1. SALVATION

(Instrumental)


2. FRIENDS IMAGINARY

Pushing your now feeling, religion you just swallowed
Hypocrite don't hit me with your bible.
I don't have anything to throw back,
Unless you count these sticks and stones.
Your name has escaped me.
Loot the vision that clouds the sky,
Betraying more than decency.
Mask your works, practice til perfect.

Be revered, with luck be believed
perceived as other than a thief,
Other than what you are.
Are you what you thought?
What are you without me?

Talking behind backs turned,
Stabbing back and forth.
Words rising to the surface,
Burned and arranged out of sequence.

Red letter labeling defeats a willing loser
With nothing else to lose.
When gravity seems scarce settle
For something form all of the non-believers.
Ye of little faith sent to convince.
I'm further along than this time last year.

Ice age defeat taught me wisdom.
Cry myself to sleep.

I've been sold out again, thank you friend, Imaginary.
Sometimes there, Always scary, to count on or come through.
Disappointed, what's new.
Sound sincere. Were you ever here?
I'll give you to the count of three to disappear.


3. PAYING THE TOLL

I feel you in the distance, waiting for weakness.
Stalking out horizons for hundred thousand years
Plodding every forward, unstoppable in motion
Impatience waiting for the chance, signaled by our fears
I’ve seen you in my tortured dreams in silence every creeping
Extinction turns deaf ears to screams
To catch us while we are sleeping.
You’ve lived in our subconscious for as long as we can know.
Hear the rattle of the bones from hand collecting the toll.
In vigilance perpetual, in purpose denied
Unwavering persistence like the steady march of time.
Matching every footstep while we laugh at our progress
Our arrogance denies you we are living in our lies.
This fee is not negotiable and nothing
We have accomplished can keep us from the final lonely ride.
Some will boldly step on deck
And some find they are not so eager
To see the fate awaits us when we reach the other side.
At odds with all of nature creation an annoyance
You have lived in our subconscious for as long as we can know
Waiting still in patience till we reach our river station
I hear the rattle of the bones
From the hand collecting the toll.


4. THE DOOR

Sitting alone in the silence
With a bottle of death in your hand
It will take less than an hour
This will make them understand.
That you have death on your mind
You are feeling so sure.
That your temporary problems need a permanent cure.
Staring so long in the mirror
At a face you don’t know anymore
The eyes staring back like a tombstone
They aren’t alive like before.
But in the end you will find.
That you are trying to fight hanging on to the threads
As they are slipping from your sight.
Do you find yourself reaching
For those who said they didn’t care?
What would you tell them if they were here?
The light fades away the heartbeat is gone
Do you wish you could stay, do you see you were wrong?
Your pale skin is plastic and frozen
You can no longer close your eyes
This final solution you have chosen
For the temporary problems of life
Did you find at the end
Of your hour the peace you think you were looking for?
Did you see your mistake and try to fight it?
Or did you boldly step through the door?


5. J. CHRISTOPHER'S HAUNTING

(Instrumental)


6. IF THESE WALLS COULD TALK

Surfacing as the only living witness to a crime,
Others label with disgrace.
Only a mother who's child is lost to her feels
What can't be replaced.
Strength failing to exist, now when needed most.
What a price to sacrifice, Life or the life inside you.
Imagine the hurt when time is gone to choose.
Opinions voice decisions of pro-choice.
Freedoms abused, in this manner refused.

If these walls could talk, what would they say?
If these walls could talk, Would words or sounds convey?
This pain of loss. The ability to pray.
Breaching faith through life's will betrayed
If these walls could talk what would they say.

Not proud of what's been done, but doing what's right.
In light of all the darkness carried
Through hearts hating to breathe.
Creations power, in this blackest hour.
Exchanging gifts of life to be taken back
For what's been taken away.
Trapped inside a womb, foreclosing walls caving in. Surrounded, dumbfounded.
By voices to be reckoned with.
Force fed words meant to console.
Though still feeling alone.

Judgements given out by those who chose alternatives.
What have I done? Whats to come?
For me there is no other way.
Mere moments to measure, split seconds of pleasure.
Was it worth feeding emptiness.
Innocence given up to protect your forever.
Meaning never again will this heart beat inside you.


7. ALL SINS RETURNED

Now I look back on all I have lived
At all I have taken from those who would give.
Never a thought to those I passed by.
I could’ve helped them, but I wouldn’t try.
My sins not of murder or theft in the night.
But more in my arrogance, sure I was right.
Never a hand would I lift in attack.
But neither would I offer my helping hand.
I hide in the twilight
My breath frosts the glass
I look in on the future
I’m trapped in the past.
My own lack of vision
My version of hell.
It’s all that I learned
There’s no more to tell
No one grieves for you when all sins return.
I’ve lived at a distance, kept my life at bay.
I showed no emotion because it wasn’t my way.
Those few touched me and those I cast aside.
I run from my sins but they find me each night.
Between whom I should be and the man that I became.
A vast chasm stretches my sins are to blame
Sense of fear is forever my friend.
Winds of time pass and I stare looking back.


8. SCAR BARROW'S FARE

(Instrumental)


9. THE LAST KING OF THE HIGHLANDS

We’ve tilled this great valley, we’ve braved winter snows
We have fought like our fathers before.
We don’t know what brought them or why they came to kill.
This is war, and war is something we all know.
Rise up my people, fill your hands
With steel there will be time when you are dead for sorrow.
I won’t be their hostage, I won’t be their slave.
I’ll fight till my death on the morrow.
I will go down there to die at their hands
With my wife and my sons at my side.
I stood there staring with steel in our hands,
And then they will know the rage in this highlander’s eyes.
Outnumbered by tenfold, they rush to their deaths and expected to come out with the glory.
The odds don’t matter when family is at stake.
This is war and war is something they all know.


