1. |
Velvet Shed
01:49
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It happens that [the] stage sets collapse:
hours and days gone as fast as they came.
Always strangers to ourselves.
A need to know there’s purpose and meaning,
some hidden soul of the world.
[but] I am, and nothing more.
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2. |
Nothing But Figs
02:55
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When two hares fight, it is the jackal who feeds -
carving our hearts out and made to bleed;
striving to be the vanquisher,
but the last ones alive win nothing.
They have eyes to see and yet see not,
for their old sins cast long shadows- hidden and lost.
Alone with them and hither Man
shall thence be not, for dead men all!
So try they may from me to dig,
yet to my name are nothing but figs.
From fallen leaves to fallen heroes,
the earth will always take us back.
If it’s me they wish to slay,
then Death will find me most unfair.
Although, from bone they pick and flay
before the insects are aware.
Beneath skies to never be cloven a Sisyphean life of unrest.
To have been born at all is time enough to meet certain death.
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3. |
The Wild Hunt
04:46
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They flex their talons and bare teeth with pure evil.
Yet, discard their sheepskin only to dress like people.
Ears are growing deaf to cruelty
by the sound of everlasting beauty.
An open chest with open arms
[only] to reveal empty hands with an empty heart.
Lo, and behold, [the animal kingdom].
Red in tooth and claw [with] sky-blue savage eyes.
Beasts may be cunning and ferocious,
but it takes real Men to tell a lie.
Like half-starved hounds we stare at helpless game.
In this life there are only two types: wild or tame.
In this life there are only two types: predator or prey.
Beware of the uncanny animal furies of Man.
Menacing bloodshot eyes, foaming at the mouth
snarling with erratic spasms, [and] uttering mournful howls.
Predator or prey, wild or tame, we are all alike.
Humanity is not simply an animal species,
but a historical reality.
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4. |
Shoebill
03:17
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A stranger's eyes caged by mine.
Nothing in common, yet looked [all] alike.
Not knowing why [that within this place],
against the wall, together we will die.
Not sure how long it’s been but we heard the fusillade -
like shoebill’s.
Each day in that pen die like animals alone we may,
but we’ll never know when.
Eyes staring back at me.
Watching, thinking, clever.
Thieves, soldiers, priests, and kings.
Archetypes. clichés. human beings.
More eyes staring back at me.
We are those they’ve displaced.
The stranger who stood beside me
stripped of that warm embrace:
illusion of life eternal,
he wore death on his face.
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5. |
Meat Honey
03:26
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Wretched families littered with “sick children”,
“insane wives”, and “lazy drunk fathers”.
Shadowed by vultures eager to bathe
in the breath of corruption.
Where pain begets pain, forever,
in a vortex of melancholy madness.
“He who has bread shall not want”,
[but] this house belongs to the rats and the dust;
this house belongs to waste and the bugs.
Bury them in filth, bleeding them
of their veins that still run with milk.
I bear witness the unjustly suffering of Man
and it is our fate to suffer the shame of it all.
Pain is truth; all else is subject to doubt.
[There,] death is a true friend, for few the only way out.
They know of the stones that will rest above them
may say all but naught of burning lives.
Nevertheless, they dare to dream of falling asleep
and waking up happy
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6. |
Loathing Vultures
03:47
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Beneath these skies to never be cloven our end’s an end,
as perfect as dusk when the sun swings low.
All that you have of your own are the things you hide -
behind the eyes that shine with ruin.
Staring heavenward where with dreams you may meet,
grow the flowers of phantoms and false lights.
With hopes, terrors, and needs we seek for greater things.
With anguish, boredom, fear and trembling.
This is to live where vultures fly with loathing.
Still, you fight like sin, just coping;
waiting where vultures fly with loathing.
Lost, we rainless storms, on shores of forgotten light.
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7. |
banshee
01:40
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Where were you when the lights went out?
In darkness.
With neither maps nor roads to guide us
there’s nothing left to do but live.
Birds of passage that carry a fear
more secret than death.
Doomed to docility and only one day older than yesterday.
Human undulation: hours and days gone as fast as they came.
Seasons change, but every year the same.
Something is in the wind, I think I hear a banshee.
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8. |
Domesticated
04:56
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a system of dehumanization that transforms Men to things,
[to objects] it must possess and control
for He who wields them, wields the world.
Our wings were clipped.
Our hearts were left housebroken.
Beaten, scared, and alone.
Conditioned to the fear of freedom.
They annex the world itself and born from it,
we are to die in it.
A fog tiptoes through everything
and is as silent as the void before creation.
Shaped by those who name the cage and leave us trapped
as shadows of ourselves - living corpses of a lost colony collapsed.
They scatter their empire as birds may scatter their cries.
Trained and afraid
as we lick our wounds and drink the hurt.
Carving our souls out like a stone from a peach.
Taken for instruments they’re proud of knowing how to play.
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9. |
Starfish
04:21
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For I am nothing greater than a name,
I plead, deliver me from myself.
If they showed you a glass jar and floating in it
was my lifeless heart, would you recognize it?
Perhaps they showed you my liver or lungs.
would you recognize them?
What if you saw me with longing
the way you look at your [own] arms and hands?
Detached and disembodied.
Beneath our faces, clothes, words, and feelings
are power and sorrow:
Power of inventors, sorrow of the disconnected.
Between so many cities and two days,
forever guided by an inner knell:
As one knows nothing of me,
the other knows me no longer.
Condemned to be free.
Life like water: dreadful, shallow, [and] lonesome;
but the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.
I am, and nothing more.
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10. |
Interlude
00:48
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11. |
Blackbird
04:29
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Eyes like whispers, choked by an abyss as dark as deep water.
Bloodless people cannot be made to bleed.
Last night I swore it was the last time.
There the world went when they closed their eyes with indifference.
Against closed doors above which is written:
“No Entrance for the Low”.
They watched as we clutched each other
like drowning people in deep water.
The safest place to be for them is utter solitude.
And tomorrow the blackbirds will come,
tomorrow the blackbirds will sing…
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