows
The morning comes to soon
The morning comes to soon
The light is glaring off the concrete
In want of a witness
You were there to greet me
In visions dreamed
It never seemed
So transparent a sheen
Set it right, it leans
If it’s hush it’s a scene
It’s bruised and blue and mean
Call their names, they scream
The sickle cutting grass inside the walls
Not a scrap, not a morsel, nothing left but silence
They forged the shackles from the iron
Cut from the machines
Not a word, not an answer, not a sign from you my God
The leather of our shoes is all that’s left
Not a bird, not a tree, only bodies in the stones
They took the laughter from our dances
Fuel for the machine
So far away, a voice is calling, but I hear it clearly
In sullen thought
Hope is sold and bought
In open prayer
Another market share
Under acid rain
A rusted weathervane
Pointing off to the west
The future manifest
A face of stone
A moment alone
The crystal walls
Show the words of Paul
The holy word
A message reinterred
The spoken name
Is just a waiting game
My dearest love, the blood within the beating
We heal our wounds by cutting out the clots
I stole a kiss and took the road to meet them
We heal the world by cutting out the rot
The final light is fading from the world
Not a sun, neither starlight, nothing left but darkness
The message forced inside our eyelids
Song of the machines
Neither happiness nor sorrow, only droning on and on
Ten million miles of stone is all that’s left
The coffins tall, monolithic, casting shadows over all
They took the sadness from our stanzas
Fuel for the machine
Inside my heart, a voice is calling, and I hear it clearly
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8. |
Closing Prayer
05:06
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The priest and the pastor loaded up their guns
Holy water in their bandoliers, enough to bless everyone
Their Bibles in their knapsacks, burning hearts upon their sleeves
And over each chest is a bullet vest when they slink into the night like thieves
The imam and the rabbi, the shepherd and the flock
They’re building up the stockpile while the others punch the clock
And there between the waters are the holy city’s walls
And a knife between the bricks to spread the cracks until they fall
You don’t need the light to see
You don’t need my comfort
You only have a handful of straw in your hands
Your worship isn’t much worth
With a thousand arms dancing in the mushroom cloud
In the open wound, in the scream without a sound
In your nightmares, in the closing of the day
There’s no silver lining, there’s no other way
In the holy books, in the spoken names
In the whirling dancers, in the closing prayer
All is spinning like a galaxy slowly round the fire
All is on the ghat in a smoking pyre
The Kaaba lies in ruins, the Vatican’s a heap
Jerusalem is fallen, but all its people are asleep
And overhead with smoking wings flies the Enola Gay
The harbinger of angels calls them to the sky to pray
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Cyrus Dark and the Symbols of Reverence Providence, Rhode Island
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