CIRCLE TAKES THE SQUARE LYRICS

1. Enter By The Narrow Gates

["All Hope Abandon Ye Who Enter Here." -Dante, The Inferno]

Bring forth the Light,
To raze colonies
In a single cleansing breath.
Don't sleep, my queen;
The sun rises one less time
Than it will set.
Now overhead, the stars
That guided our forebears
Have turned to dust.
And underfoot, the churning
Framework of this earth
Succumbs to rust.

Bring forth the Light.

These dreams of Thunder displace,
Dismantled spirit's burnt bare-
Sylphs in the shards resounding,
"Open to the Field!"
Depatterned, floating in Grace,
Mapping the fragments...
"For to awaken and reassemble,
Enter by the narrow gates."

All has been inscribed
In the footnotes of time,
From the rising dead
To the falling rains;
From these proving grounds
To the burial mounds
Of fallen satellites'
Skeletal remains.

From a timeworn note's
Subtle feeling-tone,
To the coiled scales
In this mistaken mode.
Felt the birch bark walls
Of the temple shake,
When those who from heaven,
To this earth came.

From Eleusia
To the Killing Fields;
From the Promised Land
To the coming plague;
From the trenches of
Every whispered war,
To the future wreckage
Of the Large Array.

For the gate is wide,
And the way is broad,
That delivered me
(Insufferable in-between)
From the fleeting dawn
To this endless night,
In the labyrinth
Of the Iron Kings.

Now my footsteps take precedence as the traffic sounds fade,
And this city's lungs have purged their last breath.
I'm held captive at the curb before the World's End Lane,
Where I pledge my self to uncertainty.
From this shattered breaking point each new step must be
Nothing short of the saddest act of sorcery.
In search of that fleeting adversity,
O, merciless emptiness, that used to possess me...

So farewell Persephone, at rest on the altar,
Who dared to merge stone with the skies.
What curses of men guard the bridges you built, dear?
What doorways, what star-gates have you left behind?
So I'm following stardust, what's left of the twilight,
To get to that last jagged line.
To the edge of the earth by the age of rebirth.
I'll dissolve, end this realm, and reclaim what is mine.

Take in the knitting air,
Part with the cleansing breath,
Destiny turns the soils in which we manifest.
Suffer the burning coals,
Yield to the spiral tides,
Peer into the darkness, that all may be defined.

(swing wide the narrow gates)

2. Spirit Narrative

Stalking the formless
Collapse,
She strings me along...
Vapor trails,
Disappearing tracks;
Entanglement unwinds
In threads of golden error.
What strange attractors ahead,
Lie awake in wait?

Crossing this fertile
Expanse,
To commune with the life-less...
Spirit narrative,
Rite of passage;
Progress is paralysis
When poison is my path.
I'm laid to rest,
Just to rise again.

Hell-bent circuits-
Shadows speak through the frequencies.
Heaven-sent asylum-
One psychotic break and the veil recedes.
Channeling devastating
Revelations of the method

From the other side of Somewhere.
From the endless halls of Elsewhere.

In some mythic story arc I wake;
Hand pick your pleasure, feast, then fall from grace.

Fabled
Decline;
Within
The text
Resides
My next
Shape Shift
Time Slip.

Listless,
When the hammer drops.
To be still,
When the narrative breaks down.
Holding centre
Under shelter
Of this altered state.
At rest,
In the restlessness
That was forged
In this state of changing phase.
All structure failing:
God's forsaken sanctuary.

In field of view
Her solid state
Our passing tryst
Just melts away
Sublimate
The Great Divide
The Grand Design
Defected
Solidify
The Great Divide
Our cells collide
The Grand Design

Deserted-
Demiurges running free.
Arcing archangels-
Only resonate out of sympathy.
Summoning shocking
Demonstrations of the method

From the chambered heart of Nowhere
(Where the feedback feeds on echoes).

