orbidden feast of sin
Entangles silken nymphs with hordes?
To steal a glance pernicious
To heed diapason divine

The longing gaze toward drifting pairs
Uncovered dreams of gold and silk
Yet gold melts under gruelling blaze
Unbidden sentinel unveiled

Quiescent summons of revelation
From eyes angelic bidding forth
With ghastly fear and awe amassed
Becomes an unexpected guest

In silence takes his outstretched hand
Leads her in the chosen dance
A kind of minuet grotesque
Kindling fire of the profaned

The revelers of dark observe
The nymph in play with incubus
The jealous rage of succubus
Unfolds forbidden passion bold

The embers gasping for a breadth
The last guest crawls to find his rest
As music slowly dissipates
The nymph shares one last toast distressed

But Time unkind does not release
Majestic spirit from this hex
His temptress fair of flesh and blood
His Galatea etched in stone

In watchful eye he spies the night
Dare not disturb her yearning rest
Bestows her dreams by bedside realm
Of dancing silhouettes and pyres


2. Homage - Magni Nominis Umbra

A gentle rustling assents
to gusts of fury south and west
Foretelling of the nearing guest
of rapture and of doom forlorn

Behold the streams, the undesired
Beneath the shadow of his wings
Descending in his silent power
Majestic being the tempest brings

The desert sands may bury deep
Enigmas that were once to keep
But true to legend past engraved
Continueth the search for prey

Behold the streams, the undesired
Beneath the shadow of his wings
Descending in his silent power
As guard, as executioner

As dew bites dust to bitter end
And ivy breathes its deadly breath
The roving minstrel, troubadour
Intones his eastern song of yore

Behold the streams, the undesired
Beneath the shadow of his wings
Descending in his silent power
A grinning child in wretchedness

An aria of howling pain
An ode to torment and distress
A grip that holds beyond demise
An empty stillness in his eye

From whirling sands and heightened sun
To heightened moon and gusts of wind
As guard, as executioner
Beneath the shadow of his wings


3. Vestige - Non Omnis Moriar

Barren hills of darkened earth
Recollections young and old
Butchered, scattered manifold
Faded footprints in the snow

No demi-wolves with piercing eyes
Appear with painted masks of war
Now still and calm conquer these hills
Where once the rivers flowed with blood

In the midst of the shimmering frost
Where the tree of the sacred lie dead
To defeat all the lies and the tears
Hear the galloping ones ride through hell

How time forgets this sanguine creek
The heaped, the scattered, butchered ones
Their voices chanting narratives
Their movements hail to ghostly pasts

For demi-wolves still roam the skies
Coyotes, vultures at their side
One thousand horses ebony
Ethereal in phantom flight

As the chanting of Elders grows fierce
And the menacing wolves circle prey
To return to those glorious days
Hear he galloping ones ride through hell


4. Lure - Pallida Mors

Gleaming droplets douse the mead
bringing with its breeze the scent
Of weeping willows Babylon
bedding down for winter's chill

Like two young lovers intertwined
in the frivolity of life
Leaned one over with gallant whisper
betrothed domains of ceaseless time

Coaxing her to drop her veil
to shroud his cloak around her frailty
As two together become one
to ride the winds of no tomorrow

Coquette mortality enraptured
a beam of light adorned her lips
With head leaned back welcomed her captor
inhaled the sweet October mist

Caressing gently hallowed bodies
undulate for Dusk to see
Not yet kissed the waning siren
as Azrael waits patiently

For pendulum must swing away
from transient fear-uncertainty
Although he holds with timeless hands
the siren soul safe in his palms


5. Interlude - Ultima Ratio Regum



6. Reprisal - Malis Avibus

The ticking hour of Father Time releases memories locked in mind
A wandering beggar digging holes in all unspoken deeds of old
A yellow death lay on his face, a smile so fixed not of this race
Indeed he'd known where he would go, to where he feared it clearly showed

The devil I can safely tell
Has neither hoof, nor tail, nor sting
Nor is he, as some sages swear,
A spirit, neither here nor there
In nothing-yet in everything
He is what we are-a gentleman
A statesman spinning his web of crimes,
A swindler, living as he can

The ticking hour of Father Time released the memories locked in mind
The clock's monotonous tick obscured to most this man's so lonely cry
He'd said that with his clenched teeth, he'd seize the earth from underneath
He'd seize the earth from underneath, and drag it with him down to hell

[Lyrics based on Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Peter Bell the Third"]


7. Premonition - Lex Talionis

Stank lagoons with grasping claws a serpent have released
From dungeons of despair and farce to feast on brackish hearts

The walls a tint of crimson fierce speak of vacant names
Beheld by missive magot-pies, prophetic in their crow

In vested misery, thy devils damn thee black
Not all great Neptune's oceans may ever cleanse your robes

For Weyward Sisters guide the hand, the hand that held the scythe
To lands undiscerned in tongue, Cimmerians have roamed

Infidels of tawny hue cannot hide behind
The cross that bore a bastard child and reigns in fiery fear

No ends of earth may stifle choirs oracular from magot-pies
Perched upon a hungry vault to witness serpent's jaws

Mandibles, sabre-lined, ruthless tear through flesh
Grant the mercy shown to those in dungeons of the past

Forsaken hymn cacophonous concluded long and drawn
To realms of stank lagoons retreats Leviathan to find repose


8. Eclipse - Vita Nova

Dowager of wandering empires knocking at death's door
Putrid winds carried the voices wailing in the night
Solitude of land Europa; battalions ominous
Conquest dressed in ivory garb attack from east and west

Baleful ballad tragic spews
From her lips of lurid blue

Infantries of bony vampires draining one by one
From the headlands plunge like death-birds;predators descend
Prancing, laughing, undertakers don tools of dusky trade
Puppeteers in childish play,ghoulish marionettes

Baleful ballad tragic spews
From her lips of lurid blue
In a dream I saw her
Drape her cloak from sea to sea

In dawn of life she came to flee with lonesome shadows before noon
Who dare impede her timely flight or rob of quarry due?

The coy, unwilling silent bride; Misery stands by her side
The demon mourner bathes in tears of those she left behind