Incendiary Sanctum

Twisted and decrepit, we struggle through the fields Dawn an ocean in our footsteps, we chase away the light A clangor of bells herds us in droves toward the gallery To disperse with weary hands this landscape of bone Our turmoil scorches out the seasons in a militant burn The feral dawn stoked high and wild in the hell we made Those of us who remain yearn for a sense of home In this forlorn abatement, silhouettes call my name Burden grips within; the jaws that cripple serenity Encased in a house of glass, I am depleted by the sun I feel safe in my prison, arms open in rejoice Fingers of light grazing luminous walls, embers settle in my blood The wind dances across these lonely leaves like a flock of nervous birds Heavy limbs carry the hangman, eyes wide and daunting in his sorrow The skyline is beautifully on fire, and we marvel at its gruesome, twisting light Reaching out into the firmament, as if to stop the stars from falling As a figure of shadow, I pass through the wake of life and death Dressing wounds weathered by years of affliction The beacon of my viscera incinerates the truth of all form A heaviest of hearts, and a fading radiance bleeds into the night

Synapses crack like whips in the endless dark A wild lightning born in the fire of the eye We bind shadows to our eyes so we might cloak our gaze Rivers of vermillion ash are wept into the broken hourglass I'm suspended in the doorway; the veil has been severed and senses wither in the cradle of unbeing Crystallized in willful possession The void burns my skin and digs deep into my bones A knife in the wind to pierce my body and cleanse my soul Bathed in the astral lake, I soar with radiant wings Defiant in the husk of flesh In this night we open our hearts to the wind and spill our wounds into the sky

In the silence of a darkened drapery, their bodies are radiant Memories rekindled in a hearth somewhere between waking and dreaming guide them on a lonely pilgrimage Frail nomads of that distant shore In pastures that stretch beyond death and resilience I hear them singing Their voices not unlike the tide An undertow unbroken and a heart aching for the marrow of the sun Emblazoned lifelessness and holy decay Their sullen bones reach for the skin of twilight Where neither gods nor man walk in faithless dominion In the years following our struggle your apparition grips me by the soul and refuses to let go Like ships that pass in the night your course is shared A silhouette walks the gilded tightrope through constellations until the death of every star A great wind choking out the flame of a million candles in the sky Lanterns growing dim, I will scream your vengeance.

Nothing is forgiven in this place Rage sweeps it's dunes over the frontier, obscuring all purpose Orphaned by grief and waned by passing years Sifting the dust of desire with phantom limbs Scaling the crumbled fortresses of pride Shallow depths, a sallow unblinking eye Vanity our keeper, I despair and writhe A pained exultation A beacon A toll Desperate ode to filth, beckon this child of God Gather your moths in forms opaque and absolute Devour this false dawn Whisper with your venomous lips and voice of scorched earth Manifest that imposter into flesh and tear into a realm just beyond the gaze of the mirror The infernal gateway Woe to the culling flood Abide the cataract and it's furious grace, and spill from windows of the skull Forthright is that river that gave birth to me It's perfect silence dissolved into every shred of my being In fervent stillness a darker garden blooms Come forth, and drag me into wretched bliss With potency you lit a fire in my lungs, so that every breath would be a reminder of what led me here What dismal beauty in this ever growing wilderness Stone angels stand sentry as the reaper leads the masquerade Dispirited fawn in their feigned joy, moving to the bitter clock of impermanence Matter is desperately clinging to emptiness as the ashen pendulum falls.