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2. |
Last Dream Before Dawn
05:01
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Last Dream Before Dawn
The silence left us humbled
Four walls looked on with indifference
Sleep talking in circles
Tired efforts fall on deaf ears
Helios turn back your steeds
Sleep in this day, forgive our deeds
And if it by thy will to remain your pawn
Please grant us one last dream before dawn
My reflection fades from your eyes
Failing to make do with this new life
Gave up the ghost in desperate times
The path is well worn but leads the way home
Learning to let go of the reigns
See the world consumed by flames
I bid thee fair well my last dream
No means to an end I have seen
For this dream...
You know I got to let it go
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3. |
Say, Is It Really True?
07:37
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Say, Is It Really True?
Say, is it really true?
That the flame of hope has grown?
That the spirit has changed?
That the weak no longer stand alone?
Say, is it really true?
That the thought of war has lost its meaning?
Them devils men made have died?
That the power of greed is sinking?
The coldest nights are followed by dawn
An outburst of light that cures the blind
A strong conviction has evolved in time
That life demands deeds we must define
Say, is it really true?
That once buried virtues now arise?
And that the truth itself, no longer asks for a disguise?
A power that’s been neglected, denied
Now blossoms and grows, calls out the best
At last the change of an era has come
But there won’t be much time to rest
Is this the force I feel within?
Heart and mind the truth?
Or am I deceived again?
Deceived again?
Say, is it really true?
That the flame of hope is lost
Or am I deceived again?
Deceived again!
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4. |
Mandragora Mechanism
01:32
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5. |
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Prophecy (Anno Domini 2009)
As he our darkness, cannot we his light
Imitate when we please? This desert soil
Wants not her hidden luster, gems and gold:
Nor want we skill or art, from whence to raise
Magnificence; and what can Heaven show more?
John Milton, Paradise Lost: Book II Lines
269-273
After famine and war and pestilence
and floods and plagues, I, a man of small
consequence, yet having been born
in affliction and preserved by the
necromancy of unnatural science; now
affirm that the words of Galileo and Copernicus,
once considered blasphemy, are true.
For huge Euclidean metallic winged birds
roar across the sky, in great numbers and at great speed.
And spidery satellites glide the heavens.
And prideful man has tread the moon.
And no Deity was found.
The eye of man has scrubbed the starry expanse,
and traveled through the eons, and has not found God.
I swear my account is true and my sight is clear.
I do not believe in the providence of the miraculous,
or that I shall be raised incorruptible.
I believe in the dross of metal.
And I attest to the magic in silicon.
And I swear the sands of the ocean
can express with zero and one
the sum total of creation.
Not much has changed since Moses,
burdened with stone and law, stumbled
down some dusty ravine
in the shadow of the Sinai,
except that the chief inlet
of knowledge in this age
is a single illuminated tablet
which can be held, or carried, or sat
upon a table, and which can show
any known thing or any book
in any library
upon the earth;
which is round and populated.
And that words,
and drawings,
and man's voice
are stored in sand and carried
on unseen waves which ripple through the air.
Still, there is much suffering and starvation, and war and disease...
and every despicable deed imaginable,
and horrible deviance,
and evil, and depravity,
cover the firmament of the earth.
What shall I say of war
except that this generation
has perfected it,
and we can slay the multitudes
faster than Christ could feed them.
For man has learned the alchemy that slew
Sodom and Gomorrah.
And the great Himalayan glaciers
have begun to melt.
And the Apocalypse approaches.
And the name of the final horseman
is Pandora.
And when the moon
rises over Rome
and washes the Vatican
in its blue sea,
and spreads its slippery
blue feet
in the Fountain of Neptune,
the crater Copernicus stares down
like some strange cyclopean eye
at La Dolce Vita,
blinks once, and is forgotten in the great,
drifting, slumbering millennia.
I know, I am, at once,
ephemeral and eternal...
...and central,
...and unseen.
For I have seen
exact representations
of the past, and the past itself.
And the nature of time
has changed;
as if, somehow, time could foretell.
But the nature of eternity
remains the same, for man is still mortal.
I, a common, even trivial man
have seen the world from my room, and my city,
which is infinitely larger, in scale, and in imagination
than Rome in the time of Christ, but is smaller than Rome is now.
For Earth's moon spins on its own axis, and circles the Earth.
