A Vision Burned Lyrics

A vision burned its way through my mind, and I saw a glimpse of what seemed, at first, to be a ghost. But this spirit was not from a being whose living was past. It was a glimpse of me...in the future...peering into what used to be. A singular, perfect moment of realization. An epiphany... Frozen in time.

From behind a pulpit of vipers, the false prophet preaches a sermon to a sanctuary of hate-filled infidels. Standing in the midst, I saw the few filth-ridden pews that remained and a long-neglected, inverted rood. Stained Bible pages littered the floor, and some were used to light the Devil's Fire that burned inside a pit fashioned of forgotten catechisms.

In much fear and weakness, the congregation warmed itself around its ravenous flame, and from its intense heat, forged their most ferocious weapon - Fear. And the true prophets looked on in hopeless horror from their stained-glass captivity as the mourners' bench, altar, processional cross, and all of the holy vessels became nothing more than empty relics.

Erupting from the flame, The Serpent dropped upon my tongue a molten ingot of gold. At first, it seemed a sweet savor – but once the glowing elixir cured into my blood, it became as Wormwood in my soul. Once digested, the elemental composition of the compound changed to iron – weighing me down so heavily that my body was anchored to a central point in nothingness where truth was revealed before me....

The mechanizations of the universe are kept in perpetual calibration by a pendulum whose bob consists of an innumerable, yet ever-growing, mass of caskets. Those therein are doomed to swing to the sickeningly precise rhythm that strokes each tooth of its gear cogs, and there is no reprieve for its doomed members until, at last, the minute hand strikes the final midnight toll. This is the penance bell. This is the Planck time - that dying instant... the fleeting, gleaming, morning moment when trouble was still trapped in sleep, only to break through again when the mind flies the bands of subconscious slumber and gives way to consciousness, and peace comes no more.

How can I be born again when I was never alive?

A sense of unreality came over me
The world was made of wax
Faces molded from clay
Echoes of the strange tingling of awareness
Zinging, buzzing, catapulting me into the blackest depths of derealization