1. |
Chaos (Sex at Dawn)
09:13
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At twilight the couples arrive
By midnight they all divide
What seemed planned and pristine
Is a chaos older than you or me
There is no stable system
No one can be trusted
No one is innocent
But there is no final judgment
Nature is indifferent
To malice and kindness
Do you fear chaos?
Do you fear your brothers
Because you fear yourself?
And what you know you’d do
If they all left the room
Once they drink up their courage
The church girls are easy
But when they’re alone
They still count their rosaries
I don’t believe in sin
But what is this affliction
This condition we’re born in
If not a punishment?
The first cell division
The first sex at dawn
Was the talking serpent
That brought us all to harm
But there is no salvation
No light at the end
Do you fear chaos?
Do you hate your sisters
Because you hate yourself?
For what cannot be fixed
For the cruelties we all must commit
At dawn the bird songs commence
And echo through a hungry wilderness
What seemed beautiful and pure
Is a madness with no cure
I don’t believe in freedom
But in the tyranny of genes
I don’t believe in heaven
But I see hell in my dreams
I don’t believe in joy
But gradients of pain
I don’t believe in love
But the utility of hate
I don’t believe in good
But I believe in evil
I don’t believe in God
But I see Satan in the mirror
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2. |
Vile Moonlight
05:38
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A thousand eyes behind the neon haze
Size up their quarry with a predator’s gaze
The moonlight drips like a wound in the sky
And the scent of blood stirs their primal insides
Wolves in grey slacks
Study the movements, study the movements
Watching the girls with prurient interest
Drink the potion, drink the potion
Make the kill with no emotion
There’s a hunger that gnaws and can never be sated
By the jagged maw of the violence district
I point the finger but I’m no different
Flickering teeth pierce the skin of the night
Carnivorous stars froth in frenzied delight
The moonlight curls like a grin in the sky
In the city’s throat swells a stifled cry
Wolves with blank masks
Vile intentions, vile intentions
Lurk beneath ornate deceptions
Close the distance, close the distance
Lure the prey with feigned affections
The rotting yolk of the soft-boiled moon
Infects the air on the pale horizon
I open my mouth but there is silence
Study the movements, study the movements
Watching the girls with prurient interest
Drown the conscience, drown the conscience
Sink their fangs with depraved indifference
The silver tendrils of a pregnant moon
Smother the streets in a poison cocoon
There’s a hunger that gnaws and can never be sated
By the jagged maw of the violence district
I point the finger but I’m no different
At the heart of the cosmic abode
Is a yawning black hole
A spider devouring her young
This is the only god that we know
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3. |
Babel
06:13
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Sin won’t bind us to the soil
In which we’re sentenced to forever toil
We shall conquer life and death alike
Our mighty works will cleave the sky
The first brick laid over ancient graves
Cast from the id, a bloody clay
The architect relays his grace
So we cleanse the land of wickedness
The beasts that slither on the ground
The heathens to their forests bound
Till nature, trembling, submits
To the empire that progress built
Day by day the stones collect
Though our bodies now are worn and bent
The scaffoldings, our histories
Were burned and now we know
We can’t climb down
Kingdom come, thy will be done
In heaven as it is on earth
Dominion for your chosen sons
And poverty for those who curse
The knowledge they were made to bear
What if there’s no paradise
Beyond the clouds our spires rend?
