Born to be eaten by our own
Devoured slowly on the same slab
On which we consume
The flesh of our mothers

Piece by piece, muscle down to bone
Eat a sliver of the magic
Inherent in all once living souls
Take the last thing that they have

Face slick with blood, engorged with flesh
Inherit the pain of our wounded mothers
Learn to fear what you will birth
Love what will consume you

To keep wind underneath wings
Laced with the viscera of our sisters

To taste the flesh of stars between our teeth
Mouths wet with the tendons torn from heaven

Eaten
Our one desire, our only wish is to be
Eaten
Devoured by daughters we never learned to love, we are
Eaten
Our one desire, our only wish is to be
Eaten
Our greatest fears, forever unfaced

Fated to die for the Star Eater
Lusted for the sweetness of their flesh
Power bursts onto their tongue
Drinking down the arterial wine

Eaten
Our one desire, our only wish is to be
Eaten
Devoured by daughters we never learned to love, we are
Eaten
Our one desire, our only wish is to be
Eaten
Our greatest fears, forever unfaced

Face slick with blood — engorged with flesh
Inherit the pain of our wounded mothers
Learn to fear what you will birth
Love what will consume you

Red sails and blackened hulls
Cresting over the horizon
A rising tide of wounding trauma
Contagion of hate that will forever scar

Stripped of all your morals
Learn to hide the scowl
Suppress the grinding teeth
Acquiesce yourself
Become compliant
Make flexible the heart
Immovable you make the mind
No matter what the cost

Already you have seen — committed the greatest sin
Already you have done the unforgivable

This is the price you pay for your mask
The flesh on your face that smiles when you cry
That hides the anger, the reddening eyes
That guises the hatred disfiguring you

Push it down and drown it out
Ignore the screaming voice inside my head
The beating of my heart inside my chest
The ocean ‘neath my eyes ready to burst

I was me — I had been me
I cannot bear the skin that I’ve been made to wear
I was me — I had been me
I cannot bear the bones that move me through this world

Drag me from the jaws of the earth
Wipe clean the mud from my eyes
Dispel all the things I hate in me
And still I will leave you to the sea

I am not me — I am not me
What is this skin draped on my muscles
Who am I — who was I
I cannot tell what hurts more
Forgetting or remembering

I am I, a cormorant without the sea
I am I, a cormorant without the wind
I am I, a vessel of rage
I am I, the traitorous bird

I have begun to search for the sea
I am in quest of salt in the air
To bury it inside your wounds
Even if it costs me everything

Born into a world built for someone else
Obfuscate the rules, obfuscate your will
Speak the way we say to speak
Think the way we say to think

Comfort yourself with all your discomfort
Be intimate with all your displeasures
Act the way we say to act
Kill the way we say to kill yourself

All of your pain so easily repressed
All of your trauma made our munition

A mouthful of sand, each grain a wound
We drink this desert flesh and you call it water
A mouthful of bone broken by ourselves
We eat of nothing and you say it’s sustenance

We pray for a storm to empty us of shame
We pray for a tide to take away the guilt
Beg for a tempest to drown our foes
We pray for rain to feel something else

We pray for a storm to empty us of pain
We pray for a tide to ease the exhaustion
We beg for a tempest to drown our fears
We pray for rain. . .

Gold in our eyes
Become the rain

Forced into a world made for someone else
Steal all your pleasures, hide all your passions
Unbending and unbroken
Mend every wound—the storm approaches

Raised among cowards and liars
Men unable to look at themselves
Every mirror — all water muddied
Safer to drink the muck than see their own reflection

A shield raised against the sea
Recite the ancient words, rebuild the walls
Lights sing, rocking on the waves
Ignore the sirens’ voice and do not heed their song

Harden your hearts against their words
Our truth is singular our truth is all
The old madness shields, the old madness guides
Nemowfo eciov eht morfkcab

But the sea will open and swallow the island
The moon will pull the ocean like a veil
Over the corpse of men who could not see themselves
The slumbering god on the island slumbers still

The beating of hearts, the rise of fear
The shore climbs every moon, nearer still
The men still pray to their madness
Beneath the soil the dreaming god wakes

The ocean's maw will swallow the island
Inward facing teeth will shred every man
Their wishes and their prayers are finally answered
In oblivion they’ll never hear their song

And just a wound will remain in the sea
Where the ego of men had been
When the water heals nothing will be left
And the song of sirens fades from the island

So the Old One waits for the next
Man to build where everything sinks
In his dreams they find the earth
But all will pray themselves into death

Soften your heart and make yourself weak
There is no island on this sea
sllet snerisfo gnosehtos

Set forth into the sun
Into the light of our mother
No return from this warmth
Our first respite from the cold

"Good dream? Let me guess, the surface of the sun?
The only dream I ever have. Every time I shut my eyes it's always the same."

Scorched deep by beaming light
Turn our lungs to ash
Every breath always a labor
Every step always a struggle

Placate our pain with waves
Our final words gone unspoken
Reach out and touch our gravest failures
Ease our hearts with the fluttering of wings

Protest until the end our certain fates
Quietly resign life to the warmth of the sun

Placate our pain in waves
Reach out and touch our gravest failures
Ease our hearts with the fluttering of wings
We will not survive this

No yearning for our lives to be remembered
Desperate for them to just have had meaning
Drowned in the fires, buried in the cold
Please take our lives and give us purpose