Post by Mike on Apr 17, 2011 18:01:21 GMT
Full album downloadable at cauldhame.bandcamp.com
PLAYING THE WAITING GAME
You have come for me. You wear many skins, but you’re always there beneath. Behind each second epidermis the black lights shine. I’ve learnt to read the signs. Cloaked by the tatters of a smoke-stained drape, I pry back the layers of dirty newspaper and smear some grime from the windowpane, and I take a good… long… look. Mouth hanging open, cigarette dangling down, grazing my throat like the afterthought from a suicide note.
You stand at my door, flaunting your stolen face, flagrant in the hubris of your disguise. I wonder where you harvest your different skins, what features hide behind and beneath that second flesh? If there are features at all; or something soft and pale like dough that glistens as its mouth works vaguely, or a swarm of carrion flies crawling over each others’ bodies, wings quivering in unison.
I can almost see them already; movements under the membranes of your eyes. My eyes search your face for telltale tears, cracks around your eyes and lips, mouth widening and lengthening…multiplying…
I wonder if it splits what might pour out. Or if I dare, if I can bear it, can I reach out and tear it free, end the agony of uncertainty by peeling away the shreds of flesh and truly seeing for the first time?
Is that why you’ve come for me?
Before I spill out all your dirty little secrets like maggots from a paper bag dampened by the evening drizzle, on the grim and ruined streets down which we’ve trailed each other many times, while the litter flaps and flutters round our feet, moths to the flames of our hellfire.
I watched your shadow warp beneath the streetlights, compiling clues to what you really are.
I’ve been waiting for you, in this darkened room, breathing the sweet aroma of decay (it smells better than the world I hold at bay). The pieces come together in ways I wouldn’t dare to dream, like dirt-trails in the sink, causing my flesh to crawl once more.
Playing the waiting game, with a bloodstained hand…
DELIRIUM OF THE NEOPHYTE
As I crawl from the deep black (deaf and blind to the shapes that follow me but feeling the pain of them) their barbs are hooked in the flesh of my back. Blinking new eye tumours, erupting like pustules from my flesh, torn by ragged bloody fingernails…
What have I brought back with me?
An empty concrete shore in a vastness of hanging smog welcomes me with apathy to a heap of filth-stained rags. Twilight bleeds from nowhere. Body-gift crippled. Stillness of illness. The peace of sickness growing worse…
I FEAR FLESH
You have not come for me, through this derelict warren. In lightless corridors I try to touch the dust that shapes your footprint. And you must walk alone; deafened by returning echoes, the debasement of shackled terror, walls drenched red to the mind’s third eye.
This cradle of the wretched… minds tainted and besmirched, walking sewer mouths, eyes and bodies ravaged by perdition; Our ghosts stain the peeling walls, a spreading mould of dark. Faces crawl beneath the grime, lingering behind.
I fear flesh, its imprisonment of pain. You will not touch me, not my flesh. Not ever. I gnaw the very word, its gristle in my teeth. My ashes lie beyond your reach. Behind closed doors I rusted shut these locks.
Dead leaves flutter a quiet vigil. Shattered windows slash and hack at the tendrils of the setting sun, while something blacker shuns the light. Though I rattle the bars of my cell with ceaseless vigour, no one ever hears the shrieks of the dead and gone.
Least of all, you who come hereafter.
THE SLOW DEATH OF THE HOST
As darkness falls once more, beneath its weight we founder. Broken-backed, I drag myself in circles. My claw-marked flesh stilled amid contorting spasms; a tree of broken limbs bound in shadow like a trinket.
Are you the stillborn twin, whispering in our shared ear? Disease and dank hot in your breath; just a shadow’s breadth apart?
Stars drift from sky to errant sky, emerging tarnished from the murk; cataracts that shine, smears against the broken jaw of ruins. The stars swim slowly closer, like the lures of predators. The light can only shine when nothing moves.
