PHINEHAS LYRICS

1. Dark Flag

I looked into darkness too long
Now it stares back

Welcome to the inside
The world's largest prison
Where the only way out
Is six feet deep

Forced to fear
By burden of indoctrination
A weight upon their eyelids
Asleep to the outside
The apotheosis of madness
Paints red a nation
Free will is a death sentence
There's no salvation

Mourn when I say mourn
Or make your graves with the resistance
Bow when I say bow
Or fade in a vacuum of nonexistence
Dark flag: the insurmountable curtain
Dark flag: how can we be found?

When light can't reach into shadow
How can we be found?
When light can't speak into me
It's trapped in-between hell and myself

With the teachings of the great leader: we pledge
We oath to hold our guns to defend the state: we pledge

Mourn when I say mourn
Or make your graves with the resistance
Bow when I say bow
Or fade in a vacuum of nonexistence
Dark flag: the insurmountable curtain
Dark flag: how can we be found?

Where paranoia runs rampant as hunger
Welcome to the inside
Drowning articulation
It feels like madness
With no end in sight
How can we be found?

When light can't reach into shadow
How can we be found?
When light can't speak into me
It's trapped in-between hell and myself

Shrouded in shadow
They threw away the key
I looked into darkness
Now it stares back at me

The only way out is six feet deep
Dark flag: how can we be found?
Dark flag: burn it to the ground

2. Burning Bright

They stole you far away
To the end of the sea
From rib and clay
My lantern and key

Home is the narrow and wide reaches of our shared scars
On tomorrow's horizon I want
To believe I choose to see

When the sun is down
Show me how to reflect like the moon
The key is in my hands and I choose to burn bright
Safe years behind me burn bright

I know now I am not alone
You've always found me in the deep of night
I could die well here, before morning comes
Because I can see all the lights of the sun in your eyes

We spoke of lovely things
With guards not listening
We made plans to escape
Like in the movies

Confiding in scripts
Kindling in secret
Our home discrete
In captors' keep

In quiet still small moments

Wait till they leave us alone
And don't look back,
Cross with me over the threshold
My inimitable half

In quiet still small moments
I hear you breathe and I remember
I am alive

I found you under distant stars
You saw me through my deepest dark

I know now I am not alone
You've always found me in the deep of night
I could die well here, before morning comes
Because I can see all the lights of the sun in your eyes

Home is the narrow and wide reaches of our shared scars
On tomorrow's horizon
I can see all the lights of the sun in your eyes

The key in my hands and I choose to burn bright
Safe years behind me burn bright

3. I Saw The Bombs Fall

I awoke from a nightmare
In a fit consciousness slow
Cold sweat and colder air
Blinding flashes cast a shadow
Before the sound hit the square
The end of it all

They kept in from your TV screens
A slight of hand
But I dreamt of a lifeless rock
A cratered wasteland

It's not just an alternate reality
I saw the bombs fall
It's not just overseas
I saw the bombs fall

Are we really that far away?
Am I naïve to think?
That this I only a dream
Is it really that hard to recall
What brought the end of it all?
We lost our chance to rewrite history

A path void of heroes
The abysmal waste of what could have been
Discerning only ones and zeroes
There's no space between for them
Peel back what covers your ears
Hear that a nation is crying out for mercy
Before it's too late for them to raise a sound
Mercy

Are we really that far away?
Am I naïve to think?
That this is only a dream
Is it really that hard to recall?
What brought the end of it all?
We lost our chance to rewrite history

Between the bodies in trenches and the blistering sky
It's not just overseas: I saw the bombs fall

4. The 38ᵗʰ Parallel

[Instrumental]

5. Hell Below

I sowed the salt but the bitter weeds still grow
I fear a heaven above for the hell below

I wept when guilt by association stared in irony
Avoiding its eyes bowing three times
I watched as hopes expire under the weight
Of standards I create and betray

One day they sunk hungry fangs into the hand that feeds
A hand that bleeds
In trying to stifle their voices
I bowed their limbs, they bowed my knees

Struck to silence by the gavel
Make him bleed for playing God
I sowed the salt but the bitter weeds still grow
I fear a heaven above for the hell below

Lost in the waves of a sea of fire
One million portraits to fan the flame
Burned in effigy
A fitting end to a cult of personality

Struck to silence by the gavel
Make him bleed for playing God
I sowed the salt but the bitter weeds still grow
I fear a heaven above for the hell below

Called to the judgement seat
Eye for an eye watch a man playing God bleed

Struck to silence by the gavel
Make him bleed for playing God
I sowed the salt but the bitter weeds still grow
I fear a heaven above for the hell below

Turn to the last page to see just how this ends

I fear a heaven above for the hell below

6. A War That Never Ends

First light under quiet clouded cloak
All hell broke the ridge
Wry trees up a narrow trail
A wordless story a war that never ends

Brothers and sisters sleep in a bed hollowed by staves
Like discarded shells from guns of powerful men
Last one lays in red under swinging single light
No pulse: a war that never ends

How clever you lie
How many ways you kill
Your cure is worse than the disease
Your sated shrine
Your cup overfilled
Your cure is worse than the disease

Our proudest legacy is how unendingly we scheme
Of new ways to kill than condemn
A war that never ends

