Carved lines
Frozen echoes of time
Disavow
Past and present
Faith and wonder
Here and now.

Endless rhymes
Frozen echoes of shine
Enthrall
Pure and repulsive
Kind and callous
None or all.

Hollow lives
Frozen echoes of the sublime
Wreathe
Darkness and light
Beauty and foulness
Above and beneath
Where discordant nature guides.

A hand proffered in numbers and lines
Awaiting in constructed utopias to mine
To dance along the pathways of another’s mind
As music plays the distant echo of fines

All classes inside the ballroom mill
Like moths to bright fire
Sharing in common desires
Trust in power to their fill

In decisions to face
Inconsequential imperfections to embrace
Stepping stones either lead
Up to victory or down defeat

Building faith in partners and creed
To stumble along paths littered with greed
An adventure on loan, safely at home
To fulfill a yearning for something unknown

Innocuous crime
Spare some time
To decode the faults of mind
Set in parchment and ink
Fallen to dust in the wind
Behind lost eyes in a wink

Caught in tradition’s mire
To seek the burns of novelty’s fires
As being turns to dust
Glorious shine is effaced in the rust
Of changes gone by
Still no right answer nigh

Dogmas eclipse
Chains rattle and drift
All directions under the sun
A compass superior to none

Are perceptions unique or uniform
To culture borne?
Or are answers forever amiss
A world built in chaotic bliss

Listen to the wind
As it howls and echoes
Promises broken
Vows to be upheld
Even in the storm
I still call upon lightning
To illuminate the pains and truths
Diatribes and faint regale
As rain cleanses away
The ashes of fires
Still dancing across my skin
Now free of marks
Carved by forgotten sins

Where present meets past
Is where silence refrains
Speak up, held high
On this pedestal of dust
Where I lay claim to
Success and failure
Joy and misery
Abundance and emptiness
The soil upon which
I plan to grow
Is nowhere and everywhere
Forged in depths all my own.

Gotta wake up from the dream
Gotta concede
No more words to scream
Inside an empty mind

Watching the pieces float away
So far on the streams
Where memories should be cast
But ripples still soak the seams

Wrote it all down in fire
Wish I could call myself a liar
Spread the ashes
Tried to put everything out
With big splashes

Purge the desire
There's nothing more I require
Than silence, an old friend
And the strength to pretend

Stuck in arbitration
Can we ever get past the miscommunication
Your armor so thick
It's like throwing a glass heart against brick

Staring into the clear
Where tears buoy what was held dear
It's just that time
Another happiness to mime
Our moments right now
Vanish into thick clouds
Of uncertainty and doubts

Why is the season always drought?

Echoing retribution
Attrition
Convolution

Do you know
Who you are fighting?
Or is just the
Advertising and lighting?

On grand scales you contort
The empty grounds
Of your forts

Scorched earth are the embers
Upon which you plant
A foundation to hunger
For greed, hate and self absorption

Rivers that flow, dowse us
In gasoline and words
To flare the conflict ever brighter

A powder keg
That’ll make the world’s load
Ultimately lighter
If the dissent
Is where all our stories end

Bonded to the ground
Chaos soaring above

I am
The path that leads
The path that feeds
My soul

Every motion
Reacting in turn
To every unscripted notion
Even the high North
Cannot keep me
Frozen in place

I am
The path that heeds
The path that feeds
My soul

New beginnings
Awaiting every step
Past the tribulations
Past the trials
For I am here
And here I shall remain
To progress in vain
Forever moving beyond
Any pain

It takes little time to come alive
Soon finding fortune and misfortune
As we strive
All the firsts that are yet to come
The first touch, the first sound
The first walk and falling on the ground
First school, first friends
First successes and failures that never end

Moments upon moments
That make a life
Moments that some never have
Because only one moment
Is what it takes to end a life
One wrong card in their stack
One turn to end up in a wreck
Before their firsts could begin
Their ending swept in

Past all judgement
No one decides
Who can value
Firsts, seconds, thirds
Seconds upon hours upon years
Moments upon moments
That were near
Yet had no way there

Stars are blooming forth
Illuminating the vast expanse
Disclosing what was hidden
Behind sun rays

The opulence of choice
Destruction and birth
The mysteries, joys and miseries
That span
Across time and space