Your sun burnt out my eyes, but for one moment it was beautiful…
PLAYING THE WAITING GAME
You have come for me. You wear many skins, but you’re always there beneath. Behind each second epidermis the black lights shine. I’ve learnt to read the signs. Cloaked by the tatters of a smoke-stained drape, I pry back the layers of dirty newspaper and smear some grime from the windowpane, and I take a good… long… look. Mouth hanging open, cigarette dangling down, grazing my throat like the afterthought from a suicide note.
You stand at my door, flaunting your stolen face, flagrant in the hubris of your disguise. I wonder where you harvest your different skins, what features hide behind and beneath that second flesh? If there are features at all; or something soft and pale like dough that glistens as its mouth works vaguely, or a swarm of carrion flies crawling over each others’ bodies, wings quivering in unison.
I can almost see them already; movements under the membranes of your eyes. My eyes search your face for telltale tears, cracks around your eyes and lips, mouth widening and lengthening…multiplying…
I wonder if it splits what might pour out. Or if I dare, if I can bear it, can I reach out and tear it free, end the agony of uncertainty by peeling away the shreds of flesh and truly seeing for the first time?
Is that why you’ve come for me?
Before I spill out all your dirty little secrets like maggots from a paper bag dampened by the evening drizzle, on the grim and ruined streets down which we’ve trailed each other many times, while the litter flaps and flutters round our feet, moths to the flames of our hellfire.
I watched your shadow warp beneath the streetlights, compiling clues to what you really are.
I’ve been waiting for you, in this darkened room, breathing the sweet aroma of decay (it smells better than the world I hold at bay). The pieces come together in ways I wouldn’t dare to dream, like dirt-trails in the sink, causing my flesh to crawl once more.
Playing the waiting game, with a bloodstained hand…
DELIRIUM OF THE NEOPHYTE
As I crawl from the deep black (deaf and blind to the shapes that follow me but feeling the pain of them) their barbs are hooked in the flesh of my back. Blinking new eye tumours, erupting like pustules from my flesh, torn by ragged bloody fingernails…
What have I brought back with me?
An empty concrete shore in a vastness of hanging smog welcomes me with apathy to a heap of filth-stained rags. Twilight bleeds from nowhere. Body-gift crippled. Stillness of illness. The peace of sickness growing worse…
I FEAR FLESH
You have not come for me, through this derelict warren. In lightless corridors I try to touch the dust that shapes your footprint. And you must walk alone; deafened by returning echoes, the debasement of shackled terror, walls drenched red to the mind’s third eye.
This cradle of the wretched… minds tainted and besmirched, walking sewer mouths, eyes and bodies ravaged by perdition; Our ghosts stain the peeling walls, a spreading mould of dark. Faces crawl beneath the grime, lingering behind.
I fear flesh, its imprisonment of pain. You will not touch me, not my flesh. Not ever. I gnaw the very word, its gristle in my teeth. My ashes lie beyond your reach. Behind closed doors I rusted shut these locks.
Dead leaves flutter a quiet vigil. Shattered windows slash and hack at the tendrils of the setting sun, while something blacker shuns the light. Though I rattle the bars of my cell with ceaseless vigour, no one ever hears the shrieks of the dead and gone.
Least of all, you who come hereafter.
THE SLOW DEATH OF THE HOST
As darkness falls once more, beneath its weight we founder. Broken-backed, I drag myself in circles. My claw-marked flesh stilled amid contorting spasms; a tree of broken limbs bound in shadow like a trinket.
Are you the stillborn twin, whispering in our shared ear? Disease and dank hot in your breath; just a shadow’s breadth apart?
Stars drift from sky to errant sky, emerging tarnished from the murk; cataracts that shine, smears against the broken jaw of ruins. The stars swim slowly closer, like the lures of predators. The light can only shine when nothing moves.
Your sun burnt out my eyes, but for one moment it was beautiful…