Madder Mortem

When the time and the place is not my own
I'm okay just as long as you are around

It's just like Eden's door is ajar and desolation's peeking out
Coiled like a snake lies the shadow of a doubt that gnaws at the roots of my heart and dismembers my peace

When I'm caving in
When I loose myself too far from home you'll kill the distance
But I'll close my eyes, close my ears, close my mind and put my head down and run

Is it a coward's heart that trembles in your hand?
There's a fear in me you will never understand, but beneath that fear there's a will of steel and I think you know

Then there's just the little matter of where and when you need to make a stand
Make yourself clear, I'm damn sure that you can
A token of will and resolve is long overdue
I need to know I can depend on your sight, that you know the difference between what's not wrong and what is right and I'll sing and I'll scream 'till you hear me

But it's all right - I don't mind
Build your own words, make your own time
You've got nothing to prove
I know you hold
I know you hold

Storyteller, bring your stories to my pyre
You, the tame man, be what I have learned to loathe
Tell me the secrets buried underneath
A thousand years of dirt
Tell me the fever chills your blood
You were the last
I'll be the first

Fall as you are and for good
I am here, there's nothing left to change

Life bleeds too soon, counting time down on us
Hope withers at my touch
Leaving it's ghosts to teach all colours grey

Change

Storyteller; see the futile smiles and answers
I will teach you not to taint my sweet control
I have a deeper kind of riddle
And a puzzle you won't solve
Laugh on your knees
Laugh for the changeling and the joke that took us all

Change

What are the words of the queen on her throne?
Spite and splendour, cold under stone
This is her promise

What is the name of the gift she brings?
Sleepless slumber under her wings
This is her promise

Cold, cold stone

Cold stone that buys and baits you
Cold stone that hides and hates you
Older than pride and pyre
Older than flood and fire
Here the swiftest beat will stop
Here the strongest man will fall
In her tower, in her halls
In her silent maze of cold stone

Cold stone to groom and grind you
Cold stone to mae and mind you
Cold stone to bleed and blind you
Cold stone to break and bind you
And her arms won't let you go
And her weight will pull you down
And her breath is in your lungs
And her laugh is that of cold stone

What are the words that will always remain?
Hunger, sorrow, winter and rain
These are her promises

Sleep, take me now and never let me wake
Still in your hands, in your kingdom I'll be yours to break

Sleep, I am tired
I have blundered on to a path where I don't belong
Still in your hand, I'll be safe from where I could go wrong

Promise me a silver dream
Let your silence flow over me
Give me serenity and take away my will
Let your silence flow over me

Ghosts hold no pain
I surrendered years ago
Life has no claim on me
Let me slip quietly beneath
The pulsing noise of everyday
Life has no claim on me

Sleep if I beg of you, will you bleed all memory from my veins?
Cold in your arms, I'll have given all my hurt away
I am not afraid
I have waited on your doorstep too long
Take back my name
Close my eyes and turn my face away

Fate, I see your stare
Underneath your pale eyes
All is here, holding it's breath to have life

Smooth, sleek smiles howl at my door
To hold me down
Or move me on?
The pace makes it unclear
They smell of lust
Of sweetly silky rotting dust

Once they'll measure me coldly
Twice they'd beg me to try
Hope will always betray me
It's hand of stone has left the bitter mark on me

Hopes, atrocities and daydreams
Lay it all on me
The cause that I should die for
Lay it all on me

Fate, I see you stare
All is here
Fate, I could not care less
All is here

I open my eyes today
To leave the world of dreams behind
We all know the nothing
A hole in our hearts we try to forget
Or drown in jest and jokes
So I open my eyes today
To let myself be torn apart

In the rigid chill of my vow
All my dreams will die

My blood is seeded with hateful ghosts
Their cleaving hands upon my faults
Pleading my guilt as they pull me down
Into the sea of broken hope

How could I have known?
All my dreams were lies

I know
All my dreams were lies
All my dreams have died

Die.

I know that death hides in my eyes
And screams from my song
I've left the bright lights
Left for the river without bridges
Slow and silent:
In it's waters I can dream of peace
I know of no hope
Down and into the flood will be my way

And to my hangman I will bow
My scaffold will follow me down
Sing as the soul falls
Over the water your voice lingers
Just be by my side
When the river sweeps my feet away
Though I gave you no hope
And all your love I have repaid with pain

I will go down
Stay with me
My light is all gone
Stay with me

Time bent out of shape
A swirl in the waters of Lethe
Time stretched impossibly thin
Webs beneath the laughter

Silence for the master

Time striking poses at life
A prancing and prideful accountant
Time dragging cold feet behind
Webs beneath the laughter

Breathe the sticky sweet
(It is the way, it is the way, the only way)
Never-ending rooms where nothing seems to move
Breathe the sticky sweet
(It is the way, it is the way, the only way)
Liquid clinging hours neatly stowed away
Just endless choking time tracing patterns in the dust

Time waiting only to pass at a glance
So hungry to find and devour us
Time smirks and gloats at our backs,
eating all our hope away
Time, time, time
Time stretched unbearably thin
Webs and woe and laughter

Silence for the master

Like a rolling tide
Like a gentle slide nears the point where you and I converge
I won't have you say that my wilful ways is a vast new land just now emerging

You know what I am

I'm the fire you thought you'd lost
I'm that breathless touch of frost
The one spell that will endure
The cancer and now the cure

And you seem to find a pleasant peace of mind in the fact that I'd take on the world for you
Does it strike you then, when you withdraw again, that it might be worth your while to see it through?