Baiting the feral
Demise,
On the heels of Culture...
Another crippling analysis,
Unraveled
Dreams now interpret me,
At the trail's end of this
False Awakening.

3. Way Of Ever-Branching Paths

["Reality is not always probable, or likely." -Jorge Luis Borges]

At your doorstep
Cloaked in negative space
First frost aches
To lay its claim

At the threshold
Between without and within
First foot prints
Disgrace the virgin soil
Ignoring refusal
Let the winter in
Indian Summer
Defiant forever
Let winter have its way

Through hollow insides
Made of branching halls
First step falls

Vanishing reasons
I chose this course
Death is in season
Inward to source
INITIATION
Vanishing reasons
I chose this course
DISINTEGRATION
Death is in Season
Step inside...
One thousand faces
Stare back from their fractured origin

In turn
Turn another corner
And lose my place
A blue print for disorder
The Way of Disarray

Backward glare
Burnished obsidian walls
Reflect the endings
That will never...

Unfold
Fold the corners over
To hold my place
The panic feels so familiar
In a breath-work maze

Clear the air
Ceremonial smoke rings
Fill the creases
Where the trauma collects

You better keep your thought forms clean
How we, the Conjured, seek
To breach the compass of this dream

Illumination
Elimination
Tangental slipstreams
Derail our train of thought
Stationed in fog
Composing
Decompositions
In constant revision
Infinite indecision
Encaged
Within a finite space

Help me hide it away
Under thin coats of cracking paint
Under smothering soundscapes
Where every layer I've made
Competes for a place

Enchanting parlor tricks
And slights of hand
Made me a god
Here in obscurity
Confined to making believe

So help me wish it away...
But how long
Yeah, how long
Before I'd beg to bring it back into life?
To bring it into the blue grey
The Grey matters
Matters of the Maker

Mark and Measure
Locus of control
Order, theorized
Crooked, our belief
In the straight line

Leave room for failure
One fatal mistake
That human touch
Planning its own obsolescence

The scent of senescence
Permeates

Our vast potential
Fated to fade
Our monuments
Willing its own expiration

Ground to powder
Chaos, improvised
Stolen fire
Blessed are the thieves
In these end times

Distill it down into a single line
Meet the demands of the mountainside
Compromise is such a loaded word
When landslides are singing

Hermetic melodies
Only we could hear
We clutch the chords
Forgotten anthems reappear

Encoded messages
Only we could speak
In native tongues
Ancient strains have gone to seed

Entangled crossroads
Only we could see
Beyond the fear
Our new creation will be gleaned

From the wastelands
Of the insincere
Winged beauty she looms
Inside a derelict cocoon

Inspiration strikes
Under flashing flood lights
Winged beauty emerge
To search this tortured world for new growth
Resurface, Recreate, and Redeem

Shades
Of night
Blossoming
Within

These Laced
Pathways
Of Hekate's
Garden

Retrace
Mind streams
Following
Her lead

Wellsprings
Whispering

The Rites of
INITIATION
I chose this course
DISINTEGRATION
Inward to source
PREVERBERATIONS
Follow the stations
Through branching halls
ANNIHILATION
Fever breaks my fall

Dionysus, good heavens
You've gone to pieces
In search of closure, you went within...
Everything and Nothing
Clashed
In counter movements,
Rotating spins-
A dream,
A dream
And nothing more.

Chart the startling curves
Of your dementia
(No way out)
Map the staggering depths
Of one dimension
(No way out)
Like clockwork witchcraft
One must suffer to pass
Suffer to Pass
Like clockwork witchcraft
My dreams now abandon me
Suffer To Pass

In time, you'll add my shadow
To your overspilling urn
And match my every move
Step for step, turn for turn

Reclaimed by a destiny I revoked
A trajectory, resigned
Writhing
In surrender
Storm clouds gather in this altered state

Hard-wired
To the recklessness of perception
Bathed in artificial light
Steeped in fabricated time
Storm clouds gather in this altered state

Ever-spinning,
The Great Wheel:
Void of progress.