10. BORN UNTO (BUT DON'T BELONG TO ME)

Here we are in the middle of our own universe.
A private central park. Sitting on chanukah hill with Tyrone and Agnus.
Sleeping with slinky on the steps of the capital.
East evangelistic carpet bagger. The suns at 10 plus 3.
Blinded by ghosts in bikini's
Searching for the illusive tan line.

Born Unto But Don't Belong to Me.

Love handled sports fans cheering cellulite triumph.
Exercising victory, RTD, Give me a transfer.
Kings and safety guards on strike.
It's not your business but I'll hook you up.
Bakery chef, bread winner. We have the goods.
Boys in the hood. Little Tijuana, Larimer square,
Colfax whores, prices fair. Drink Muddy's decaf.
Twist of lemon.

Born Unto But Don't Belong to Me.

Run around where colors abound without a sound.
Lost in five points, points a 9mm.
Martin Luther rests under a shade tree.
Free me for less that what it costs you to smile.

Born Unto But Don't Belong to Me.

Cultural tours, spanish lessons.
Texans migrate, Californians take over.
Move me out.
I'm not sore. Capacity discharge.
Hold a grudge, hold down the fort,
My boats been blown off course.


11. LEFTIST OUT

(Instrumental)


12. TURNING UP BROKEN

Two voices connected by scaling arms.
Outreach programmed to detect
Vacuous thought pushing from 180 degrees.
Extend your tether to defect.
Ravens wings span to their limits.
How far are you willing to go?
Examples given, defend your opinions.
You've stumbled across frontiers
Stumbled across by men greater than yourself.
Dissolving in a pool, evolving cruel.
A higher life forming.

There's been times I couldn't face
Turning up broken in this place.
You have found me, found me out.
But still can't see what I'm about.

Use your superior intellect
And master thesis to prove me wrong.
Religious guilt holds you back or was it your mother?
Over protect.
Locked in a crawl space til worlds are safe to conquer.
Released on occasion, sleep walk to metropolis.

Carve out a living.
Make your mark before times up or does time not exist.
I insist to those burdened by the financial lack of,
Time must carry a certain significance.
Struggle to get in back of the corporate monster.
Run the ladder to the clocktower
Trying to convince the minute hand
To pocket the secrets to why we are all here.

My self I have found the answer.
I believe with literal definition.
Educated but could not predict angered disposition.
I won't presume to speak for the small minds collective.
It's safe to assume my money's where my mouth is.


13. FAILLING AVALON

Taking census of stars, counting those who project light,
Discounting those less than radiant.
Taking census of stars,
Trying to capture an enlarged image of oneself.
Moving abacus sliders to negative blue,
Reflecting waning IQs.
Heads swelling to the stratosphere,
Constellations disappear.
Absorbed into supernovas consuming ear.
Open for complements and flirtation.
Expelling the onset
Of unflattering remarks by grasping to a comets tail.
Marking the sky with an illuminating trail.
Take me away from all of this.
Truth burns seeping in to pores
In a descent on gravity's course.
The oceans mirror the source of this melting shield.
I presumed too much and forgot to feel.
Strength in beauty is easily lost.
Taxing the cost of burning up on re-entry.
I could capture and steal all of heavens treasures.
Bringing them to you in an open hand.
Asking only once to be judged and measured for what I am
And not for what this world has made me.


14. APOLOGIES WANTING TO MAKE GOOD

If there was a time, or place to again see your face.
That day I will find you hanging there.
With all the other unanswered prayers.
Can I ever break away to express regret and say.
I did mistreat you.
Being taken for granted is easy to see through.
I confess to lies and all the failed tries.
It was wrong I admit.
I can barely cope with it.
It is hard to live with yourself
When you have lost to that someone else.


15. LEGACY DEPARTING

Heritage has never been troubled with such pride or conceit.
The last in a line of fine nobility,
History will not repeat.
This day has not blessed my bloodline.
Failure follows wherever I go.
Incomplete with a century closing fast.
Progress moving slow.
Trying to escape a generations disease.
acting upon suggestive temptation
Without factoring in reprise.
Dying unaccomplished means this name dies with me.
Wear a label, carry a curse, from better to worse.
For what it's worth, as long as I am able, I will endure.

We have spent out legacy departing
Building up to starting over, and over
Legacy departing.
Embarking on goodbyes
Resurrecting monuments we destroy in time.
With apologies come closure, suspect the benign.

Impatience guides my hand to strike
At the right side of choice, ending up wrong.
Pulling straws for posthumous fame.
Opening my mouth to lose my voice
Condemned to pay for sins with all of the hope in the world.
Mistakes can't be taken back
With the force that has brought them forward.
Limits have been set as to how far rules can bend.
When you are gone, you are gone.
It does mean the end.
History will forget me.
Erase every trace I existed.
Closing my heart in a bottle.
To be remembered,
I asked for this and never resisted.

Thinking I will finally find the reasons having crossed my mind
To save myself over solving the riddles to claim the prize.
Questions may arise in authenticity,
Showing canvass blemished with self pity.
Poetry interprets works
Through foundations laced in tannins.
Callow ripens on the vine surviving through famine.
Traverse the seam, balance a beam of light.
So quick to speak,
Adore the way outrage has never silenced you.