The redundant titan mouths the song of painless sadist saints In shades of Plato dreamers dance the lake that Charon taints It's nothing too familiar what I haven't seen before The dredged up phoenix carrion that sleeps on Lethe's shore Tyrannically the walls they weep in tones of vicious grey Like Prometheus's mountaintop to watch the devil pray I envisioned something tragic in the throes of Samson's dirge Under the blackened sky collecting slack of joy she purged You tease like a ghost of yesterday As spectres of the Argonauts lay siege on Venus' nest She slides along unnoticed through the trappings of my rest The fortress walls collide with words and never stand a chance A masterpiece of dust on which the rainbow chasers dance Our final word lies waiting in a morning twilight shade Sealed in iron armor for the farewell to be bade Yet voices call in Babylon tongues through apocalyptic rain And whispers in my ears that all these barriers are in vain

Tragic priestess caught me in a sonic snare To wash my vision with visions of trespassing To take the invisible path to the dream of a reckoning Just to walk the lane that you'd be passing Shimmer baby, slide down my veins The dreamer can run dry through the storms when his head is full And in the awakening you'll still be on a pedestal Just to tease me into the loom unintentional Where I'm blindsided by your croons ever sensual There's plenty of nothing coming soon As long as I'm reaching for mirages I'm still nothing more than another faceless pawn In the back rooms far behind the castle wall Where the pendulum is swinging much too fast There isn't a reason why there's any reason at all That you'll ever share your secrets with me at last And when I arrive there still can't be a guarantee The dreamer can run dry through the storms when his head is full And in the awakening you'll still be on a pedestal Just to tease me into the loom unintentional Where I'm blindsided by your croons ever sensual There's plenty of nothing coming soon As long as I'm reaching for mirages I'm still nothing more than another faceless pawn The dreamer can run dry through the storms when his head is full And in the awakening you'll still be on a pedestal Just to tease me into the loom unintentional Where I'm blindsided by your croons ever sexual There's plenty of nothing coming soon As long as I'm reaching for mirages I'm still nothing more than another faceless pawn The dreamer can run dry through the storms when his head is full And in the awakening you'll still be on a pedestal Just to tease me into the loom unintentional Where I'm blindsided by your croons ever sensual There's plenty of nothing coming soon As long as I'm reaching for mirages I'm still nothing more than another faceless pawn

Amid the bohemian garden of thieves In Napoleonic tantrums far from belief The Corsican mares they all dress down As tribal anthems of redundancy sound To walk below bridges of the Rhine It's near below contempt for to feel this fine On derelict complacent brigand decks The podium where emptiness elects A vision of a long forgotten shell Atypical this unimagined hell Reaches out just shy beyond my reach That blinds my eyes and confounds my speech Scarcity of reason casting shadows Festivals of sobriety that glow And Solomon never faced judgments as this Deranged, betrayed and addled by a kiss Amid the bohemian garden of thieves In Napoleonic tantrums far from belief The Corsican mares they all dress down As tribal anthems of redundancy sound Yet loneliness comes along with my daydreams Visitational memories of screams In spite of all waiting far away You tease like a ghost of yesterday

Baptized in axle grease with the soul of a maniac I could feel your sawed-off smile baby, can you fit it in the back Been down at the bottom, lord the devil knows that I took some licks Gray leather decked out in the front seat of a drop top '56 Seven priests are calling they all want me to fill a seat Eight undertakers waiting ready with formaldehyde and a sheet Outlaw rickshaw mover I take my turns at 89 Grind all five gears boys come on, the limit's just a sign I'm living it fast out here, you think you're enough of a fix Light fifteen candles for your loverman baby and I'll blow out all the wicks If you're not pushing what I want to hear then I'll catch you down the line Don't you know there ain't nothing to nothing momma Don't you know that that's just fine

