A Forest Of Stars
A Shadowplay for Yesterdays
1. Directionless Resurrectionist
Once upon a time there was a lady of no repute,
One Miss Crow, who, by force of a certain stranger,
had engaged in violent night-time actions, against her very will.
Resulting from this invasion came,
an aberration of desperation, a horror in all but name,
A stoop-backed boy, short of stature, violent by nature;
to be expelled from the womb in late November.
A fast track to sorrow in a world bred slow.
From foetid seed, a poison tree with a venomous bark did grow.
He was to work all the hours his sorry god sent,
a resident of fantasy, living a life of lament.
He was to have no living lovers, no-one on who to depend.
Yet his friends were to call him Carrion,
the friends inside his head...
2. Prey Tell Of The Church Fate
So we forge onward through lonely valleys of pious pretense.
No healthy prophets encountered outside these steely inquisitor's eyes.
No men of any monotone god we could stand proud beside.
They and their gilt-riddled baubles cast onto the blazing temple pyres,
holy whore houses proudly reduced to ashes of sweetest desecration.
Soporific spirits quaffed from dusty, sightless skulls.
Strong-heart would not entertain their malady.
Weak of will tangled in leprosy.
Spiritual sickness babbling incessantly.
Babbling Babylon put to the torch.
Pinched faces staring through funereal fog,
felt flame broiled crook'd hands a'grasp.
Ground them to fine dust, snorted them deep.
Left coated in confusion, with my lack of sleep.
You that seek to encode reality, to defraud sanity -
Be damned!
You that seek to incarcerate spirit, to calcify astral eyes -
Be damned!
Be mindful that mind is not you.
Be mindful that you are not mind.
Be mindful that heart knows how this goes.
As real as Azrael?
Don't mind - never mind.
Don't mind - never mind.
3. A Prophet For A Pound Of Flesh
Ugly Christs peer through nailed spaces,
flesh ripened on idealist meat hooks.
Con-gregation staring in pious devotion,
ravenous spirit starved faces,
famished minds consuming works of friction,
symbols of submission choking scrawny necks.
We count spent prophets into filthy begging bowls.
Conflagration of the body - see? Do you really see?
To kneel lost in venereal veneration,
to love their god served rare,
savouring their saviour,
on their hands and knees.
Nowhere to go from here.
Golden wine proffered by filthy hosts,
micturation as benediction.
Washing down the failure,
praying for something stronger
to take the taste away.
Sorry sun god facsimile,
not so convincing in the cold light of day.
- Jerusalem consumed -
Salvation in flash fried defecation,
sustaining the soulless to bleat another day.
Half baked men of soiled cloth,
scream tales of avarice and sloth.
Four and twenty corpse fed crows, untamed,
laughing cackle their names.
Slave religion of the pitiful, lost,
choking songs of sorrow and loss,
Four and twenty corpse fed crows, untamed,
a nesting amongst the graves.
4. The Blight Of God's Acre
He's a seaside side-show freak armed with the tools of the trade,
standing in shadow by cemetery gates.
The revenant tenants of this tenement yard,
raise two fingers to the fates.
No solace to be found in their foetid tombs,
he at leisure to violate those catacomb wombs.
Plots twist with hosts yet unwilling.
Last sods of earth clawed away,
he knows they know what he knows.
Polite enough to knock upon the lid of each box,
to await their invitation before being so bold,
cracked heart stutters in hollow chest so cold.
So, sunk deep in festering flesh, their baubles stripped at leisure,
Guiltless here, without compassion. Taking pleasure in their corruption.
It all gets worse when he finds a fresh one,
to be carted off as contraband for the medical profession.
So, nefarious urges sated, pockets a-brimming with shining trinkets,
he plays at brother Magpie's games. Heart a flutter of oily black.
Leaning back against a monument, heedless of inscription,
a stolen cigarette fumbled from a hidden poacher's pocket.
He may yet take a moment to ponder,
upon the marble town of Yonder.
And maybe just a trice to wonder,
why her bone orchard saplings never say a word.
And only come out to play, when he requests admission,
then assuming rite of passage, in decayed passage ways.
So he loads his barrow with the fruits of God's acre,
and all away upon his toes he goes,
to shower his bone sore friends in their ivory sewers
with gifts all rent asunder.
But all willing, unresisting. Spoiled fruits of plunder.
5. Man's Laughter
(I don't want to be left behind here...)
6. The Underside Of Eden
There is a fear here.
Azrael has a finger on my pulse.
His infinity is not so far removed,
from the Metatrons' babbling insanities.
Music of the Spheres bouncing,
as infinite echoes bickering in this rubber tomb.
Whom God helps? None but itself. So if God is death, death is god, yes?
There is a fear here.
Azrael has a'whispered in my ear.