Just more mass-produced identities
To which the clear-cut lands lie testament
More soldiers brandishing their guns
More concrete cast with oil and blood
Credit scores and bank accounts
It’s too late to look down now
But the tower shakes beneath its weight
An atomic dawn alights the sea
Then the last sunlight evaporates
In the empire of make believe
We watch and wait with bated breath
To ring in the apocalypse
That will free us from this great prison
And return us to the dirt to be reborn
Kingdom come, our will be done
Heaven by our own design
The self-anointed chosen ones
Whose want is never satisfied
Kingdom come, thy will be done
In heaven as it is on earth
Release us from the throne of rust
Freedom from the Bronze Age curse
The knowledge we were forced to bear
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4. |
The Great Divide
04:10
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Cats and dogs don’t have souls
So when they die
Their essence flickers out like a broken bulb
But lovers who’ve built a little life
Must shed their rings at the great divide
Great divide
No husbands and wives in the afterlife
No one stands beside you at the great divide
Because we’re all betrothed as the bride of Christ
There is no love in the afterlife
No one stands beside you at the great divide
When the children are gathered
Into the bosom of God
We will have new bodies
Without lust or vengeful thoughts
And we’ll be lined up naked, nothing to hide
Our secrets are disposed of at the great divide
Great divide
No drugs or sex in the afterlife
No one sleeps beside you at the great divide
Because our bodies won’t tire and there is no night
There’s no sense of touch in the afterlife
No one sleeps beside you at the great divide
The cat won’t warm the foot of your bed
Your friends won’t talk on the telephone
The dog won’t walk with you in his stead
Your lover won’t wait for you to come home
No one stands beside you at the great divide
On heaven’s gate, there is a sign that reads
“No pets allowed, no month to month lease”
We will not have names or mouths that lie
Everyone is made deaf and mute at the great divide
Great divide
No joy or sorrow in the afterlife
Our memories are erased at the great divide
We forget about the ones who were left behind
There is no compassion in the afterlife
No one stands beside you at the great divide
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5. |
Wild Shores of Love
10:15
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Beyond the city’s sphere of radiance
Beyond the traffic noise and violence
The sea exhales a gentle roar
Its opiate mist churns ever forth
It’s where the ring I almost gave
Then cast in anger to the waves
Washes up on the shore
And lets us start over
Where evil ambitions
Sink like heavy stones
And the dogs of war
Cannot chew our weary bones
It’s where we all came from
When we were cells in the brine
And where we all return
To be swallowed by the tide
Where my mother’s songs still fill the house
In the town where we grew up
And our skins grown thick from lives of pain
Are soft and we can trust again
Possibilities bloom and enfold
Like the fractal plumes from your cigarettes
Where faith abides in the curling wisps
These younger selves must still exist
Old I-love-yous
Awaiting a response
Hang in the air
Lit by an always setting sun
Every animal that ever lived
Still treads along the shores
The lions and the lambs
Lie huddled in the coves
We must still exist
There must still be hope
There must still be time
To get it right
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6. |
Hidden Attractor
14:30
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You call me a friend
Though we once shared a bed
You say to me, “friend”
As we lie in your bed
Do you think of me, friend
When you sleep in this bed?
Introduce us as friends
Though we’ve laid in his bed
Am I your, am I your hidden attractor?
Am I yours? Am I yours, hidden attractor?
Everybody has a body
Every body tells a story
Everybody needs somebody
Every body needs a body
Anybody, any body, hidden attractor
Are you there? Are you there, hidden attractor?
Your room is a tomb
Your room is a womb
Your womb is a tomb
Your tomb is a womb
The sun is red, the moon is lead
The stars in my head, the body is dead
The sun is dead, the moon is red
The bed is lead, our blood is poison
Swollen ocean, secret ladder
Molten ocean, hidden attractor
Body in motion, secret best friends
Go through motions, hide attractions
Tangled affections, crafted deceptions
What has been said can’t be unsaid
The head is poison, the bed is red
The body is lead, maintain silence
Hidden attraction
I am the mouth at the bottom of the pit of stars
The great mother spider that weaves the web of lies
Where the sun and Earth struggle but never break free
From the strands of gravity
The terrible truth in the spaces between
The thrashing beast at the base of your skull
The eternal wind of indifference
Blowing lazily through the killing fields of time
I am her
I am he
I am you
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7. |
Punishment
07:28
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Rabbits run in front of cars
And paint the roads with their insides
Each struggle dissolved into the din
Of a trillion unknown suicides
Sparrows fly into the panes
And convulse in loops with broken wings
You clutch them to your racing chest
But then abandon them behind the fence
You know you can’t
Oh you can’t save them
We’re punished for the crimes we can’t comprehend
Dead dog in the river bed
Betrayed by gods that walked with him
For now the vultures pick his ribcage clean
But the dirt makes brethren of all beasts
Girls ride inside the cars
With painted masks that hide their scars
The canvas layered with hazy trysts
But once their clothes are off the wounds are fresh
No you can’t
No you can’t save them
We’re punished for mistakes
We were designed to make
No you can’t
No you can’t save them
We’re punished for the flesh
That we were forced to wear
Once she’d found God through a needle’s eye
Melody filled up her veins
With all the love the world denied
Till her heavy heart burst at the seams
So they carved her name into a stone
That the rain will eventually erase
But she left me in the woods alone
Before I had the chance to take her place
But you know you could not
You could not save her
She was punished for the paltry joy
She dared to scrape
No you could not
No you could not save her
Did you really think it was your choice to make?
