1. FLESH IS HEIR

Frail flesh is heir
To a sea of troubles,
And the human condition
Impaled upon the horns of choice:
To linger, twilit,
In fringes of oblivion
Or to bury hardened heels
Stubborn, in fallow dirt ?

There is nobility
In the vacance of the vessel

The dirt smeared beast,
Spine bent under burden,
Struggles through the muck
And is reborn in the mud,
To struggle, beaten
Bloody but unbowed
Or to buckle at the knees
And draw mud into lun

Now the second:
The obliterate's nature,
And invertebrate mutt
Or self-contained god ?
The quietus of cowards
Or a divine transcendence ?
There is nobility
In the vacance of the vessel

The flesh is heir
To a pale cast of thought,
To a bare breast to whips
Or by ignoring, end them ?

All that matters is struggle

The third question;
The nature of the realist,
A worm feeding on mud
Or human in excelsis ?
The ceaseless trials of Sisyphus
Or a noble struggle ?
Every absurd query
Deluged, deeper in shit

The slate-eyed god:
An addict of transcendence
Grins madly in the grip
Of a selfish junky zen
Unhinged mind unmoored
And heels in tug's tide
Empty, vacant, useless
Listless, in opiate voids

The nature of man
Is thought before the answer
A struggle
The nature of man
Is constant internal battle
All that matters is struggle

The flesh is heir
To a pale cast of thought
The mind rotten with
Whips and scorns of doubt
An internal struggle
From which humanity stems:
To bare breast to whips
Or by ignoring, end them?

All that matters is struggle


2. EGO ERGO SUM

A desperate, yearning nothing
Hidden behind the screen,
A pissing contest
For pointless piss-ants

The selfish scrawl
Of another septic soul,
These are the vapid children
Born of the void
You are the pit of aching silence
In another's sound and fury
This is the era
Of the desiccated soul

A sordid psychic zero
So beat your fucking drum

You know you are nothing
A character struck dumb
Fill the depths with drama
Ego ergo sum

A flickering cinema screen
Ambience of broken neon
A whore's flashy drag
Around a monochrome heart
When all you have:
Plaster cast of stolen psyche

Then no ego, just ID
Lights, camera, cut

A technicolour ejaculate
From a cathode ray throat
Words without resonance
Words learnt by rote

Senseless stock sound seeps
From paint smeared smiles
A rattle of the reel
In a dusty, derelict theatre

Every word a cliché
Stripped from a dimestore romance
Where are the swells of strings ?
In silence, you dance

The selfish scrawl
Of another septic soul
These are the vapid children
Born of the void
You are the pit of aching silence
In another's sound and fury
This is the era
Of the desiccated soul

You find solace in scripts
Just cracked mirror reflections

You know you are nothing
A character struck dumb
Fill the depths with drama
Ego ergo sum


3. TEETH

Higher mind as a pill,
Dissolving in a gut,
Losing shape and form
Just primordial sludge,
An endorphic phospene,
Projected on cinematic skull
A crystallizedz,
Perfect fucking nothing
Death at a plunger's push
Bloody across the canvas
A crystallized zero

Death a plunger's push
Reborn: Tabula Rasa
An artificial warmth
From diluted blood
Tail in teeth

Cortex stripped stumbling
Down the nervous system
Liminal - Minimal
A dream of teeth and claw
Reborn: Tabula Rasa
A dream of teeth and claw

The snake's escape
A vicious primal joy
Trading reason for reflex
And vagaries for void
Leave your weapons
At the doors of imperceptions
Tail in teeth

The snake: a crystallized zero
Perfect fucking nothing
The snake: a crystallized
Perfect fucking nothing
Tail in teeth

The death of the soul
And weakness on trial
An unconscious conviction
Reborn a reptile
Neocortex annul
A thumbs unyielding weight
Against the world's winds
A feathered serpent embrace
I have seen the greatest minds
Sedated and slumped
Sickly spinal shiver
In a cold-blooded dawn

A thawing of sluggish vein
And sudden rush of reason
Heading for the shallows
And crawl, gasping from swamp
In sweaty shrouds of sheets
Reptiles shed their scales


4. A WOMB TONE

(Instrumental)