And the Earth, in turn, circles the Sun.
And the Sun itself circles the Galactic Core.
And the stars are not gods after all.
And Democritus was proven correct.
And the universe is infinitely large and infinitely small.
And God has not been found at either end of this polarity.
And yet, those claiming to know God, are, by no means, a rarity.
The rulers of my time are cruel and clever
as they have been throughout the ages.
For the nature of man has not changed.
And man knows:
every deprivation
every suffering
every insult
every degradation
every humiliation
and is still used as a beast
and is still spat upon
and used as a slave
and treated unjustly
and tortured, and killed.
And all of this is done because the eye of God
has not been seen in the infinite heavens since the Fall.
For space curves and Gravity befalls us all.
We have brought down Leviathan and the tower the Babylonians
built, was nothing compared to our spired cities.
The streets of Jerusalem and Gaza
run with blood, and the Lion of Judah
flashes its gold fangs,
and stretches itself out under the hot sun.
And money is loaned at higher interest to the poor
than it is to the rich.
And the poor are among us.
And our firstborn sons are given to war.
And we curse our rulers.
And virgins are taken by force, and for no value, and they are never betrothed.
And endless are the number who perished because they were someone the Deity loathed.
Our armies are legion and the power of my nation
is beyond the imagination
of the ancient Pharaoh.
And the motto
on our currency
proclaims in God we trust.
And yet, no one has seen God.
And Noah has found the Galapagos.
And while the Stones performed Sympathy
for the Devil for 300,000 living souls
Hells Angels prevented murder and mayhem
by sacrificing one from among them.
And in Iran, falsely accused
adulteresses stand proxy
when Abraham Stones the Devil repeatedly.
And the age of the Prophets has passed in the shadow of Reason.
So now, an epoch passes in a single season.
And the heavens, Lord,
are cold
and full of stars
that blink
in the frigid expanse
of night
like the cold, listless eyes
of psychopaths.
And my soul, which is filled with knowledge,
and the learning of men from throughout the ages,
knows nothing of your divine nature, or of angels, and rages
with hunger and longing and death.
And I long to hear your soul, to hear you take a breath.
I want to hear the language of angels
and the dreams of Jupiter and Neptune, and the Pleiades;
to expand noiselessly
like thin oil, or slippery
molecules
across the dreamy,
frozen ocean
of space--to be
as thin as nothing,
as negligible and pervasive
as zero,
as insubstantial
as air.
I long to be impossible
or an improbable
sequence of events
in the absurd theater
of being.
And yet, here I am,
two dark bellows
inhaling all of creation
and exhaling it
a little at a time
into thin air--and void
--and space.
I sit with my sins
clothed in the shroud of mortality,
condemned from birth
and exiled here
on an infinitesimal
speck of rock
in a sea of light
in the Orion arm
of a spiral galaxy.
And I Am...
Alone.
Gerald Long
12/23/04
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6. |
Bonfire of Myth: Tableau
11:41
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Bonfire of Myth: Prologue II. Tableau
Great Warrior, can you see through the haze of misconception?
And even from the depths of thine own grand perdition?
Amplified by greed, wrath, and false trials of redemption
Great warrior blind ambition is magnified by hell’s eternal touch
Find your way
Find your way through
Inside the halls of The Great Assembly
Motivated by your carnal treasures
You must drink from the cup of The Gods
You must reach out to seek their trust
Fall victim to their boundless sin
Unravel hidden layers of unbridled, everlasting lust.
Take upon thyself
The sins of our fathers!
Here within The Tableau, seek thy riches
See your fleeting future
Here within The Tableau, there is shelter
Here within The Tableau, there’s a safe place
Rest your soul my weary son!
Tiresias, I beseech you, give unto me the greatest light
Bequeath unto me all thy knowledge and might!
Standing on the edge and overlooking this bleak eternity
I gazed longingly upon humanity and knew of their plight
Recounting the tale within The Last Great Council
We pondered the burning question of The Blessing and The Curse
Do we have the right to interfere?
Misguided passion will surely destroy all
Oh where are thou Great Warrior called on high?
Will you take upon thyself this burden by choice or be buried and forgotten in time?
Carry on wayward solider fear not the task ahead
We will provide you a way The Tableau is close in hand
Bear witness unto this alliance which has been forged!
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7. |
American Hollow Salt Lake City
Music to fill your void.
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