One summer afternoon when I was a child
I played in the garden of my parents’ backyard
It was a vibrant fractal flame, a wondrous wild
A wasp shot its venom into my little arms
The pain—so sudden, so undeserved
Taught me the discipline of the world
Though the swelling receded, the lesson remained
Fear is the currency of every living thing
No loving hand guides the cosmic play
Then I saw the abyss in a fever dream
It bore the shape of a man with a tortured gait
A visage malformed, as melted candle wax
I believed he was the devil, come to claim me at last
But then he spoke to me in a terrible voice
Like a swarm of locust in a lion’s throat:
“Son, I am God, and I hear your prayers
And that’s how I know what you fear the most
You’ve had your fun
And you’ve had your freedom
Now the time has come
For your punishment”
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8. |
The Seed and the Egg
04:51
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I am the Khmer Rouge
I am the Viet Cong
I’m the hole in the world
After the bomb is dropped
I am the twelfth imam
And the Great Satan
And there will be no peace
Until everything is dead
I’m the ego and id
I am the seed and the egg
I’m the stillborn conscience
Floating in your head
I am love and hate
I am the key and the gate
I am the light and the shade
And the void that remains
When they both dissipate
I saw the abyss in a fever dream
It looked like a man, it looked like me
A devout without salvation
A vagabond with no compass
No light at the end of the road
I am ill-gotten gain
The burdens of the poor
The hope for the future
And the wolf at the door
The chemical despair
Of a lover spurned
The irrepressible urge
To get closer till our bodies converge
I am Thanatos
I am the fear of death
I am the lust for life
In every labored breath
I am an ancient chaos
Of a second-hand sun
And the haunting stillness
When its course has run
I see a portrait of the future
It’s the same as the past, painted in our blood
A brood of theives and murderers
Conceived on the backs of slaves
There’s no light at the end of the road
I am the big bang, I’m the eschaton
I’m the face of Cain in a cloud of smog
A peptide chain in the Hadean sea
A uterus in a blot of ink
I am the messiah
I’m the antichrist
There is no escape
From the nothingness that awaits
I see the abyss in front of me
From the frigid stars to the molten loam
No light at the end of the road
There’s no light at the end
No light
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9. |
The Way of All Flesh
08:06
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It was 5 a.m. on New Year’s Day
Parked on the shoulder
Of the Pacific Coast Highway
The swell of the ocean
Like a funeral choir
As we started to kiss
Your lips a funeral pyre
Bitter with ashes
Of defeated desires
But a sliver of light shone
Through the sadness of your eyes
And I swear you had a soul
In the cold comfort
Of my trembling embrace
You whispered your worries
The ultimate fate
Of our lofty ambitions
And our carnal designs
The fire we’ve built
From the fallen scraps of sky
It blows away without warning
Without fanfare or mourning
In a burst of heat and light
And then nothing
That’s the way
The way of all flesh
It’s the virginity you can’t reclaim
The child you can’t be again
The wonders you could not explain
The animals inside us all
Little stardust fetish dolls
Forever at the beck and call
Of pain and desire
The way
The way of all flesh
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Novus spero San Diego, California
Gospel of the final human century.
San Diego, CA / Hemet, CA / Flagstaff, AZ
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