Ever-Branching,
The Great Work:
Grieve the dying
Dying art
Art of process

Tunnel visions
Wander without aim
Through the Gauntlet.

Spirit Guides,
Forward Exits-
Disembodied nights
Shrouded in war paint;
Losing mind
To behold
The Other side

4. The Ancestral Other Side

["He who dies before he dies, does not die when he dies" -Abraham of Santa Clara]

Take hold
If we fall before we fall, we do not fall when we fall through
Take hold
If we fall before we fall, we do not fall when we
Take hold
If we fall before we fall, we do not fall
Take hold
If we fall before we fall, we do

There are forces at work here beyond
This Realm of Self in which we reside
A call to consciousness with no response
Another view from that vanquished other side

May this healing crisis
Unmask the faceless
All those who occupied my peripheries

(Fever Builds)
Silent flakes of snow bite your tongue
Until their angles and hardlines grow soft
Atomic winter, a drifting dormant sun
Boundaries and bridges all a blur
Your life spans, my disconnected dots
(Fever Breaks)

May this healing crisis
Make known the nameless
Who colonized my soul
When the other side took hold

Hiding in a healer's
Sacred heart, the worst disease-
Caverns of atria,
Black holes of empathy.

Where pale and distant
Shapes made of shadow speak
Forms in a feedback loop
Of abandoned memory...

Allied in our open wounds,
We bleed venom and wild flowers bloom,
They give way
To the side-winding vine,
To the brambles of time.
Love's first creation was loss.

Red-shifted horizon looms,
Echo chamber of self-imposed solitude
Mass and weight fall away
My true nature escapes
What was boundless now stands consumed.

Refiner's Fire
Ancestral Flame
MAKER OF LIGHT
Radial Voices
Recursive Planes

Engaging only this moment,
While the patterns erase
Mandalic sand
BATHED IN BLOODLINES
A desperate plea to stay present,
In the ember's embrace

Non-attachment retreats
In a pillar of steam
Another mantra in splinters
At the Maker's feet
Precepts deconstructed,
Focus, going astray
I refuse to Burn
Falling Forward

Through fevered visions,
Silence devouring its own tail.
Unbroken circle,
Grant us the crisis needed to heal,
Through fevered visions,
Silence devouring its own tail.
Unbroken circle,
Grant us the crisis needed to heal

5. Prefaced By The Signal Fires

Hanging in the balance
Between the pauses of the second hand
So long awake...
IN WAIT
(Four colours cloud the sky)
IN WAIT
(Red rivers dripping dry)
Our bottomless well of wishes, drained

Igniting in the vacuum
Between the friction and the everlasting flame
Lifetimes amass, dormant...
I WAIT
(Backlit volcanic shore)
I WAIT
(Five pointed star is born)
As it is in the Void, so it is under my skin

Posing in prayer on the South Rim
Shrouding the ridgeline in Softness
Finding peace where Endings begin

Premonitions
Of a quickening pace,
At the rock face
Brushing with broader streaks

Treat the symptom
Of a paradigm shifting,
No lantern burns long
In this cavity
Flickering
In and out of Becoming
TOTEM EMERGING

Tied
In the mind's eye
Pendulum is pacing
Blind
In the psyche
Sliding scale of belief
Is tipping
Transmutations
Prefaced by the signal fires

Intuition
Scrivened pigment and clay,
Past lives play out at each stage
In this gallery
Wavering
Archetypes intervening
On the walls of a hand painted cave

I confess,
You are a stunning mess-
Unbetrothed to a single spectrum.
I digress,
No vow of permanence
Has a deep-rooted hold
On its host-
Mycelial
Massacre
Gnawing away
(They're gnawing away)
These tracks I laid.