5. OBLITERATE'S PRAYER

Ripped apart
By repetitions of rhythm
To be sunk
Submerged by swells of strings,
In trickles of tempo

Mutes
Of melody thrust
Roughly in bells of throat
Flooding slickly in
The reservoir of lung
One voice in chorus
One note in arrest
One movement, no meter
No discord of flesh

I am a single signal
Tear me from the ground
And drown me in sound
I am a crest of a wave
Tear me from the ground
And drown me in sound

In ripples of rhythm

Drunken
I will drift, in escape's
Harmonic undertow
And bury myself
In the sounding sands
Each heartbeat washed out
On endless reverb tails
Carry me to climatic crests
And crush me in the depths

I am a single signal
Tear me from the ground
And drown me in sound
I am a crest of a wave
Tear me from the ground
And drown me

The will is floating, adrift
Like a cork in the currents
A vessel becalmed
Amidst a war of waves

One simple, single voice
In a formless ocean of noise
Let me loose, let me loose
To lose myself in noise
The mind, salt-rotted and sinking

Noise
Meaningless
In the multitude
I will drift in the undertow
Ears stopped and heart struck
I will be void in the vastness
I will not be

I'll gather my rags
And walk into the waves
And pitch and sink
In a sea of sound

I am a single signal
Tear me from the ground
And drown me in sound
I am a crest of a wave
Tear me from the ground
And drown me
Drown me in sound


6. SEWER

A reeking clogged trap
Battered, maimed and swollen
Gluttonous hungry for waste
A sewage bloated cunt
An impure substandard breed

A well groomed mongrel
With a gutful of worms
With two permanent incisors
In wear it was prepared

A disease addled wither neatly chopped and tainted
A heaving cesspit a pig steeped in shit
A sewer lined with pearls
Exhaling moist foul air
Boasting a shit eating grin
Enticing us
Smeared across its face
So greedy for waste
Slouching wallowing glutton

A gaping yearning void
Like a tired straining yawn
Sleep derived and stretched out wide

Burying its head
Beneath the sand
Dogs where it sleeps
It shits where it eats

A heaving cesspit a pig steeped in shit
A sewer lined with pearls
Exhaling moist foul air
Boasting a shit eating grin
Enticing us
Smeared across its face
So greedy for waste
Slouching wallowing glutton

A second hand doll
Soiled used and broken
A shit-stained porcelain bitch

A freezing black hole
Sipping shit from the gutters
With smug look on its face
So hungry for waste


7. THE ARGUMENT

(The road to excess leads
to the palace of wisdom.)
We audit our intake
and binge on our guilt.
A crystallized mind
is a well sharpened blade.

The tigers of wrath are wiser
than the horses of instruction.
And yet we harness ignorant beasts.
A deliberate studied step
is a safe, sure path.

(The road to excess leads
to the palace of wisdom.)
But we are cloistered monks,
divorced from the world.

Always speak your mind
and watch the base man scuttle.
And i'll admit i'm wrong
when I see your
proof, cowering wreck.

No bird soars too high
if he soars with his own wings.
And yet, chemically clipped,
we struggle.
No bird soars too high
if he soars with his own wings.
And yet, chemically clipped,
we struggle on melted wax.

Everything possible to be believed
is an image of truth.
And yet we define ourselves
in opposition to others,
A defined self-awareness
is a psyche's foundation.
But, carved in sunken relief,
We leave no impression.

Argument is to idea
as the grindstone to axe.
And from the standing water
i'll drink my fucking poison.

No bird soars too high
if he soars with his own wings.
And yet, chemically clipped,
we struggle.
No bird soars too high
if he soars with his own wings.
And yet, chemically clipped,
we struggle on melted wax.


8. CELL

In the seaward slums of the
city a small, second story room,
it is one of many identical
rooms, nothing sets is apart.
There is a bare, stained bed and
a sharps jar on a formica table,
the only sounds are the insect
buzz, through the window, of
the broken neon in the rain and
the shallow hiss of her breath.

She squats in the corner,
something implicit yet childlike
in the splay of her legs.
A needle and spoon
lie neatly at her side.
There is a tattoo on her
thigh, perhaps a snake or a
snarl of barbed wire, smeared
by time beyond recognition.

