Panopticon / Skagos 1. Skagos - Smoldering Embers Worldeater- swallower of worlds and devourer or the biosphere: my wounds are salted by every lapsing second of thy malevolent subsistence. The earth is darker than conception, and yet the lights never fade. False stars cast forged light across the faces of hollow, ecclesiastic deities. May you wade through the entrails of your enemies. The drought earth thirsts for man's blood Nefarious whittling in the worship of progress... The last communities dance with the guile of wraiths, drowning in miserable rebellion, wading through the entrails of an artificial beast. Ancient fires are eclipsed, but never are they extinguished as the embers of atavism smolder. Redemption is a ship sunk thousands of years ago: New beginnings must be found. 2. Skagos - Anamnesis II: A Dry, Sterile Thunder, Without Rain ...And the feeling body shudders and lurches on the edge Quaking with dead inertia- a caged oak suppressed from the instant that seed took root in earth the promised of a monolith. All I see are saplings shackled to stone a genocide of all we've sown. I am waiting for the great abate Thunder claps, but no water falls. Thunder claps, and no water will fall. Shattered Ouroboros: I feel the mountain within; the sea, the soil, the sky; Suffocating under ten-millennia coil: Shattered Ouroboros. I call thee, hark... Devoid of metamorphosis, twisted larvae starve. Megaflora extinction, an era of gynocide. I call thee, hark Ares! I call thee, hark... Apocalyptic atavism! "Here, one can neither stand, nor lie, nor sit. There is not even silence in the mountains, but dry, sterile thunder, without rain." I await the flood in rusting chains, for a fertile thunder that reeks of rain. 3. Panopticon - A Message to the Missionary The institution of your faith is not worth dying for, not worth living for, worth crying for. You want us on our knees not only to pray, but to be enslaved. We cannot fight when we can't stand. You've locked us in a cage, taught us to be afraid to be free. We are told of visions by those who cannot see. We are told to listen by those who cannot hear. We are given salvation based on terror and fear, denied this life for a day dream in red letters and gold trimmed pages. One nations ethnocentric perception of god cannot be the only end. Your internecine is supported by scripture, it's the only credibility you're willing to lend: Lies to support lies. 4. Panopticon - ...Seeing... We search so hard in vain When the answers hold our hands. They fill our bellies. They drench the sand. They pour from the sky. Their thunders roar. We still search for answers. We must search no more! Disregard dogma. We've no need to kneel again unless to feel the earh, to drink from the streams again. Divinity in the forest. Drenching the night sky. Present in all things that grow. The gods as an archetype. I saw the gods in the eyes of my father on the last day he waved good-bye. I saw the gods starring at the night sky with a friend standing on lake ice. I saw god in the eyes of my nephew just minutes after his birth. I saw the gods at the end of sumbel when an emptied horn made flames burst! I see the gods! I see god. 5. Panopticon - Watching You (co written with Jack Hannert) This loss of all innocence. The hands that guard us often wither. Leaving us so exposed. Naked to the wolves. Away from our fathers and mothers, who once sheltered us from the terror of the wolrd. Who will hold us now that they have gone? Left to be embraced by fear and loss, whose gentle hands rock us to sleep, singing vicious lullabies to us... The grim reminder of all we have lost. ..of our fallen kin. The innocence lost so we turn within. Grown into adults Longing to be children again Just to hear your voice once more... (AL) We saw the hands of the gods that day. In quick wings held steady. A gaze across time, a last goodbye and hope took flight. We may never see your face again but I know you haven't left us. Your work livecs on in me. Your heart live on in me. (JH) The current ran against our feet. Another loss to nourish. The river you became. Rich earth contains memories of past days. The soil who embraced you and seeds for future hopes. The air I breath again. The cycle spins on. Neither lost nor forgotten with sun shining down. We walk within you in the day. We sleep beneath you in the night and remember you all of our lives. (AL/JH)