Bury Me Deep
When you finally fall asleep, does your weightlessness surprise you?
Unburied by the world, your hands no longer tied.
Do you finally feel free?
People that you meet on their vacant hungry pathways,
The fire in their eyes long since extinguished.
Do you see them and weep?
Shovel in hand, I dig a grave for my dreams, lay down beside my love, and bury myself deep.
Canary King
Give me dust, give me death, fill my lungs with blackness.
Scratch my wounds with sighing breath, send me to the mines again.
Grow a grave into a home, shallow rest for hollow bones.
Grow a scream into a moan, swallow down a pill of
another endless road, another shelterless storm,
Your body crushed and torn, your spirit died unborn,
It never witnessed the sun.
Crack the stone and drink the water, burn my land and take my daughters.
Eyeless king sits diamond throne.
I won't be back with the others.
Give me dust, give me death.
Fill my lungs with the darkness.
Give me dust, give me your death.
Crowned king of the abyss.
The Barrens
Heart, beating stone, marring flesh, bending bone.
(and their tears fall from on high)
Bright budding crone, slay in peace, love alone.
(slashing rain across the barrens)
Blood that salts the earth, maiden battle birth.
Fist that cleaves the sea, shattered sky of green.
Heart, beating stone, marring flesh, bending bone.
(and their voices from on high)
Bright budding crone, slay in peace, love alone.
(sowing truth across the barrens)
Shadows, painted by the rain.
Ghosts, memories trapped in dark hallways.
At your back, burned to black, killed for love, none above.
Heart, beating stone, marring flesh, bending bone.
(and their arrows rain down)
Bright budding crone, slay in peace, love alone.
(shaping justice in the barrens)
Ghosts, silently contained.
Trapped between shadows of young and silver days.
I've held onto that for so long
I can't give it back.
Pyre
Too many voices in the fog,
each of them calling to his god.
A harmony that sets their souls free while they rot.
Tell your god he don't get my soul yet.
Too many days lost in the swamp.
Ancestors watching from the dark.
A dream of fire, a funeral pyre will guide me home,
to a nightmare of cinders and bones.
Fire will guide me home!
There's no winter in this land,but time clings like frost to my icy hands.
A shrine for your eyes, a feast for your teeth.
Pull back the veil, find another veil underneath.
He held her hand close to his face
as the last of his humanity drained into the ground.
The setting sun painted the world blood red
as his mind fled back to the swamp, never to be found.
Asleep in the pyre, asleep in the pyre!
Atlantic City
A long hot Indian summer.
Poolside white girl tans.
She got her claws into me early that summer.
Toenails like talons, sparkling in the sand.
Atlantic City, winding back alley streets.
Her wrist in my hand, on the run, clutching my gun.
We left our souls open and willing to the heart of a fray not yet exposed.
And all along the beach, sharks washed up, teeth strewn around, bleached by the sun.
Watch where you're walking, there's blood in the sand.
Watch where you're walking, this gun in my hand...
Love, wait for me, I'm almost home.
Save my place at hearth of stone.
Don't wait for me, I'm almost gone.
Take my place when winter comes.
The Last President
Makeup teams, camera crews.
Address them on the evening news.
The button pressed, we had to choose.
God himself tied the noose.
Tell my wife I'll be there soon.
Clear her grave, make some room.
Kiss my boy, close his eyes.
Hang myself with chicken wire.