And the praise it was fraudulent
Nothing sacred in my fingerprints
Shed my skin as a parting gift
SLASH AND BURN, and start again
Through the lens of predation
Monochrome interpretations
Only fit for the color-starved
Strip-mine my flesh, I WILL ASCEND

At a cut throat crawl
Traverse the grounds of decay
At a cut throat crawl
To erode at a glacial pace

Trance-formations
Sawtooth waves of transition

I regress,
Hypnotic dissonance-
Every lie that I told
Is a ghost-
Residual
Apertures
Haunting the frame
(They're haunting the frame)
Sequential fates
Massacred
Gnawing away
(They're gnawing away)
Legacies waste.

SIGNALING FIRE
SIGNALING FLAME
Illuminate the Way

In this world of wounds
Transcend with hands in the earth
In this world of wounds
To amend with hands in the dirt

Off course in the crooked rain
Always chasing a distant flame
(At a glacial pace)
Untwine yet another braid
Clutch this tangled cord

In this world of wounds
We can heal with hands in the earth
In this world of wounds
Climb forevermore
EVerandeverandEVERandeverandevER

(balance can never be restored...)
"Sorrowing, Sighing, Bleeding and Dying"
New hymnals sound from the mouth of a cave
(...will never be restored)
The chosen betrayed us, worshipful conquest
Healers in ash at the foot of a stake
Wild waters forgotten
In violent eruption
OUR TOTEM EMERGES
Field and fountain
Moor and mountain
WAITING...

For the Sign

6. A Closing Chapter (Scarlet Rising)

(All awash in
Scarlet rising
Bloodbath birth marking
A passing age)

Adoration
For the elder gods
Was a closing chapter
Now the sky
Is a vacant throne

Apparitions
Patterns we projected
Shake me out of slumber
 Pull me back
To the deep unknown

TO DECODE:

Inscriptions
On the inner circle
Interwoven spirals
Signaling
We're not alone

(All awash in
Scarlet rising
Bloodbath birth marking
We're not alone)

So, pin me down
To your vast embroidered web.
By witchery, self was conceived...

I made a bride of the moonlight
Endured refusal for a thousand lives
She guided me through the temporal streams
In turn, how I would disgrace thee

We made a shrine of this mountainside
Built our blood from its root and vine
A sylvan ashram to shelter me
In turn, how I would betray thee

I made communion with a hungry wind
It lapped the salt from my calloused skin
And I know, I was warned not to fall for the meek
In turn, it preys on me

Take cover
Never saw it coming
(Cover)
Touching down
Where pressure points meet
Timelines diverging
At the Trailhead of Eternity

Take shelter
Never saw it coming
(Shelter)
Breaking ground
Where four corners meet
Ley-lines converging
At the Gatepost of Infinity

...form was perceived...

No present tense
No middle mixture gradients
No tender hex

Through and Through
The Future Past
Through and Through

Just the gnashing of teeth
(Passing Through)
Just the wedding of two extremes
Just my own failing grip
(Passing Through)
Losing feeling in my fingertips

Overlooking a scene from the slaughter 
Of Innocence
My alternate
Selves strain and fracture

Undertaking a rite on the altar 
Of Experience
No deviant
Virtues recovered

Sculpting my death mask
From living rock / kcor gnivil morF
Shielding my true face
From the Other...

Letting go to grasp
The paradox / xodarap ehT
Contrary logic pervades...

Passing Through
The Looking Glass
Passing Through

Overlooking the slaughter
Suspended in time
Staring out from the amber
Overlooking a scene from the slaughter

RITUALIZE THE COLLAPSE

Through and Through
The Future Past
Through and Through

(...all awash in, scarlet rising...)

7. Singing Vengeance Into Being

I'll depart, when the lights overhead have all but one burnt out,
In a slow procession dragging every shadow, every doubt.
What pioneers precede me? Cloven footprints left behind
On a land base cut so clear, white trails blazed across the skies.
Some spin wild in praise, most just need to save ourselves:
A people out of time, who have lost the will to HOWL...

From four legs
Fortnights
Withhold the rest begged of weary eyes.
What rot-refusing cemetery
Pines for all our kind?