It became our greatest prize to keenly wield skill to devise
More ways to cut than to mend
A war that never ends

How clever you lie
How many ways you kill
Your cure is worse than the disease
Your sated shrine
Your cup overfilled
Your cure is worse than the disease
A war that never ends

7. Break the Earth

If all it takes is a voice to lead,
Rise up Moses and teach me to speak
If all it takes is a mustard seed,
I'll trade my heart to move a mountain in me

Struck me like lightning and called me by thunder

To raise an army underground
I hear the trumpet, the final sound
We will rise from barren lowly dirt
First to strike the stone, break the earth

Taunt the jaws of lions
And you will suffer teeth
Lash the backs of my people
You'll be scarred to bone underneath

Oh I pray for the day my words unleash the rain

If all it takes is a voice to lead
Rise up Moses and teach me to speak
If all it takes is a mustard seed
I'll trade my heart to move a mountain in me

Move a mountain in me
Break the earth

Heels to the throat of liberty
Always withdraw broken
Forbidden words of prophets
In time will be spoken
Rise up, from barren lowly dirt
Rise up, strike the stone, break the earth

If you reap what you've sown, why has nothing grown
Oh I pray for the day my words unleash the rain

If all it takes is a voice to lead
Rise up Moses and teach me to speak
If all it takes is a mustard seed
I'll trade my heart to move a mountain in me

Struck me like lightning and called me by thunder

To raise an army underground
I hear the trumpet, the final sound
We will rise from barren lowly dirt
First to strike the stone, break the earth

8. My Rosary

Is there a power without or within?
Hope isn't grown, hope is awakened
The threat of law can't outweigh conviction
Hope isn't grown, hope is awakened

Where are you now?
Are you present of an accident?
My rosary
Where are you now?
Will my faith meet sight or bayonet?
My rosary

My first free choice was lying to the state
Given context to what lies past the gate
The fog surrounding my camp began to disperse
We took our chance for the fence but I wasn't first

I've found that running away isn't the same as being free
I'm paralyzed in my sleep
Running away isn't the same as being free
You were my compass
My rosary

Hope isn't grown, hope is awakened

I slipped on ice and watched your hands reach out
Shaking as coils sent current throughout
Grounding the brunt of what should have been my fate
Opening the wires sending fire through your veins
Like a bridge I crawled over you to the outside
My first breath of freedom was your last breath of life

I've found that running away isn't the same as being free
I'm paralyzed in my sleep
Running away isn't the same as being free
You were my compass
My rosary

Is there a power without or within?
Hope isn't grown, hope is awakened
The threat of law can't outweigh conviction
Hope isn't grown, hope is awakened

Where are you now? Are you present?
Where are you now? Are you an accident?

9. The Arduous March

[Instrumental]

10. Communion for Ravens

[feat. Jimmy Ryan]

The smell of wine turned
Bread beneath the gallows tree
Ode to the nameless; a hooded child
Communion for ravens

No hope to lose; no past to mourn
Born a slave deep in the earth
A famine stricken cursed womb
Nothing is sacred
The only escape is death
You would torture my family
To litter my tomb

I refuse to live dead any longer

Hooks in the wall over open flame
Silence escape
Bowing heads into the earth
No hope; no name

I refuse to live dead any longer

The smell of wine turned
Bread beneath the gallows tree
Ode to the nameless; a hooded child
Communion for ravens

I saw the stone walls fall
Crushing their will to dust
Swept away with the river's current
But still I see every face

In blood or famine
Silence escape
Grow old to die here
No hope; no name

I refuse to live dead any longer

The smell of wine turned
Bread beneath the gallows tree
Ode to the nameless; a hooded child
Communion for ravens

I refuse to live dead any longer

11. In Meaningless Names

Counting days with each cell door creak
I know the number of every chain link
Grieving walls draw near to mind
The deafening hush of waiting to die

Hold fast to hope of another day
Hold fast it can't last forever
The meaningless names of far off places
I have to believe something better awaits

I sense a waste in every exhale
Breath escapes iron bar and nail
Forgotten silence condemned
Darkness as my only friend

But hold fast to hope of another day
Hold fast it can't last forever
The meaningless names of far off places
I have to believe something better awaits

I am waiting to die among a swarm of flies
Every day is a lifetime in chains
Every day

Hold fast to hope of another day
Hold fast it can't last forever
The meaningless names of far off places
I have to believe something better awaits

I have to believe. I have to believe

12. Know Death; Know Forever

I had to be broken to be pieced back together
I had to know death to know forever

An angel hiding in the hearts of a stone
And the sculptor's patient means
Cutting through rubble to the bone
To carve her into being
The unsung and lonely orphan
And the namer of names
A refuge and father given
Granting title, will, and claim

Broken; pieced back together
Know death; know forever

When sorrows rise
The thorns in my side
Make me alive
I wear my scars like a crown
I had to be lost to be found

Oh captive wearer of chains
And the holder of keys
Deliver ankles and wrists from pain
To abound as eternally free

Broken to be pieced back together
I had to know death to know forever

When sorrows rise
The thorns in my side
Make me alive
I wear my scars like a crown
I had to be lost to be found

Broken before the maker
All death will know forever

I wear my scars like a crown
I had to be lost to be found







PHINEHAS LYRICS