A whisper in the rushes disturbs the flies
That creep their way slowly to the bones of the body
Twisted and meaningless, a mass that still
Rots inside rusted plates of armor
Forgotten longsword in the long grass nearby
That only ever drank of the rain

Fresh mud once splashed a face young and proud
Hot blood once spilled in the weeds
Where once a Paladin fell, now a shroud
Of insects devours and feeds

The dragon still gyres over the town
While the worried pace the floors of their hovels
Smoke in the sky and a mountain of gold
Unclaimed in the dead heart
Of its bestial mountain

No one will save them
The dragon gyres lower
With fires flickering in basilisk eyes
And mortal terror burning slower

The Lady of Dreams shuttered up like a
Jewel of great price
In the tall tower with a madman reeling
Downstairs in his reverie
The demon in the triangle that told him…
The knife that will cut…
The cup that will drink…

No one will rescue her
No one will come
Her champion lies dead
Tangled in weeds
With grass growing over him
The eyes of the brave eaten by worms

Champion shifting from grave to grave
Lying dormant in gloomy bowers
Spirit is restless, no one to save
Centuries follow drunk on wickedness
A forest child found a helm sprouting flowers
And wore it in his innocence

Wildflowers growing through useless steel
The Hope of the World as tyranny glowers
A spirit discarded, a wasted ideal

At harvest time, the reaper lies dead amidst the sheaves
His scythe lies beside him
The smoky skies darken
Everywhere are the fires and the mass graves growing
And the knell, knell, knell
Countless knelling on the split church bell
By a man of faith who worships water and wine
And turns the dying away from his cold stonework shrine
He prays to the god of their torments
While in the muddy street the people die unshriven

Watch them scourge themselves
And carry the cross of their oppressor
Two twisted branches stripped, bound
Tied rough together by leprous hands
The parade of degenerates sprinkles their blood
It splashes the face of a filthy child
Wild eyes watching from beside a thatched-roof cottage
Sleeping mother decompose inside
On a straw bed rank with soil
The flies give praise

Procession of demons stripped of dignity and pride
Offering of hope in the icon of bleeding vanity
Torn and bloody and seeping into the ground
Like the seeping of bodies rotting
Those that forgot to be forgotten

Pass the time, pass the town
Pass the bloody vomit down
Bury the dead, burn the living
Run away screaming
God of torment raping, feeling
The skeletons of thousands contorted
By the throes of anguish
By the All-Merciful aborted

Moving on, a serpent slithers
A grotesque menagerie of grovelling sinners
That beat themselves bloody and sip their torment
To the next stinking pyre
To the next sobbing choir
Lazy eye rolls in trance
Drown in blood, death, and dance
Stone rolled away from Paschal tomb
Madman possessed, roll in gloom

God on High breathe in fumes
While below the Brethren salivate
Creep from dawn until the pyres
Twist the shadows and their cross into a shambling nightmare

A forest of treetops bends their neck before you
The river sharp and wild straightened its course
Strange eyes peer out from beneath a weeping willow
From doors high in the trunks of the mightiest pines
They watch the hills part ways to ease your passage
The breeze to blow back against the ridge and elms

A gathering by the pathway of oaks as old as age
A million creatures watching as she slips through the forest
Her eyes could make the world fall on its sword
Between the roses that stretch themselves around her
Beneath the boughs that swept up to shade her
A million creatures watched as her tears filled the oceans

She lay her down at the top of the mountain
And was nailed upon the quarters
She lay her down upon a stone and suffered the stroke
Copper knife
Give of life
Life and Death
The honey of her breath
It does not grow stale, only cold within its season

Her brilliance subjugates the downfall
Of the tyranny of men
The corpse-lords gnawing at the shadows
The dead-men tearing the sick world apart
Let them gloat and in their greed the trodden die
She lays between the Four Rivers
And listens to their sweet song
While the world churns and washes away
To a dark corner of her All
She listens to the sweet song of Rivers
Naked with the stars rising up to embrace her
She bleeds upon a stone and laughs

Skeleton peers from gibbet splattered
With bird shit from a hundred rooks
See that nothing grows around?
Do you hear that gnawing sound?
Life gnaws at silver cord
Skeleton creak like branches