Teach me to scream
In volatile whispers,
(SIGNALING FIRE
Teach me to wake inside your dream and stay forever.
(SIGNALING FLAME)
I could wage your wars,
I could cast your spells,
I could preach your meaning.
(SIGNALING FIRE)
Teach me the notes to sing
Your vengeance into being...

From two wings
On high
Patterned flight ignites an ink-blot sky.
What fearful blackened symmetry
Reflects our soul's design?

This is no place for the noble or young
Born with the taste of blood on our tongues
TO FORGET / TO FORGIVE
With a hatchet buried deep
(Under Lapsing Time)

Illumination lost its bearing.
Eliminated light:
Left her bereaved.
Kaleidoscopic grief
Tightening its noose.
Now decoherent speech
Is all that rings as true.
Force your words through the gale
Of circling fan blades,
Just to hear another voice...

Resonate
God awful proof
Crying out

Paralyzed
Poisoned heart still beating
Short of breath
Love lies bleeding

Purified
Cauldron over-boiling
Vine of souls
Serpent uncoiling

EVER UNFOLD

Trapped and tamed in this
Thinning wilderness,
Just skin and bone,
We dared
To let the demons in.

Motion sickness setting in,
Crystal waters darkening,
Hair raised on our necks...

We drew
Our breath
Out of the thick air

Deviate
Wandering kiss
Co-create
Seething abyss
(Re)integrate
Exiled arts
Bi-locate
Tear us apart

So long, eternal youth-
Bare feet and empty hands,
I'm off to find the Truth
In this pathless land.

To command
My nightmare
"Speak your name"

(in vain)

Regards, untimely death-
The urge to understand,
Merely a lapsing crest
Bound for the sand.

If I should stray
And disappear
I fear what quantum scaffolding would be revealed
And If only I knew
At creations end the fog would lift and clear
Unveiling:
Silent Sovereignty Surfacing

Pulverized
Wounded heart stops beating
Between lives
Patterns repeating

In verses
To sing
The Seeds Of Rebirth
TO BE SEWED:
In chorus
To sing
sing of hope

Upwind, a budding Spring

Parallel
Galaxies of light
Synchronize
Tattered edges overlap

Downstream, the Nettle's sting

Winding down
Vortices of time
Narrowing
Tired movements come to pass

In violent symphonies,
Let us sing it into being.

The ancient corridors
Are closing
Our hexagonal hives
Collapsing
The antique pathways
Corroding
Our holographic lives
Enfolding on themselves

Shudder in the quake
Of pending Eschatons
Hatchet buried deep
With a paradise we lost
FORGIVEN / FORGOTTEN
Drafting my swan song

8. Arrowhead As Epilogue

Long of tooth
Many rings now in tow
Return
Another cycle brought to its close
Grant the heavens thirty years
To make good on their word
Bow your head, now, in surrender
Saturn
Return

Devoured
Descendants
RIVERS FLOW
Currents damned will never veer
Devoured
Descendants
ELDERS GROW
Branches shorn shall never bear
The burden of the seer
For sight is both a blessing and a curse
To resurrect the Trickster's song
We declare the Arrowhead as Epilogue

Raven ARISE, from what was lost...

Explorations in decay:
Atthisaltitudeoftheunwellmoralcompassspinslikeaspiralstaircase

This union is forbidden, Love
Two-spirited embodiment of One

Open windows
Tangled antlers
Crossing over
Through the caverns
Seeking answers

On the record this is regret
Passages in-progress
Pass for memories

For the record this is contact
All my words fail
When we meet in dreams

Off the record you were laughing
In the crashing waves
Gone with the tides
Wading out to the sea

May those crooked spears of light guide you home
May you carry no more crushing weight
A soul displaced
From it's herd of white buffalo

Return...
Return to The Source.
Awaken...
Awake from this dream,
Wake from this dream.