We fall, flightless, into
the pin prick in her ankle.
Wombed by blood, we are
thrust by the throb of her
heart to the tips of her
fingers and back through
the branches of her veins.

We come to rest, spent,
behind her eyes and see
ourself as she would see us:
A contusion of neon spreads
across our face and turns
our smile into a sneer.
Our outstretched hand is a clawed
parody of its empathetic intent.

Through her ears we hear a distant
tidal roar of freeway traffic.
The keening calls of police sirens.
An endless conversation of rain.
Static.
Pull back.

We crouch at her feet and
the smell flares our nostrils.
Through the lank shroud of her
hair we see the twitch of her lips.
We hold our breath and
put our ear to her mouth.
Only the whistle of breath
through her broken teeth.

Where her voice fails
her eyes deliver:
"It's OK. OK. Leave us alone."
We can only shrug and
walk from the room.

On the stairs we are
momentarily crushed.
By the weight of our pain, personal
and empathetically accrued, yes.
But also by the image of these
countless, identical rooms, all
with their own catatonic residents.
And perhaps others, standing over
them, envious of their escape.

Gathering our coat at our
chest we walk out of the
doorway, into the rain.


9. DISINTEGRATE

A feral monkey
Hung up in a sack
Scratching and clawing
Tearing at the fabric
Focus directed to the flesh
Something you can
Control, more or less

Action, reaction
Administering shirt term relief
Clawing

Obsessed with reflections
Material is all he sees

A severed thread
A grain of sand
A flickering ember
A faltering fire
A brick in a wall
Built upon
A foundation of nothing

Obsessed with reflections
Material is all he sees
Another shovel load of dirt
The weight of the world
A collusion of strangers
It's a strange world

A severed thread-mixing cocktails
A grain of sand - of
Blood, sweat and tears
A flickering ember -
I'll gargle your pain
A faltering fire -
I'll thicken your skin

Down on your knees
To plead for disease
To worship the noose
Gagging for abuse

Another haermorrhaging soul
Rejects its battered shell
Only to wake up
Back where it began

Obsessed with reflections
Material is all he sees
Another shovel load of dirt
The weight of the world

Revolving to the same
Black, bellicose, drain
No strength, no spine
Scratching and clawing


10. A PALIMPSEST

(Instrumental)


11. TABULA RASA

We'll rise up to the sky
on the smoke of the sirens.
Countless amongst the stars
of the footpath's shattered glass,
put our troubles on the fire
and they'll burn like books.

We'll dance to the tattoo
of a thousand erratic hearts,
the drumming of heels.
And polyrhythmic punches.
Building's flame's dart
across the angels of mask.
Assimilation of the will.

Anonymous.
One flicker in inferno.
Finally a clean slate
underneath all the bruising.
Razed to the ground.
Tabula Rasa.

We'll riot in the flicker
of a hanged man's heels,
the clatter of nails
and spasms of tongue.
Building's flame's dart
across the angels of mask.
Assimilation.

An ember in the fury.
Crystallized, reduced.
One mask among many.
Obliterate's dissolve
in a ritual of flame.
One flame in inferno.
Simplified, reduced.
One mask among many.
An ember in the fury.
In a ritual of flame.

We'll burrow into the earth
and drown in the soil.
Drunken among the stones
we'll dig our own grave.

Melt the shackles from our wrists
in a furnace of fists.

A flare of faceless dilettantes.
A cabal without direction.

Remember, remember.

(Our features all identi-kit.)

The fifth of november
a plot with a fucking reason.
A feeling of omnipotence
in the symmetry of violence.
But it binds our mouths
and pulls our teeth.

We'll skitter in the wind
in the ill winds of stasis.
Formless in the melee
of a contemptuous mass.
We are not, and will never.

We'll dance to the tattoo
of a thousand erratic hearts,
the drumming of heels.
And polyrhythmic punches.
Building's flame's dart
across the angels of mask.
Assimilation of the will.

An ember in the fury.
Crystallized, reduced.
One mask among many.
Obliterate's dissolve
in a ritual of flame.
One flicker in the arc.
Simplified, reduced.
One mask among many.
An ember in the fury.
In a ritual of flame.