1. GALLOWS

The dark mirrors of my ruin...
My downfall as our worlds divide
And the hollow moon in sorrow hides
A dance of shadows in peril
Through eternity's lethean guise
Evanesced, sinking in these visionary tides
Gaze not upon these tempest peaks
As they stare with callous haste
And the gallows sing my last lament
By the famished ghost of our dying days...
And I see your wilted silhouette
Under the starlight's tender gleam
Through a drapery of tears...
Drifting into everlasting sleep

Knelt before my fallen self in a perilous bliss
In the crashing rain and weight of regret
For you, I gift my final breath
My love, my oath, my death...

And I'll write across these pallid, forsaken skies
The wavering beauty of your name

This tomb, a sanctum in her arms
Where all is lost and all else fades...
Here I've not much left to give
With hopes but a grain of sand
As nightfall looms so swiftly
And the final curtain descends


2. SHATTER THE VISAGE

Soaring are the restless screams
Weightless through the dismal pale
These silent gales serene...
And from the deepening gloom
The thrashing tides on which I sail
The moonlight drips upon my skin
My destiny unveiled...
On the back of burned, dispirited wings
The weight of dread enshrouds
The voyage within my dreams
In the grip of lightless slumber
A nightingale unto me speaks
A whisper of mortality
Cast unto the boundless sea

And I lie powerless, before the sullen ether's cry
In the reverie of a dying wish...
Buried beneath the dust of the stars we held
Cometh thee; seal my lips eternal with one last kiss

Here I'll leave this vale
A futile hand to the windowpane
A voice among the ruins of a fallen masquerade
And from this timeworn page within my cold grasp torn
How softly the words doth fade away...

And I lie motionless, surrendered to a barren sky
In the reverie of a dying wish
Buried beneath the dust of the stars we held
Cometh thee; seal my lips eternal with one last kiss

Here I'll leave this vale
A futile hand to the windowpane
A voice among the ruins of a fallen masquerade
And from this timeworn page within my cold grasp torn
How softly the words doth fade away...

In fragmentary loss of soul and sanity
My hopes descend...
And shatter the visage I hold in vain
Suspended within the firmament's rage
In repose, I touch your luring presence
This darkened, starless image disdained
And shatter the visage I hold in vain

A voice among the ruins of a fallen masquerade
And from this timeworn page within my cold grasp torn
How softly the words doth fade away...


3. A SCARLET THRENODY

Paradise to dust
I lie within this endless dream
Bereft of the seraph's touch
A silhouette, a vision
The fallen angel I grieve
Under distant skies I walk alone
Where light evades and silence breathes

Her bitter rain to bless my skin
Washing the mire from my eyes
To rise from the depths
Where darkness sleeps within

Blood stains the stone betrayed
Where the spirit of my heart lies
This temple forever burned, burning inside
On the face of broken pillars
A scarlet threnody of days gone cold
Etched with the thorns pulled from my chest
Here rests our sorrows nevermore

At the throat of the world I kneel
Where burden fills the voiceless air
And from its crest drip frozen tears
Flooding this forgotten vale
A ballad of sundered wings
Of memory's pale splendor
The ruins of my defeat

Blood stains the stone betrayed
Where the spirit of my heart lies
This temple forever burned, burning inside
On the face of broken pillars
A scarlet threnody of days gone cold
Etched with the thorns pulled from my chest
Here dies our sorrows evermore

Paradise to dust
I lie within this endless dream
Bereft of the seraph's touch
A silhouette, a vision
The fallen angel I grieve
Under distant skies I walk alone
Where light evades and silence breathes


4. APPARITION

And deeper, deeper I fall
In the dark of this delusive sea
Whose waters know me well
The voices within
"Let it enfold you" I hear them sing
My sweet sorrow
In a beloved caress with capturing eyes
It steals the breath from my lungs
Drowning to hold onto what isn't real
To find what cannot be found

And distant, I wake to see
No shelter around me to confine
No stars nor direction to guide
Only my shadow silently beside

A fading image of you
A lost touch of heaven
An apparition in the desert sun
Merely a figment of my hopeless imagination


5. THE PERIAPT OF ABSENCE

When the sky burns out the sun
A quiet stare masks the coming night
I roam untrodden halls in search of you
Whose whispers upon my heart do they write