Make a leap of faith
Trust the riddles and the signs
Cross that cold, forbidding line
Find the trail between the words and chase down what you have stirred

'Cause I know you feel it change
From a whisper to a storm
From a keyhole to a door
From a flow of honeyed brine
to your tremors locked in mine

I was never moved by serenades beneath my window, but by your gentle touch on my spirit and on me

I am!
I am spirit, I am clay
I am growth and I'm decay
I'm a saint ablaze with sin and I end where I begin

And I will not be defined by another's set of rules; by a Reason void of Truth
My own path is mine to choose, but my heart is all for you

It's the little things, like this need to sing
Like the way your voice resounds in me
Like the way you resound in me

I'm handing in my guns now
I will stop slipping away like sand between your fingers
For better or for worse,
I yield to you

I will lay my armour down, claim the hunger and the words that were always on my mind
Any triumph breeds defeat
Any blessing holds a curse but for once I won't let go

You laugh at all my twists and turns
The stories I tell find a home in your memory
And by now it is too late to run, so I yield to you

I will lay my armour down, claim the hunger and the words that were always on my mind
Any triumph breeds defeat
Any blessing holds a curse but for once I won't let go

You see me like no other
And I have tired of staring it down, tired of turning to find it all too strong, too strong to let it go

Nothing can turn me now
Come the terror, come the turmoil
Close over breath and bones
On the tide will flow
Rivers of vibrant life
Come the fever to the dead soil
Stream with my dormant dreams
On the tide will flow

Cold is the waiting stone
Come the change, I'm sick with hunger
Burn me and make me whole
On the tide will flow
Slow and sure
Come the fall, the fall I long for
Blind me and bring me home
On the tide will flow

Seed my world with auguries
With agony and joy
With fear to hold my spirit down
And glory yet to come

So will be the day:
On the tide will flow
Out from our eyes
Out from our feeding hands
No pain and no penitence
No word to hold the flood to come

Burn me and make me whole
Blind me and bring me home
On the tide will flow

There are many names for the place I'm in
It's a different kind of hell
There is room enough but too many stairs
No one asks and no one tells

With each door you pass, another set of traps revealed
Pin-on smirks that smell like fear

See behind the pretty faces
There's just no substance underneath
It's all a game, and how I hate it when all their fancy words turn out to mean the same

Let it seep - let it slide
Let it fill you up
You'll feel the little cracks appear
The venom dancing in your blood
You're coming just in time to see me tear

See behind the pretty faces
There's just no substance underneath
It's all a game, and how I hate it when all their fancy words turn out to mean the same

Just a little hope stretched far too long
It's different kind of hell

Just a different kind of hell

So now the bringer of unease has reappeared
He has dared to show his face within our walls
His visage hidden in the mouldy earth and his fingers in the waters I had calmed
His intrusion is a presence in the air and the fire is a nuisance to our hearts and he's showing off the secret little thoughts we kept apart

And then the trap will spring
Nip our heels and make us bleed
Just as we found our ease pops a monster out

Behold the travesty!
Get that monster out of here!

He is steadily uprooting all our plans, letting loose the sordid demons we had bound
Turning all our dainty gestures upside down and misplacing all the footholds we had found
Every corner holds a shadow to expose, every closet has a skeleton to show, and he's proudly re-displaying all we worked so hard not to know

And then the trap will spring
Just around our time of need
I fear the change he brings
Get that monster out of here

Behold the travesty!
Get that monster out of here!

I will mask the wounds I could not heal while you set your resolve
We'll be laughing at some joke we played while our options dissolve

It is only fate, my love
Who could wear it down?

Behold the travesty!
Get that monster out of here!

All I know is the light of lanterns hanging from the trees and the sound of the heart that beats to keep me here

And then the darkness falls
(It always does for the likes of us)
Stripped of voice and thought and cold on the ground
I fall between the stars

All I know is the path that led me out here on my own where there's no time
A lonely place for old and frozen stone

And the darkness falls
(It always will for the likes of us)
The distant burning suns of other worlds singing dreams of ruthless light

All I know is the light of lanterns hanging from the trees and the sound of my heart beating inside of me

Time floats so slow here
We won just to lose
Here all walk solemnly
No light shines through

Here the waves break for you

Deep blue the spell on us
Old, sick and drained
All creation turned its face away to leave us blind and torn and failed

Here the waves break for you

Nothing stirs the underneath
Our hearts are so cold
Up above bright life ebbs and flows
Salty tears below

Here the waves break for you
Always

Here the waves will break
For you

This ordeal has made you fret, but you know it's not that bad
We thought ourselves beyond its reach
Well, it seems we've both been had

See, it flows so easily
A ruthless piece of art
And it grows and speaks of mysteries to be
And flips itself to show the deuce of hearts

The riddle wants to be

It rubs our noses in nature's demands and it wrestles our dearest doubts out of our hands

There is a balance of hope and despair
How we bleed for it!
In our need for it all sense disappears

The riddle wants to be