1. BLANKETED IN FLIES

Compounded, darting eyes
Instinctive desperation

One of the swarm
Feckless speck
Mercifully Unaware
Heedless Cipher
Beg for your crumbs
Covetous insect

Feed to live - Live to breed
Breed to live - Live to feed

Dead stop, senses awake
What sweet rotting bouquet

Emitting these corrupted fumes
Flesh mangled, extinction looms

Life misused, discarded
A gift spent and squandered

Withering wound, vermin’s delight
Calling them in, siren to blight

Dull pain blooms, microscopic stabbing
Frenzied glee - lesions blossom, manna flows

Here does fate impart her justice
So the reaper bears the fruit of loss
Here does fate impart her punishment
So the reaper pays the pressing cost

Starve to die, die to flee
Flee to nihility

Sensing proximate bliss
Flailing, plunging, famished swarm

Blanket of flies
Warming his flesh
Seeping the eucharist
Transferring the gift of life

All the failures of history fade away
As the father of thousands greets decay
As the fountain of essence, blessed ooze
Raise the worthier species, praise the fray

Father of Flies


2. SONG OF SUBSERVIENT BLISS

By the grace of the Maestro
Break from the noise
Revel in Their melodic word

Be released of the discord
Of human thought
Viruses installed in the herd

Trust all to Them
And ye shall be - un-sha-ckled
For The Maestro is man's
Conduit to pure virtue

Bathed in Their sonorous voice
Seething righteously
I, empowered instrument
Spreading harmony

Lost infected minds
Rotting in their bodies

Children of discord
Left deaf to Their word
Ours to purge from the great song
Ours to strike
With a nod
From the Maestro
Harmonizing this world

I can do no wrong
As it is Their will

Found: the corrupted
Mind that has fallen out of synch
Blessed and sliced open
Given their own blood to drink
Harmony!

(Pray Opening)

I, empowered instrument
Spreading harmony
Handsomely rewarded by the Maestro

Smothered in Their love


3. HOLLOW PENANCE

These memories persist
Marred by shame’s ubiquity

Wretched villain, heartless brute
Constant lust for more
Callous bastard, plowing through
Parasitic bore
My transgressions bury me

Desperation to find redemption

Flinging all earthly items out
Unburden, relinquish all
Take my stolen treasures and guilt
Unburden, relinquish all

Dedicate my life to charity’s bliss
Anything I can do to escape this
Crushing, cold culpability

Giving up everything isn’t enough
Covered in chains
Made by my own hands

Surely there is some way to atone
Harnessing all I have for good
And yet I come up empty handed
Plagued by guilt

I collapse into the truth of my sin
Blackened conscience
I am doomed

My retreat, my surrender
Cowardly, lost pretender
But in this moment
I am granted
A glance at the truth

Only death will redeem us


4. RESPITE

(Instrumental)


5. SOPHIST PARALYSIS

Five stories down, in the gutter
Quavering street light softly gestures
Drawing my eye to a figure
Huddled and silent as the night

What is my obligation?
Who is this stranger to me?
Contemplate consequence of the way that we may intervene in the life of a soul.
Left alone, would they not choose to be unabridged?
Would I not interfere with their path should I stand in the way?

Could they have been,
Asking for this?
Might they deserve,
All they receive?

Does my own moral compass point true north?
Who says intuition is a trusted source?

Perception
contrasted
against the
objective
reality seems
so frail it’s silencing

Being one among billions - Meaningless

But if I muster all I have
could it even make one indentation
Upon the mindless machine
Unstoppable, for which we are all but fuel

“Chorus”

With the morning sun
Sirens scream their song out

The figure
Now lifeless
Is bagged up
And dragged away

Have I participated in the scheme of fate?
Or have I squandered time that might have altered it?

All Exists
As It Should
Surrender


6. PRIVATIO MALUS

Plowing through the void, Lost colony
Utopian dreams are realized

Gone is fear, free of doubt, life eternal flows throughout
Long forgotten human defects
Ageless drones, pay no cost, boundlessly time becomes lost
Beautiful stagnated apex

One tiny flaw, Slips through the cracks, Chemistry
A subject's mind unaltered

Steeped in disillusionment
The subject clenches in disgust
How could we have sold our souls
For such a pitiful prize

Cursing the ancestral masters
For their lack of foresight failures
It must be corrected save us
From our doomed trajectory somehow

Scouring ancient texts, Splicing particles
Harnessing long dead scourge, Resurrect virus
Herald in the microscopic savior, blessed plague
Pumping through the ventilation. so we are remade

Blooming fissures subjects cannot process
Having never known a painful moment

Realization wells up to the surface
fear has blossomed, hear the wails,
feel the jolt, wide awake at last
my people, reacquainted mortality

The Dead Multiply, So Few Have Survived Here
But all those who remain grow, learn, breed
Overcome, Vaccinate, Live On

And they found me inevitably. their betrayer brought to justice

As I'm sucked into the grand abyss of space
I find fulfillment - my role was played
Bringer of fear, fuel of life


7. SPIRIT MOTHER

Seeking - Aid us, conduit soul
Healer - She who channels the universe

Mother Fair
Spirit Guide

Found deep within a trance
Communing with the past
Oblivious to all
The physical known world
Transcending our small plane
Suck peons must we seem

Please forgive us
You are needed
Wounded, wounded, your disciple's
Mangled body lies, unmoving, there in
Please forgive us
Won't you heal him?

The elements of our earthly plane you command
Will surely heed your mighty spirit
Save this man

Gently smiling, she nods

Palpitations, growing panic
Palpitations, can they sense my fear?

They believe
They believe me
Bought my words
Desperately

Liar, fraud, villain, narcissist

Leave me children, all will be well
I must commune with earth and sky

Nothing I can do
Nothing I can do

Slip through a window
As silent as a thief
My escape is
The base instinct to flee

Wailing rises in the night
Abandoned, bewildered congregation

Soul defamed, Seething shame, Beguiler