Dwellings

Dream into being. Ancestors eternal, two giants fraternal, wielding stone knives. Upon shapeless bodies, the All-Father’s follies, they carve human lives. Sun Mother! Wake unborn seeds to grow, snakes to bleed mighty rivers that quiver and flow. The light on the oils, a spectrum of coils: Rainbow Serpent. The storm clouds empowered, crying orphans devoured, drowned in its current. Eaglehawk, your children slain by Crow, split your pain! Through the brush you stalk, draped in quills of flame. Raven dyed in smoke, entombed birds reborn, locked in everlasting strife. Mourn the songs of times past. Prisons engorged with risen “savages,” the first to forge myths. Still, thirst ravages all. Proud First People beneath the steeple of a white god. Whole tribes accused, children abused. No spared rod. Terra nullius, bearer of disease. Slowly breathe in this lowly gasoline death. Culture broken, half-castes stolen, a mother’s shout. The flaying of skin, eugenic sin, black bred out. A swallowing torrent once swept the abhorrent beneath the foam. May spirits of rain rise up once again, to shape the land we roam. Uluru, battle of snakes, the earth roused awake to tremble anew, a howling mountainous birth. Demons spawned of mud sculpt generations in their blood.

Submitted by Celtic Frost — Apr 26, 2025

None speak of the pious in history: Notre Dame conquered by a poète maudit. Beyond France’s gendarmes and butchery rose my twin-eyed concrete Babel staring down the gods. Stir their hearts; men applaud crime as art. Violent birth. Pile driver lancers pierce the earth and bleed the clouds. (Walk on its veins.) Steel and glass. The propane dancers wrap this mass in burning shrouds. (Forest of cranes.) New York, I adopt this child. Flight over the ocean, mind as vine to stone on a tower. Sleight of foot in motion, twined around a throne. I count and count the hours. Alea jacta est. Wire. A workman’s attire. The years we conspired finally bear fruit this August mo(u)rn a nation forlorn, its emperor shorn of august suit by modest blades. As I walk he fades. Crate: 500 pound weight. Whisked up the freight to south level one zero fo(u)r the nightwatchman’s snore, my skull on the floor, sold to the devil for heroes’ deeds. To the skies I lead. Bowman draws the string. Ropes and cable... ...cling stowaway to the arrow’s flight; at missile’s point, north and south unite. Cordina, clamp, cavaletti, knot... At backbreaking dawn, the wires pull taut. Rope still sways. Winds will rage. Heart ablaze, I wage war on fate. Fear devoid, lungs inflate, tempt the void: The first step. Le néant. Vos chants, vos cris, je les entends. A chaque pas, les nuages s’adoucissent. Je danse. Elégance. Je me permets un sourire : Si je meurs, quelle belle mort ! Avec les dieux à mes pieds. I wave, I sit, I rest, I dream. Speak to birds words of calm. Psalms of faith swathe no auspice wreaked by siren howls. Uproar from the lowland: the rattle of lawmen’s chains. The lords of the northland cast me to the plains a mortal man. The last step. Nona, spin your thread. Join it to the Sun, so I may walk. Morta, rouse your dead. Tell them of the Sun, for with me they walk.

Submitted by NecroGod — Apr 26, 2025

This track is instrumental.

Is this song not instrumental?

What horrors we wage in the light of day, bodies left decaying for the world to see. Conakry, September, 2009. Moïse Dadis, junta chief, will not resign his command to sworn democratic law. Thousands band to demand that he withdraw. Crowd trapped. Soldiers gather, guns drawn. Fire. Butchery veiled in tear gas, bayonettes puncture eyes. Flesh strewn across the grass, knives sever robes from thighs. Women raped with gun barrels, bullet through a child’s head, howls of humans feral as they haul away the dead. Red berets, elite guard, murder-crazed, a city scarred. Stores they loot, ribs they snap under boot. Cadavers wrapped. “C’est du jamais-vu,” they said. “Pourquoi nous, Allah?” they pled to absent god. At the morgue a mother seeks out her son. No remains were found. A desperate father reaches for his gun, his daughter bound in an army base, used by soldiers in turn, ‘til a rapist discerned her familiar face and, shamed, set her free. She speaks no word to her doctor, for fear her pain disgrace her kin. For weeks she dared not sleep or dream. Camara denied blame for the atrocity: “The military’s beyond my control.” The chief of his guard drew a pistol and fired a round in the president’s skull. He survives, abdicates. A flood of candidates compete in Guinea’s first truly democratic vote. Anarchy mars the year. Election frauds unclear. Will of the people: Guineans elect Alpha Condé. The girl’s suicide, the son never found, the butchers alive. The butchers alive.