His infinity is not seeking to improve,
on the Metatrons' gabbled profanities.
Music of the Spheres receding,
as infinite sorrows in this indefinite pause of doom.
Whom God helps? None but itself.
Signs on this bone-sown road show naught but portents.
The angry dead feign smiles as they point the way.
Through nothing but rocks just quietly spinning,
around lights a'gaining critical mass.
It is all fires, but no cleansing here.
It is all fires, but no cleansing here.
It is all fires, but no cleansing here.
It is all fires.
7. Gatherer Of The Pure
He's a man of the world, but his is a small world,
being a world whirled and whipped inside a filth caked skull.
All a dalliance in delusion, all dreamed down in narcotic seclusion,
he peeps all askance through all and sundry;
three dimension unreality his fourth dimension play-day.
All eternity a rainy Sunday.
He, a builder of worlds in dreams.
He, a destroyer of worlds in dreams.
Feculent plots / hatch / fester / fry.
Subsistence burnt black, effulguent brain pan besmirched.
Labours of love ladled into ravenous toilet bowl of life.
All lost souls to feat upon fresh hot meal of voided bowel.
He, a leacher of colour. He, a void in sanity.
A poisoner of the well, instiller of winter's gray flavour.
A spasmed spatter of the obvious, a-soiling gleaming uncertainty.
On a lonely wander through twisting streets of Yonder,
his one good eye spying, prying, a shadow play for yesterdays.
All tomorrows, all yesterdays today,
Carrion Crow, pinch-faced proprietor of this sorry sideshow.
Roll up, roll up! Crack cranks his codeine calliope,
all is vibrant colour without his vermined bone box.
All within, bleak nothing - all without to pay homage, at his insistence.
Cosmic keys broken in twisting locks of lost infinities.
His worlds all a-fire now, a Lucifer turning in listless circles,
before landing in the dry hay of thoughts half-remembered.
Evensong their last song.
Pray for the prey! Sing for your supper!
Funeral pyres for one and all today.
As hand of God to give,
as hand of God to take away.
8. Left Behind As Static
This life is but an echo of a lost broadcast,
our voices and our loves, just as crackles in static.
I don't want to be left behind here;
when all my others have become as music...
9. Corvus Corona (Part 1)
So, he's hurrying demons from their seats around the circle,
hastening to complete that ritual before fraught return of day.
All this haste has crowded his cranium,
tenanted now by poison voices, relocated revenants roar.
White noise blasted black, never again to sleep,
silence a distant memory, a mutiny for sanity.
10. Corvus Corona (Part 2)
He enlists an able deck-hand to wield the drill,
a vortex in his cortex to release his will.
As spiral enters he spins out of control.
All magic circles under those eyes -
mental ventilation won't stifle their cries,
his futility belt all crowded with spies.
His one good eye now all a ghastly squint,
head held together with sorrow and spit.
So much haste, too much speed,
spasm-tongued sermon decreed;
I opened my eyes and I stared right through my photographs of you.
I opened my eyes and I choked out through my memory of faith.
... a malady on the mainline...
A man of inaction, a greyer of shades.
Prey to twisting frequencies with whom he once played.
Wild of eye and long in tooth,
lies all that are left for our seeker of truth.
A stoop-backed, sad sack, all thoughts side-tracked.
Onrush of water through compromised hull.
I opened my eyes and I stared right through my photographs of you.
I opened my eyes and I choked out through my memory of faith.
[Abyss stares right through him.]
Crow's nest crowded with cackling crew,
all staring faces peering straight through.
Leering out of this unwitting host,
a-raising the black sails and floating his ghost.
I opened my eyes and I stared right through my photographs of you.
I opened my eyes and I choked out through my memory of faith.
I shuttered my eyes and I stared right through my photographs of you.
I shuttered my eyes and I choked out through my memory of faith.
11. Dead Love
Oh never weep for love that’s dead
Since love is seldom true
But changes his fashion from blue to red,
From brightest red to blue,
And love was born to an early death
And is so seldom true.
Then harbour no smile on your bonny face
To win the deepest sigh.
The fairest words on truest lips
Pass on and surely die,
And you will stand alone, my dear,
When wintry winds draw nigh.
Sweet, never weep for what cannot be,
For this God has not given.
If the merest dream of love were true
Then, sweet, we should be in heaven,
And this is only earth, my dear,
Where true love is not given.
Mr John "The Resurrectionist" Bishop ‒ Drums, Percussion
Sir Gtx. Grimshaw ‒ Guitar
Mr. Titus Lungbutter ‒ Bass
Katheryne, Queen of the Ghosts ‒ Vocals, Violin, Flute
Henry Hyde Bronsdon ‒ Vocals, Guitar, Programming
Mister Curse ‒ Vocals
The Gentleman ‒ Keyboards, Piano, Percussion, Programming
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