Spend your life for the powers that say they be I ain't never worked for nothing see Now that's all of which that we're aware Sucked into the great American nightmare Life ain't nothing but a paycheck in your hand From your sweat to the bank to the government man Start young and foolish, end up old and poor The utility tax man knocks on your broke-down door Childhood memories, hope that you enjoyed them Looking for a job, you just pick your poison Blue collar sap with white collar ambitions He don't have a chance but just to take what they're dishing Class structure shining as it has for years Kept nice and shining by the working man's tears Cut the middle rungs out the corporate ladder Working man, good luck, cuz to them you don't matter anyway Working man, good luck, cuz to them you don't matter anyway Working man, good luck, cuz to them you don't matter anyway

I could feel it in the silent voice from solitude's refrain An imagined poison thorn seemed forever to remain Relinquished and extinguished for the lovely dead crow's caw And here the devil's laugh echoes between our jaws Upon the rising eclipse sun I blind my eyes of sight In futile hopes of amnesiac dreams to blot yesterday's light In the midnight dirge of soiled dead Delilah masked recants Nightblind I saw the redemptress with a minimalist's glance Hollow bones replaced the narcissistic demigod Complacent in the casket turning different shades of sod The warmth like blood now iron chains that bind me to my death In the froth of rabid agony I choke on every breath I felt the dew of her dawning ambience in her fingertips through my hair The tripwire gallows of wanton distance stripped the season bare The sullen shroud of Eden's garb in tatters and in shreds Now hangs as a tapestry to remind me that I'm dead

A tired breeze is blowing through the tired trackside street There's a self secluded junkie who's got no one to meet Humidity is rising and I've had too much to drink So I watch it rise as the skies and my eyes are quickly turning pink The tired leaves are falling on the derelict block Some aimless hobo's decided to take himself out for a walk There's a bohemian woman trying hard not to curse me out I wouldn't care too much now anyway, I don't know what it's all about So I'm hitting up the vineyards, I got plenty company There's a thousand in the same boat that got no place to be And I say hello to the stray dogs as we all pass the day So much nothing to see and do and tonight, that's okay

She got the mouth of a devil and the manners to match She got a lowdown vibe so hard not to catch She got the curves like a timepiece, she's playing the game And she don't back down until you screamin her name She wanna hear your voice baby tell it like it is But only if you tellin it the way she thinks it is She ain't got no time to kill Ain't got no calls to bill Ain't got no telephone Ain't nothing all alone She'll rock you sideways and love you inside out She got a way with her hands that'll make you wanna shout She got forty fingers or at least it felt that way She take twenty-five months and make it feel like a day She wanna get you down baby drag you in the dirt But only if she knows that it's gonna hurt She got plenty pain to spare She got no need to care She got a thousand just like you She gonna use you til you through She wanna take your cash she wanna call you trash she wanna Be your girl she wanna trash your world she wanna Kiss your lips she wanna move her hips she wanna Do it all she wanna drop your call She wanna take you down baby kick you while you cry But only if you tell her that without her you'd die She got plenty souls to sing She got thousand offering She got a wallet full of bills She got a tongue that give you chills I gave that girl a call on the fourth of November I was half expecting that she wouldn't remember Well what she said then it knocked me off my seat Exactly what it was I don't think I can repeat And I said I know you baby and what you're all about You can try me on for size or you can just walk out Don't play me for a fool I can't tell you what to do But you better be careful Or I'll do it and I'll do it to you Well she took my checkbook and she scissored my face She spilled my money all over the place She love me wild, I still can't find my belt Turned on the oven til it started to melt She wanna rip you off baby kiss you while you swear But only if you beg her to stay right there She got a mind full of traps She got a list full of saps She got devilish eyes She got a box full of lies Well from what I hear she's back on the road Tryin to find another man she can load She got them Jezebel charms and that bad girl smile She'll take you for a ride and leave you after a while She wanna eat your soul baby do whatever it takes But only if you tell her that it's for her your heart aches She got inviting chains She got twisted brains She got a kiss full of bile Watch out for her smile