Submitted by Warbringer — Apr 26, 2025

I’ve slit the throats of clergymen and governors. Those bloated swine... May their screams unhinge a thankless crown. O King! See your soldiers scrape at the algae growing below the planks? They starve, yet still they quarrel for phantom ore once owed your throne. “Forgive this ship of fools,” said I to the mouths of trees, leaves as hellhound tongues outstretched to drink the stream. The beast flung its filth into the wake, tail coiled, fingers grasping the remains of our splintered mast. Once we’ve razed the land of gold I will crucify him. The corpses on my raft smell of piss and blood, yet they were but men, and all men, slaves and kings alike, leave stench as their epitaph. Not I. Holy Mother Church of Rome, cleanse this ground I conquer! Rain brimstone upon the judges who steal from the weary. Slaughter the Lutherans and priests who taint your word. Make Peru the purest land, for I am its prince and will forever be. I am its prince and will forever be. O King! See your isle burned by my soldiers. Your vassals and their wives, I hung them all. Panama will fall. With my daughter I forge an empire to survive us both. My deeds live on, for I have seen what men could only dream they saw. I have seen what men could only dream they saw.

Submitted by johnmansley — Apr 26, 2025

The soil here is hard in summer so I buried my father in a tomb of rocks, a plot behind St. Catherine’s church to lay rest the gilded dreams of pitiable men. With gold found to the North, Quartzburg drove out its whores, its foreigners and roughnecks. They settled this camp. Pa left every day to mine. I’d follow him to the gulch, my pan and shovel in hand, a child devoted to riches. The Mexicans often staged bull and bear fights near the bar. They kept a boy entertained when there were no hangings to enjoy. The Cantonese flooded the quarries, working for less than the Whites. My father would curse the Orientals, yet came home reeking of opium. A group of my friends and I left to explore the creek. The Chinaman kneeled there, gleaning for gold. We mocked him and pushed him, I prodded him with my knife. He gripped his revolver and fired in the air. The errant bullet ricocheted off of a stone and grazed my leg. I ran back bawling to the town. Mobs surround the crying Chinaman, Father clutching the noose. Law arrived. The sheriff demanded that he be jailed and properly tried. Gangs amassed late at night outside the jail. Father led, rope in hand, prey in his cell. Soothing lies. Tempted with tobacco leaves, the Chinese reached his arm through the bars. The lynch mob swiftly grabbed the gleaner’s exposed hand. Father wrapped the collar around his neck. The horde yanked on the rope, Chinaman dragged and choked, his brains dashed upon the wall. Soon all the gold mines dried but that blood never did. Red still stains the jail cell wall. Father was never tried, none mourn a foreigner, but I saw guilt in his eyes. With all the riches spent, the people left the town yet I stayed to dwell here still. When Father died of drink I did not weep for him. I pray the grave unburdens his sins. I pray that someone will remain to bury me. I pray that someone will remain.

Submitted by Cyberwaste — Apr 26, 2025

Meadows of the Motherland, your farmer’s ashes sown by fallen stars, bear mankind another strand of unearthly dreamings grown from earthly scars. “Killers all!” he cried, flames clawing at his throat through melted fore. Hands jut from stygian tide upon the ferryman’s boat, dashed on the shore. Shrieks of the atmosphere deafened the engineer, vessel now commandeered by twisted chute. Thoughts to his warnings spurned, promised a safe return, Brezhnev’s plan unconcerned by wild fears voiced by a mute. Call to grieving wife, family left below. Government strife: father in thrall. His daughter’s grin while playing in the snow. Solar panels undeployed. Radio channels, lost in void. Foretold to fail, rode on a stallion pale. Orbit 19, ordered home. Blue and the green, roads to Rome. Orientation from the sun, ion propulsion manually run. Halt the second launch, thunder from the squall. Future blood staunched, rain’s blessed fault: three crewmen spared their companion’s fall. The calm of space. Aurora Borealis, fire of spirits passed, to cleanse of human malice man’s rise into the vast. Burn, burn the ties that bind mortals to this terrene rind. Yearn, yearn to part the skies, upon an ark of sullen eyes. He cursed the dust that bore him -- screaming -- bastard child abandoned to the clouds. “Compost for the Kremlin Wall, fed to blooms on Lenin’s grave... Marvel as we heroes crawl to our deaths so brave!” said Yuri to solemn friend. “Soyuz will be a martyr’s end.” “You cannot die in my stead,” he replied. “You bring the Moon.” He turned, hiding tears he’d shed, and walked to his tomb. Gagarin unsheathed his cross, and prayed to sway a brother’s loss. This too shall pass. In bygone meadows of the Motherland a laborer boy studies planes gone by. The unearthly dreamings of a farmhand to pluck the planets from a fertile sky.

Submitted by Sexy Gargoyle — Apr 26, 2025