1. THE FADING FLAME

Ashes and snow converging
In freezing rain, the fallen
Bare skin my moonlit canvas
Path mapped on pain and sorrow

Sinking down deep in the reverie of dreams awake
Haunted
Drinking the wine of the fantasy I seek to slake
Wanting

Deep beneath the ice burns the flame of my devotion
Just outside my grasp, all I’m reaching for
Will the flowers wilt, will the flames consume the ocean
Of the memories I so long to see return

Bearing my flesh to judgment
Behold my scars, my guidance
Four, six and one, my secret
Back to the start, the circle

Clawing my way from the shallow grave you dug for me
Hunting
Snarling lust to consume the fragments in my dreams
Wanting

Deep beneath the ice burns the flame of my devotion
Just outside my grasp, all I’m reaching for
Will the flowers wilt, will the flames consume the ocean
Of the memories I so long to see return


2. HOLLOW

Cry out, O Hollow, while knowing not why you weep
Carelessly crafting an effigy of defeat
Nothing is real, no conviction behind your words
Cover your ears, let the truth be again unheard

Bend your knees
Cuckolded and silenced
Sacrifice
Everything for nothing
Fictitious
Helplessness restrains you
Abdicate
Priviledges of burden

Here in dejection, the only sound
Your echoed voice
The mask of virtue will rot your eyes
Forever blind

You’ve imagined a monarch holding you back
Nihilism safer than hope
Drink the terror they peddle, poison yourself
Listen and believe, hate your birth

Here in dejection, the only sound
Your echoed voice
The mask of virtue will rot your eyes
Forever blind
Suckle the milk of their victimhood
Live just to serve
Your mask of virtue your only worth
The act you play


3. OBSIDIAN

Martyr yourself for the cause of the day
Death is the price for a memory
Life without prospect you traded for fame
Kindling forever the flames of their hate

You are the excuse that set all of this in motion
Chose to pull the trigger with a hand that held no gun
Rising in the fire of their vitriolic justice
Oppression the new currency, the outcasts now the kings

Become the hammer, taken to ivory
Become the hammer, chipping the marble
Rise, Obsidian
Sightless, hearing only echoes
Surrender discourse, silence contention
Spreading delusion your only weapon
Rise, Obsidian
Deaf to every voice but your own

World in flames, yet you smile and laugh
Burning it down, setting fire to stone
Words met with violence and grief met with hate
Melting the chains of control and restraint

Hollow ring the cries of your revolution
Finding but an effigy you built

Become the hammer, taken to ivory
Become the hammer, chipping the marble
Rise, Obsidian
Sightless, hearing only echoes
Surrender discourse, silence contention
Spreading delusion your only weapon
Rise, Obsidian
Deaf to every voice but your own

Hold up the excuse that set all of this in motion
All that you have left to hide your vacuous deceit
Burning in the fire of your vitriolic justice
Tarnishing your currency, you’ve wasted all you had

Become the hammer, taken to ivory
Become the hammer, chipping the marble
Rise, Obsidian
Sightless, hearing only echoes
Surrender discourse, silence contention
Spreading delusion your only weapon
Rise, Obsidian
Deaf to every voice but your own


4. QUINTESSENCE

Who has felt the rush of bridges burning under amber skies?
Who has felt the sorrow turn to rage on a moonlit night?

All we are, the quintessence awoken
Recoking from the darkened path
Decadent in the feast of desire
Dreaming gods slumbering no more

Who has felt the touch of roses flushed mauve with coursing blood?
Can you feel regret give way to vengeance, the rising flood?

All we are, the quintessence awoken
Recoking from the darkened path
Decadent in the feast of desire
Dreaming gods slumbering no more

Reverie of ghosts, in our grand fulfillment
Join in our excess and our ecstasy
Galaxies conducted in endless pirouettes
A silver star burns in darkest void

All we are, the quintessence awoken
Recoking from the darkened path
Decadent in the feast of desire
Dreaming gods slumbering no more


5. SURRENDER'S KISS

Undeserved, each tear I shed
Each drop of scorn I drink
Pride at war with giving in
Peace in surrender’s kiss

Relinquished, all of my passions
Unheard, my songs but lies

Verse nor rhyme can right this wrong
Beats of a broken heart
Word nor note can save this soul
Slumber at last

Relinquished, all of my passions
Unheard, my songs but lies
Extinguished, all of the candles
No hand will bring me home

In death I’ll bring you joy
Triumph in my defeat
Tears cried dry by the mask that I wear, not me
Nothing left but the act and the agony

Relinquished, all of my passions
Unheard, my songs but lies
Extinguished, all of the candles
No hand will bring me home


6. PLEASURES OF THE BLADE

My strength, my weapons, the sword and the flame
Tools of the trade for this war on myself
This bloody battle the fight just to feel
Numbness recede as I wake from the haze

My gifts, my purpose, the touch of my flesh
Ravage me, use me, I offer myself
I’ll slake your thirst if you just hear my song
Rising and bringing us out of the haze