Prismatic cascades fall to me, angelic voices call to me Lightning fills now empty veins, she commands the storms and rains Contagious flames filled with light, the timepiece hand that killed the night Upon the lunar halo's lance returned to hold Brancusic stance Oh paragon take everything I been missing Patience is a beggar's game, addiction goes by any name The bellows of the morning sun that rose and flares no matter strength of winds that blow Retired to a god's reward, the favor of the Queen of Swords Rejecting trite inane repose, Achilles' heel long been exposed Oh paragon take everything I been missing No chance that any of this is real, iconoclastic virtues now concealed Now tethered by a cord of hollow pearls, with that she'd take my soul and all the godforsaken world In crystal balls and augur's flights I dare not glimpse the future nights The drifter's lane's what it is that waits, my thread now at the scissor of the fates Oh paragon take everything I been missing Oh paragon take everything I been missing

Mesmerine, she is so careless, she wears her crown so well In the housing project campus untouched through her porcelain shell Yes I knew her that way long ago, to her I bear no ill I know of none that would die for her but I know plenty who would kill To Mesmerine across the shore, I bid a fond goodbye Cuz you never ask for nothing when the devils prophesy The seat beside me vacant in plaid Napoleon's lair I had to fill it up with magazines and pretend that I don't care And Germany with her hair cut short and her youth a dawn away Asks me for some more advice like she does every day And I myself am raking dust in the calm before the cry Listening to photographs as the devils prophesy Deridder waits up on the docks blowing smoke rings in the air Writing questions in the water and dreaming of the one she left there Saint Peter on the barge approaching he wails a lonesome song Not knowing in his self-ascribed position that he's singing it all wrong His seraphims sound trumpets and never wonder why They're unknowingly playing the score while the devils prophesy J.D. Salinger in the dance hall, he wears his pain with grace He missed his prime some years ago and had to drop out of the race "Salud" he announces to no one taking a long pull from his drink Puts his head down in his arms as the room begins to sink Salinger he racks his body nightly with his rye But even drunk you can't escape from when the devils prophesy Now Medea, she is weeping for time has passed in vain As Plutarch sits on the balcony out in the rain They share a common interest and discovered it too late Medea wails an apology even as she evaporates And Plutarch left behind, he hopes the memory soon will die But hope's a useless venue when the devils prophesy

You weep it in obituary voice "why don't you cry for me?" No desert spawns an ocean, love, no stone creates a sea In early evening paling blue the dying rays of sun Lit up the blood you saw as mine, the blood is everyone's Rage of the salacious sage superceding my age to cage and gauge the wage of me and my heart of stone Corroded razor blades aid the shade in being made to evade the faded flesh that will die alone Ambling down the vacant lots past broken shopping carts Where broken chimes sing broken tunes to dead and broken hearts The splintered hands of yesterday pound the calliope Inside a broken crystal I see no one there but me Rage of the salacious sage superceding my age to cage and gauge the wage of me and my heart of stone Corroded razor blades aid the shade in being made to evade the faded flesh that will die alone Yes I'm tethered by stone strings But hey there angel you got broken wings Been flying in the ocean thinking that it was the sky You never thought to breathe and so you never wondered why Down in the deep where I sent the rest to sleep And you seen them all drowned floating around with no sound Down down down Say hello to them for me

Rehash, relapse, laying on the grass Telephone bills and a half tank of gas And it's nothing, it's not yours, it's nobody's business The business end's fine til it's pointed at you In the evening in a sunset the salivating drones The plastic-faced people who laugh all at once And it's vicious and it's boring it's a rain-soaked flyer They paint on the mirror and turn it to you Violent morons prolific in garbage Leak to the streets and fly through the air In the TV in the jukebox, rip up the speakers to cleanse it away You can feel it, you can steal it, you can chew it for days And not taste a thing It's a streetlight in the morning, the forecast is saying That night never falls, it crashes Do a rain dance in a hurricane Plastic and mashed up and all thrown away And you can't fly and you can't cry When you've beaten a hole through the side of the wall It's a meltdown and a silence It's a beautiful sewerhole calling to you Take a day off, have a seance and tell everyone That it's just like they heard Futility comes in so many colors Hypocrisy comes in so many colors Childishness comes in so many colors Worthlessness comes in so many colors