Drowning in a perpetual fog
What is this torpor that drains me?

I'm terrified of what the future holds
As I cannot control it
And I've done so many, many things that I regret
That I don't think I will ever sleep again

The chaos of life
Calling in the twisted veins
Where lifeblood pumped and the children came to drink
Now blackened and dry
The husk of our existence
Lies parched and cracked on this barren land

Silence

The stillness speaks of nothing
From the blank slate horizon to the ceiling of the sky
Life for life
The cacophony of the carnival forgotten
Only shadows and memories
Lingering in the hands of the earth
Carried on the endless journey of the wind

We call no more
Their mouths are alive with selfish yield
We have no tongue to speak
Drained of being
Once we sheltered in the hollow inside
Now we are spectres
Ghosts of of the flood
Some day the rains will come again
So long we have waited
Lost between planes
Nothing but the echo of a perpetual cry
We will dance in the gathering waters
When breath shudders coldly
Through the carcass of our essence
Bring out throats alive
Drowning stone and dust
We will call again
Call to the eternal, empty skies
We will call again

Many have been those who walked before me
But few now remain on these blasted paths
Where once we stood and gathered as one
Fragmented now are those of the unbound

We stood and watched as the sky turned to fire
And the sacred hollows of old were sundered
Eclipsed by the dawn of a new era
There is nothing for me now above or below this Earth

For what long ago was held to is no more
A hollow shell, a shattered conceit
Condemning the memories of a thousand generations
To the abyss of the forgotten

My eyes shimmer as they fall upon the ruins
Loss scars my spirit
My vehemence carries on cold, death-charged winds
It burns through me, sears my veins
And wracks the remains of an already tormented spirit
Rage and despair entwine
And a broken man surrenders

I lay and stared as the soils turned to dust
And the last of the stars died
Eclipsed by the dusk of finality
There is nothing

We have stood for centuries
Sentinels that frame the sky
We have felt the exhalations
Of souls passed under us

We have trembled in the cold winds
That lash the soils of death
We have drawn upon the poisoned strength
Of earth steeped in sorrow

Our limbs have twitched and quivered
To the sound of myriad snapping necks
Our roots remained anchored and unmoved
To the whispers of ending that clamour within

All now is silent and still
Yet resting not are the echoes of the lost
As twilight descends and the murders wheel to roost
The fallen rise again like mist

To drape once more from our arms
Like the rotting sails of a long-abandoned vessel
The scars of time have reaved their pain not
As the land sings its death-song again

We have stood for centuries
Sentinels that frame the sky
We have drawn upon the poisoned strength
Of earth steeped in sorrow

A final threnody for a forlorn convoy
That wanders, lost, in this bleak labyrinth
Condemned to the aether beyond time
A memorial pain unyielding that seeps into our souls

Keening...
A reflection of all that was
The bell tolls...
Throughout the perpetual passage of infinity

I was born long ago
My form fashioned from the primordial rock
Storm-winds seared the umbra and my verdant spirit
The essence of an era forged by the elements

And millennia have passed
Frail flesh teems with memories
I watch with spectral eyes
The knowledge mine - and mine alone

Ancient paths that sear the landscape
Ley-lines scouring a wounded earth
Where long-forgotten shades now wander
Beneath the glare of the cold moon

The very soils imbued with a sense of longing
Beneath my tread teem myriad memories
The essence of so much now lost
Entombed in within the catacombs of a history forever buried

Yet I know not what lies ahead
No secrets unearthed from my time in the aether have I
No keys to unlock the myriad entangled strands of what will be
Behind me, a wake of unending despair
Ahead, a formless void as yet unscarred
Waiting for the echoes of the dead to come

Illumination wavers in the strengthening grip of dusk
Darkness summoned something more than dreams and empty promises
Every blade and bole turns towards the fading light
And all freeze to capture this moment in eternal clarity

Around and around the centuries thunder
Revolutions of earth and stone, oceans rise and fall
The waves of life flow high tide and beyond
This crystalline second still warm on the retina of remembrance

Bruised and melancholy is the moment that stains these skies
Ash will saturate the bones of our footsteps echo
Sandstorm future melts through the half-light tangle
The end retreats ever onwards, suspended in fire
Shadowed by ages, enthroned in forever
This hour, this minute, this second
This very second

Every memory furrows through the folds of time
Shadows aflame with resonance before your eyes
Now branded by the sharpened nature of this night

Nothing that breathes disturbs this enclave
As the monolithic cosmic millstone
Grinds ever onwards
Crushing meaning beneath cold stone

It is here that I lie, at one with the darkness
Where timelessness breeds tranquillity
And the ravages of frailty thrash against the walls
Of a reality long ago fractured and scattered

And yet... so slowly
It starts to slip away (draining, sinking)
My strength weakens with each shuddering breath
With the fading of the mists
And the dying howls of the withering wilderness
Wreathed in decay

Solitude is torn away
My cries pierce the silence like arrows
As this refuge is rent asunder
The fragile fabric collapses
Realisation wracks the spirit
And I stare into the glittering eyes
Of yet more unbridled sufferance
Rending me

As this solace wanes, the wind grows colder
This once-verdant landscape now stands
Stooped and alien, stripped of spirit
Nothing remains to soothe a lamenting soul

What was once mine is no more
Ripped open and naked, I bleed
Beneath the wanton iron skies
That pour misery onto a hapless thrall
My nothingness exposed to all...

(So little now still stands
Scorched earth and desolation and legacy of shame
For which I now pass judgement through the vessels
Of a new and forlorn Epoch)

Moving amongst the many pathways of the aether
The silent one, the harbinger of woe
The oracle of sorrows yet to be
The unnamed foreshadowing

Marauder!

Like the carrion-crow that circles the charnel-field
He knows his moment is soon

"Render ash Unto Them!"

As the penumbral darkness lengthens
And the layers of quintessence are pierced
On void-trails of scorn he descends
To sow the seeds of this world's decay
Crawling and cowled
Oracle of the End, the doom-sidhe

Watching... Waiting
Watching... Waiting

Stands unmoving upon the blasted moor
A sightless gaze that sweeps this reality
Ghost-white fingers bring blight to flesh
As whispering words strip life
From the very landscape of men
Reaving the soul of the Earth