Dead horse pile on the side of the path
Life beaten to death, discarded
'He couldn't carry me no more
He got what he deserved'
Cruel peddler walks alone
Silken bag, broken wares
Rusted, useless, dead-end stares
A few more miles, a few more feet
Lay to rest and rot in street
No one knows him, no one cares

The vulture stalks the starving child
And croaks the praises to its god
The son stifles a smile at the
Funeral of his father
A few more coins jingle in purse
Enough to clean and shine his hearse
Bribe the witch for medicine
Or pay the priest for needless saving
Either way, Oblivion carves its mark upon them

The salamander can see only fire
The undine only waves of water
It never mattered, none of it at all
When all is slate, all is gray
Life recline behind the pall
And none were ever meant to stay
All one colour, all is hay

Monstrous spire spears the purple
Mote of dust breaches tarnished portal
Far below
Of its own free will and accord
It isn't every day that a god dies
Or every age that a mortal tries
To reach the Terrace Immortal

World crawls around its axis
An endless search for a perfect season
Tower claws over the treetops
Over the apogee of suffering and
Into the watchful eyes of fallen angels
Watching from their holy places
Blessed art they amongst the brethren

Hero of the Hallowed
Minstrel plays the weakness of mankind
Upon bone horn and skin stretched over drum
A half helm fountain of wildflowers
A banner: cellar of salt over black field
Impotent in the breathless air
Suicidal stillness
Mote of dust flies from portal
In terror
It was never meant to be
Never, ever, ever meant to be

Rope scratching skin bruised, alabaster
Spider watches from spider crack in plaster
Respiration in bursts and sobs and
Whoever said this was the coward's way out?
Lashes long and sultry
Eyes look down at filthy floor
Black dress dying dress she wore
Leap of faith off of kitchen chair
Every last one of us will see you there

A treetop swaying
Evergreen playing in electric rumbling atmosphere
A broken heart
A broken neck
Strong hemp tightens the more we persevere
Cut her down
Wash the body
Scour the heart of its stains
Dig a grave and forget her
And bury her in her chains

A broken heart
A broken soul
A broken promise
An empty hole
Deep in the confines of the spirit
The center of the loop
Universal gloom
Cruelty in its multitude of guises
Every word is a thorn
Every thought shows its scorn
For the sanctity of life
With a cupful of sorrow poured over our eyes

Necklace worn by the Queens of Hell
And their Kings dressed in tatters
Royalty all who wore them in the frailty of life
Hard are the ways, some are not as dreadful
Long and lonely are the wanderings of others

Why do we torture those we love
What shackles bind the loves of our lives
To the side of the burning glacier
Snow field flay the innocent corpse away
And born again dead with freezing dawn
Swirling shape, demonic shade
Vanished back into the void of lance-toothed god
Frost dragon eye waking and watching
Jealous with the jealousy of god
Bluer and paler than sixty undead moons
Shedding ingots lead cold and pointed

Frozen in timeless
Forever the end
Forever the steaming blood spilled
Splash on unforgiving ice and chilled
Into the dying shape of bleeding
Break this beautiful thing like glass
A scattering of snow from pines
Before the Age of Waste

The Ideal profanes the Actual
Kill it a thousand times and a thousand
And a thousand times more and still it comes
On crooked legs
To torment the living
With its loathsome auguries

Goetic thing trace triangle in snow
It knows…
Curse of race is prophecy
See there is no end to perfection
Dungeon ice jail the Master in rime of endless winter

Love burned his body but stole his heart away
Locked within an ebon box
Fixed by countless broken locks
Silence says what no one else could say
Upon the beach and upon the windswept shore
A gathering of sinners mourns
Immortal words that dying scorns
Off the coast of Madness
Not far from the daemon hollow Genius

Life is short, though death is very long
A drawn-out elegy to the saddest song
That was ever sung by the mindless earth
In silent tombs waiting and dreaming
Of growing and becoming and seeming
To swell with the bloated mask of Pride
But then to fall beneath the weight of suicide

Love is forever but you are not
Dusty amber on a dusty shelf
And its dusty ancient captive gazing out
The flower pressed between the pages
Of an antique book to remind us of our rages
Stoppered tears hoarded in a flask of crystal
Holy water, an ocean's worth of memories
Stoppered in a flask of black rock crystal

Shut away are the ruins of our lives
In anguish on a couch of knives and dreams
Nothing remains but the memories of others
And the words and lines in the murmuring of stream