Crying for but one
One moment when I’m truly living
All I need is one
One instant when I know the difference
Between pleasures of the bed and pleasures of the blade
Both seeming equal in their sweetness and seduction
Both leave me sprinting to my grave

Licentious display the price of fame
Ravenous, consuming all restraint

Crying for but one
One moment when I’m truly living
All I need is one
One instant when I know the difference
Between pleasures of the bed and pleasures of the blade
Both seeming equal in their sweetness and seduction
Both leave me sprinting to my grave

Primrose path I chose to follow
Witless words that shame the sharpest knives

Crying for but one
One moment when I’m truly living
All I need is one
One instant when I know the difference
Between pleasures of the bed and pleasures of the blade
Both seeming equal in their sweetness and seduction
Both leave me sprinting to my grave


7. GRAVETENDER

Overturned the stones, a desolate portrait
Dusk-held my scenery
Autumn without color, snow without footprints
Transient memory

Roll the bones
Show me my downfall

Fading from view, mirrored eyes eclipsed by dsitance
Here I shall stay, tend the graves of my fulfillment

Overgrown the weeds, they strangle the beauty
Starving the roses

Would that I
Could be among them

Fading from view, mirrored eyes eclipsed by dsitance
Here I shall stay, tend the graves of my fulfillment
Longing to dream, there at least I have remembrance
Ageless my hearth, dead to time, alive in memory


8. EVE

Gaze into my grieving eyes
Come join me in my cage

Come see my canvas, my pain
The boiling blood in me

The taste of my fruit, the seal of our fates

Reaching out to her was my worst mistake
My Eve, tragedienne, forever playing victim
So sure I was I could light her way
My Eve, my triumph and my failure

Knowledge tasted by us both
And both of us condemned

Come gather, mocking my shame
My weakness and disdain

The taste of my fruit, the seal of our fates

Reaching out to her was my worst mistake
My Eve, tragedienne, forever playing victim
So sure I was I could light her way
My Eve, my triumph and my failure


9. RUST

Come into your sacred crown
Freedom from the burden of identity
By the edge of rusted blade
Privileged disposition of an object

Tamed by force, your only comfort ripped away from you
Now they say you’re pure
Never to rebel, a perfect prize

Drowning in blood what was once so pure
Scarring over what the scissors took

Your infection a rite of passage
As you suffer, your soul is saved
By tradition they act, unthinking
Rusted blades leave you ever maimed

Culture is the shield held up to defend their crimes
Tolerance the chains keeping us from daring to condemn

Your infection a rite of passage
As you suffer, your soul is saved
By tradition they act, unthinking
Rusted blades leave you ever maimed

“Please forgive those who held her down on cut her
Deafened by her own screams, the sound of torture”
Mother’s love shown by butchering their daughters
Mutilation the rite by which they’re baptized

Come into your sacred crown
Freedom from the burden of identity
By the edge of rusted blade
Privileged disposition of an object

Your infection a rite of passage
As you suffer, your soul is saved
By tradition they act, unthinking
Rusted blades leave you ever maimed


10. STILLBORN REFLECTION

(I. Blackest Pitch Reflection)

Blackest pitch reflection, show your face to me
Sing to me your song, your innermost conceit
Prove me right in all my darkest thoughts at last
All the lies I saw right through, yet lost the path

Fill my cage with water, let me drown, let me sleep
Drag me to the shoreline, let me be swept away

Beaten by the rain, consumed and haunted
Deeper down I fall into my darkness

Let the world erode my will to save myself
Take my shelter, take my comfort, leave my hell

Take me, pull me under, as the waves strike my face
Hold me in surrender, the embrace of the haze

Beaten by the rain, consumed and haunted
Deeper down I fall into my darkness
One by one I mourn the wilted flowers
Fading now, the flame, from time and from mem’ry

(II. Stillborn)

Sleep, dear sweet stillborn
Blessed with dark unbirth, never knowing life
Be spared the sorrow
Never taste existence and never know the pain that it brings
Dreamlessly slumber
Stay in your abyss, undefiled innocence, evermore

Sleep tight where you are, dream not of what could have been
Warmest sights bring heartbreaking nightmares
Comforting abyss that you never lived to fear
Lungs that never tasted the air

May your ears be deaf to the cries of those who grieve
Sheltered in the peace of the lifeless
Darkness without end, yet no fear of its embrace
Tranquil and serene, without end

(III. Rebirth)

So cold the shore
Dawnless, untended
Take me away from myself
In my eyes a storm, my gaze like a blizzard
Stand in my shadow and freeze to death
I’ll take your warmth
I’ll take your passion
All I will leave – your bitterness

So hard you tried to suck out the poison, only to drink it yourself
Open my veins, I’ll bleed out my darkness, burning to ash my malice
Thawing at last, the flame reignited, guided not by scars but passion
Crucible past, my triumph, finally an end
An end
A beginning
My rebirth