Omnidirectional, pulling everything
Into its graceful spinning dance
Each tune harmonizing
With a purpose effaced
Collecting all colors
That culminate time
Epitomizing the light of
Existence’s shine

Shatter me again and again
It doesn‘t hurt
When you grind me to dust
I can just ride far away on the wind
Or the maelstrom oozing
Out of your jowls like the drool
The way you look longingly for the next cut

Take this blood
Let it sizzle in the infernos
You‘ve set
I‘ve grown weary of extinguishing
Anything other than myself
Rolling disasters in the sands
Of my time

The cacophony you create
Is too loud
Too devoid of meaning
For me to remain
And tolerate the chasm inside your mind

I’d rather go down to the city
Drown myself in the cesspool
Of the depravity
One might call your soul
To expedite this deconstruction
Leave you alone in the dysfunction
Give in happily to obliteration

The places I can go
The abyss and darkness
Nowhere and nothing I know

Welcome to the journey!
On this brilliant trip
We shall traverse absurdistan
To make our way to our final destination:
Mutual annihilation

Strap in or make yourself sparse
As we begin this farce
Traveling through Shitville
To get torn apart by the storm
Until maybe we can move on?

Next pit stop is Pointless Peak
Another amalgamation of lies
Beware of your feet
Turning and turning
Running in circles, around and around
Dizzy, we finally fall off the edge

Straight into Snake Valley
Where the snake
That set us on this road
Can sneak back into the fold
To wreak more havoc
We weren’t quite sold

But now we all are
And it’s no longer that far

It’s playtime
Time for some more mud slinging
Enough slander to keep the ears ringing
Nobody want to hear reason
No matter it was never a goal
To resolve conflict at all

Almost there
At the ninth circle of hell
Hurray!
We finally made it all the way
So we can stay to play
This game of insanity
Feeding our own vanity
Forgetting the promises we break

So much destruction
So much loss
Is this what we become?
Everyone for themselves
Frozen deeper as the resentment grows
Never thought these bonds were so fragile
They’d shatter under a grain of mistrust
Or maybe the greed just cut through
The last strings keeping us together

Where shadows are conceived
And these conflicts are released
All the old wounds
The underlying pain's runes
Are crypted in scars
That brought darkness to life's arcs

Under a moonlit sky
The illusions soar high
Above the vast cliffs of mind
Where twisted thoughts wind
In the echoes of a mistake
Identity denounced at the stake

Wozu des trüben Sinnes trachten?
Unter Ausgeburt des Zorns
Die leeren Blicke verbrannt
Sodass der Hölle Schergen
Zur Oberfläche tauchen.
Indes ist karge Landschaft
Blühend vor Tod und Niedertracht

Denn der Götter Ketten
Schmelzen unter der Einsicht
Welche die Welt ihrer
Ach so schönen
Ach so herrlichen
So verschwenderischen
Lüge zur endlichen Masse beraubt

In endloser Leere
Welche nunmehr nur Pein
Vermag zu bringen
Während des Richters Henker vollstreckt
Und Gerechtigkeit
Als hätte sie denn je existiert
Mit Wehen und Klagen
Die letzten Flammen schürt

Why aspire dull purpose?
Beneath the spawn of wrath
The empty gazes scorched
So that the inferno’s minions
May dive to the surface
Meanwhile barren landscape is
Blooming with death and perfidy

For the gods’ shackles of will
Melt under the epiphany
That robs the world of its
Oh so beautiful
Oh so splendid
Oh so squandering
Lie
To the finite mass

In infinite emptiness
Which henceforth is only able
To bring agony
While the judge’s hangman executes
And justice
As if it may have ever existed
Moaning laments
Stokes the last flames

The evening lays silently still
The last shades of red disappearing
Behind the infinite horizon
As everything revolves
Around the moment
At which darkness and light meet
Holding onto time
Adversaries seizing space
Like players sunk into their game
But neither will ever possess
This glimpse of existence

It’s a shy thing
No one can catch
As it crosses over skin
Like water, clean and crisp
Between the fingertips
Like sand that slides through
Seeking to return to the warmth
Of the ground that birthed it

The eternal ebb and flow
The beauty that exists beyond
The reaches of perception
Far across sea and land
Infinitely grand