Explorations in decay:
Inthisdatastreamdeliriumthemethodisthemaze
Its just the fingerprints on a photograph, a wrong turn off the branching path
Give me station,
Some awareness,
In this static aftermath.

Rising from the ashes
Out of the empty
Halls of vacuity
Caesura breaks, Dreamer...
AWAKE
(Adrift in revery)
AWAKE
(Sleepwalking effigies)
As it is in my blood, so it is in the Night Sea

Growing in the silence
Within the womb of a long expectant pause
Timely demise, new worlds...
ARISE
(Water gives way to Fire)
ARISE
(Nature's enduring choir)
We must turn the old leaf, that we may pen a new page
Burning offerings for a dying age

9. North Star, Inverted

In circular dance
We call down the craft
Face the end

"Gods arrive
On the wings of the wind
Fade to black
How the mighty descend
Gods arrive
On the wings of the wind
Fade to black"
So it begins...

Out of body
Torn out of time
Diseased
Centers align 
Revelations
Storm cloud swept signs
Whirlwind revolutions
Drifting by
At ease
Within decline
Out of body
Torn out of time
Grace redefined

Elliptical Trance
Flared prominence
Magnetic draft
Face the end...

The future can't sleep, 
It doesn't need to, 
It dreams standing up like the statues
In the gardens we'll pass through-
Past the guardians at the gatepost,
The Light: how it gives and it takes.

Pitch black, the poles lost their grip,
Let the axis reverse-
Precious balance of mind now disturbed...
This world, it slips and tears.
And if the smoke ever clears,
Will the southern skies now host The Northern Lights?
Let's make pretend:

"It was all a delusion,
It's all in your head.
It was all an illusion,
Like gold out of lead."

The present can't see,
It is blind but has visions
Of pillage and pilgrimage,
The purging of empires-
Tyrants, their treasonous wars...
Then without warning its done.

A clean slate just feels like a dead weight,
The burdens of surface stone
Scrapes skin from bones,
As we crawled across dark parking lots,
Felt the forest floor cringe...
And let the cities cave in.

The past lost its voice, 
It can't speak but was spoken for
By pundit and prophet...
Until the dust clouds around us
Eroded our embellished belief
In some fixed history.

Could we recognize
Symbols made of smoke?

Across the canopy,
That soft-spoken sky,
Burnt by the torchlight
As we chart out the ley-line.
Pray the earth it won't break one more time,
All the voices we heard
As we followed the fault lines.

Devoured, digested, cast out...

Decomposed.

"Gods arrive
Line of dark chariots
Starlight dies
I can't bury it yet
Wheels of fire
Swing they so low
Fade to black
Carry us home"

Polaris slips her tongue
Through a kiss made out of cinders,
In a marriage of chemicals.
The sky's sulphur heart,
carved-out veins of slate,
The pulse of the earth-
How it sinks and it slows.

An oil corn and wine coated keystone,
The archway, two columns (now ash and dust)
Frame this path for us,
The undeserved-
Brought low and unpreserved
From this unhallowed gaze, we profane;
The cursed abandon the weak,
To stagger on in a stolen display 
Of confusion, of faith.

The North Star, she nods out,
Doused her torch, left us forever
Without  promise or penance.
We're left to merge with the trench,
Taught the cruelties that it takes to survive.
"Just accept to be free."

I used to waste my skin, 
Shed my time, change my colors,
Until I settled for peace...
In death, an emerald sea stands before me 
Unveiled but unbowed-
Each wave's a rainbow of sound.

Could we recognize
Any signal in the noise?

Across that static sea,
O, crestfallen sky
Yearn for the currents
That carved out the ley-line.
Pray the earth it won't break one more time,
All the voices we heard            
As we followed the fault line.
Pray the earth it won't break,
All the voices we heard as we followed.
Pray the earth it won't break,
All the voices we heard as we followed the fault lines.

Devour, break down and black out...

Decompose.







CIRCLE TAKES THE SQUARE LYRICS