With this periapt I hold to my chest
And a wounded stare behind my eye

I'll carve into the wilderness
The tale of you and I
A restless cry in a sea of aeons lost
A reflection in the dying light

Your spectral voice echoes to me
Through the falling autumn leaves
Severing the embittered veil
As my spirit wanes beneath

With these tears I've long beheld
The dream fades before my eyes
I'll carve into the walls of your heart
The words of thine
I'll follow you through the silence
Of the earth's decaying guise
May it evermore haunt the path we laid
This tale of you and I

Reaching to the starless void above
With idle hands that long again to find
A restless cry in a sea of aeons lost
A reflection in the dying light
Through pale meadows that without hope lie
Where time in solitude rests
I'll sail these seas of eternity
At the world's forgotten end
And though upon these broken shores
Wash the sorrows of my name
I'll love you forever, forever all the same


6. AS THE EARTH FELL SILENT

I ask myself in this absence of dawn
As the cold wind howls the tragedy of my pain
And the mourning sun weeps from the barrow
In memory of golden aeons aflame

"How long must I travel this pathless flight?
How long until the sun riseth again?"
I weep before the ashes of our fallen Elysium
"Take me now, thine blessed hells of my dismay!"

A grieving gaze from the apex
With despairing cry
Weakened and forlorn
In the arms of this fateful night

O' dreaded winter hours
Enshroud me in your mist
Fill this deathless ocean with tears
Caress me now this bitter breath
Where no shed of light dare pierce
A gallery of forsaken tracks
The echoing voice behind these closing walls
Where demons cloud my waking view
And a deeper shade of darkness falls...

Watching as the earth fell silent
Through the stillness of empty eyes
A stream of weakness and defeat
Spilled from the veins
of these blood-burnished skies
With no words to escape my lips

A grieving gaze from the apex
With despairing cry
Weakened and forlorn
In the arms of this fateful night

O' dreaded winter hours
Enshroud me in your mist
Fill this deathless ocean with tears
Caress me now this bitter breath
Where no shed of light dare pierce
A gallery of forsaken tracks
Her fading voice within these closing walls
Where the angel decays in my dying view
And a deeper shade of darkness falls...


7. UPON BURDENED HANDS

In the still of eventide lie two lovers torn
Who gaze upon the waning moon oceans apart
Where between us rests a veil of shattered glass
And within us a hell of cold and idle hearts

Here it rains forever
Where I feel your presence still
And over the wake of my spirit's fall
Lies the darkening of heaven
Where our silhouettes gather
Once more embraced for their final dance
In lament of beauty, the sorrows of thine
A portrait of pale remembrance

By the howls of a dream profound
The falling of departed suns
I stare beyond her spectral eyes
In breathless adoration
I drink the twilight's glare
Whose deafening silence speaks
The tempestuous sepulchers
Of all that has forsaken me

In the dust of eventide lie two hearts reborn
Who gaze upon the waning moon tethered with scars
Where between us rests a veil of memories passed
And until we meet again
I'll carry you, upon burdened hands

Here it rains forever
where I feel your presence still
And over the wake of my spirit's fall
Lies the darkening of heaven
Where our silhouettes gather
Once more embraced for their final dance
In lament of beauty, the sorrows of thine
A portrait of pale remembrance


8. LIKE DARKNESS TO A DYING FLAME

Under the shadow of a lost sun
Where dust adorns my yearning palms
And empty thrones embed the sod
The whispering wind carves
Through the pale of misery's bane
Our world eclipsed in the pall of night
in the solitude of a broken and ruined age

The enigma that haunts
The maze of my stillborn dreams
By a distant calling, beseeched
Our fragile hands depart
In a garden of promise
Sheltered from the lustrous light
Sleep now and forever
The beating of my stricken heart

The angel of heaven fall
A weeping of desolate skies collapsed
My unreality...a labyrinth of afflicted soul
I the exiled oblivion of my anguish
The stars bade their last farewell
And the spirit turns to stone
To this grandeur I succumb
Fragmented...to familiar realms...alone

The isles of Gaia fall
The broken bones below the soil ache
There is no more a path
Left within these harrowed plains
Where the melancholy waters flow
As crystal through stiffened veins
And the ghosts of all I've failed to be
Lay severed and slain
Unremembered and cold
Adrift an ocean of painted grey
A perennial slumber entraps my eyes
Like darkness to a dying flame