Consign myself
To this torture
To purge the remnants of my sanity
Of its blind fantasies
Which reality has refuted
Time and time again

At the gallows
Smiling merrily
For I am ending
Destroying your stakes
Painted myself white
To the blackness
Of the despair

I surrender, I yield
Give up the last of me
Let you tear it to shreds
Lamenting nothing

As this is my final revolt
There is neither victory nor defeat
Yet there’s freedom, there’s truth
In surrender
Retreating to pieces unowned

A granting of nothing
Is my everything
Leading nowhere but the end
Of our path

I got lost in the depths of my trust
Now I’m severing my ties
Letting go of the past
That used to define my life

Dying like the stars in the skies
I give rise
To new paths and crossings
To retrace my mind
Or at least the parts you leave behind

At this pinnacle of dust
Smiling down, empty, at the rust

The cogs will turn no more
Every move, every moment a chore
Lying there clamoring at fate
All administrations too late

Lost in the maze
Eternally confused by what to crave
In the silent shell
That doubles as hell

The conditions that drew one here
Doubts and disillusionment the mind spears
Are benevolent once the horizon clears
For these clouds of dust
Hide the nothingness they must

So the carousel turns on
Leaving its creatures wanton
For the knife in their gut
Enjoying each pointless rut

Is one truly free
When all thoughts flee?
Pitiful puppets, aren’t we?

Souls as white as snow
Even with the crimes they owe
Their virtues made the deal
For deeds to be concealed

Covered by darkness, out of sight
Where armies clash by night
Never to be revealed by light
Reminiscent of the mind

Your voice resides
In the noise it hides
To come back and haunt me

All the things I couldn’t see
All the things I couldn’t feel
All the lies nobody would reveal
All I couldn’t run from
As the tempest rages on
Never to be calm
Until you have won

A truth I can’t erase
Something you can’t rephrase
Or make better at will
Time, in this moment
Forever standing still

You’d tell your heart to play its part
But through it all
You were condemned from the start
With dried up tears
You’ll still be chased by fears

As all goes on
Your shadows dawn
Eclipsed by shreds
You’re still facing the mirror’s edge
So forever you’ll hedge

Marking your skin
So the monster won’t win
Even if created by kin

You’ll drain your soul
To bury the goals
Of dreams long past
Your self fading ever so fast
Swallowed by the abyss so vast
Where all your hopes are cast

You’ll suffer the pain
For a momentary gain
You’ll keep paying the price
For a lasting sacrifice

Paying the toll
You’ll stay empty
Just like a doll
Until all is dark
And you begin a new arc
Set upon the existing mark

Trying to dry your tears
And chase the fears
So you can go on

Forever so long...

In a mirror-shattered hell
Whispers are dying to tell
The secrets from a hidden well
Composed and broken
In a quiet shell

All the horrors in these eyes
Could light up eternity its fires
With wishes to scream
Inside an empty mind
And dream

Wallow in cries
While a shallow heart dies
Blood seeping through and through
No more lies to hold onto

These poison-polished souls
Have no place to grow
In this maze
So perfect to behold
The shadows’ touch is too cold
For any roots to take hold

Stuck in complacency
Facing calamity
Suffocating disillusionment is near
Can’t you see that, my dear?

In demons you find
The strength to fight
The human trait
That gave power to fate

Greed or hunger
A malingering farce
That’s claimed your heart
Will forever linger

The worth of pretense
It’s sometimes the only defense
To claim you really are that dense
So you can stay on the fence

Recognition is the price
For a freedom to sacrifice
Shallow depths to drown
In waters all your own

Go for submission
And spare the false contrition
You’re free to instill
A truth
A worldly one, if you will

Regrets and mistakes riddled
In a fading abyss
Where services long past rest
Are shackles at the soul’s behest

Crawling in the ashes of perception
False comforts ring as hollow realities
Bound, unbreaking, unyielding
To withering ideologies

In the demagoguery of fears
Hearts are burning so bright
When their truths are set alight
Never to cross the surface in their plight

The detriments born of desire
Create the fuel to a new kind of fire
Seizing the boundaries
Consuming rationality

In decisions to face
Creations belie
The beauty and foulness
Where reflections
Of imperfection
Die