Thic Quang Duc

Introduction

The faces flow along the Saigon street like rapids down a watercourse, save one stony visage held high above the current. The crowd parts before the silent monk and his companions, eyes drawn to the gas canister in morbid introspection and acrobat spectator glee, breaking from the momentum of their routines to observe the call of the void. The monk sits, back straight, eyes fixed ahead of him, the splashed petrol dissipating through the rank cocktail of city odors with unwavering clarity. A match is lit, and the unified gasp of the crowd seems to draw the very life from the atmosphere, leaving only an abyss of grim expectation as the flame pirouettes through the air.

Chorus

Flames dance into the effulgent sky

Bound to a man in the lotus position

Against the inferno his will burns bright

The world's suffering won't drag him into submission

Verse

The crowd grows pale as the flames grow higher

Inferno burns but he fears no fire

Dissolving muscles won't respond to the burning

The well tamed mind floats above all yearning

Verse

Where once was a man now lay piles of embers

Air dissipates but the crowd remembers

Wisps of smoke thin out from extinguished coals

The wheel spins on save one unbent soul

Chorus

Smoke in the air smells of burning flesh

Liquefied skin pouring off his body

Solitary man iron will possessed

Flame forged mind not the least bit cloudy

Burning

Verse

I look upon the city and I see that it's burning

The cold grey skyline feeds an ocean of flames

A million souls dancing blind through oblivion

Flesh black and shriveled thoughts enveloped in chains

The banker jerks to the voice of the projects

His unworn soles press down the shattered concrete

His gaze dancing round the bum at the corner

He seeks some sub-market-priced fleshly release

The whore lays numb as sharp footsteps fade down the hallway

Summons the strength to rise and strap on her coat

She counts the cash thinks of a plump well fed child

Absorbed in fantasy til the knife taps her throat

Chorus

Burning

Burning

A tower of flames

Escape the inferno lest your mind be claimed

Scorching

Charring

Blistering skin

To see the road free set your gaze within

Verse

The bum skulks through tenements in search of the dealer

Who, pockets flush, seeks the embrace of the whore

He falls asleep, havin dreams that he's a gangsta

Wakes up to find his stash has crept out the door

The dealer sweats, knowing fronts aren't handouts

His phone in one hand with the other he prays

Finds a connect, with cheap unproven product

A penthouse, a streetcorner, two bodies decay

Chorus

Burning

Burning

A tower of flames

Escape the inferno lest your mind be claimed

Scorching

Charring

Blistering skin

To see the road free set your gaze within

Know Thyself

Introduction

Mankind eternally strives towards the conquest. Choking the meandering rivers with their rigid canals. Raising neat, symmetrical towers to the very threshold of heaven. Yoking the atoms themselves to our malignant hunger. Like a reckless general overreaching into enemy territory, we find ourselves alienated and harried from all sides. Each step forward dragging us that much further from our refuge. For it is neither the jagged mountains nor the strange men on the other side who are our true adversaries, but the demons roaming unchecked through the recesses of our minds.

Verse

Wander the chambers that wind 'neath your consciousness

Descend through your inner minds blackened halls

Seeking the wellspring of liberation and bliss

Heeding the shackle bound soul's desperate call

Though there is danger you won't be unaided

Clad in the garments of salvific thread

Gifts of the mystical enlightened sages

Weapons to sever the fell demons head

Chorus

Inward journey

To the seat of

The holy caverns in the deep hearts core

Light the torch and

Hone your weapons

Hold to the course laid by the ancient lore

For the paths are

Fraught with demons

Arrayed in armor and ready for war

Brave the storm and

Slay the dragon

Stride out in triumph on the sacred shore

Tara of the Liberating Knives

Verse

Millions, gathering, throng around a flaming altar

Dark forms, answering, goad their hearts to senseless slaughter

Shrouded incubi, reach out from primordial twilight

Skull clad acolytes, curse the land with unending blight

Interlude

Thunder cracks, and the hierophant falls helpless beneath his bloody altar, his instruments of incision and anguish shattering on the ground as the heavens above begin to stir.

Chorus

Stars wheel through the midnight sky to form a tranquil goddess

A thousand worlds inside her palm sing out a soothing chorus

Tara smiles as flamed barbed knives slice through the fog of terror

Breaks the chains that trap mankind in choking clouds of error

Verse

Stone dull, plowing blades, scrape across a desolate wasteland

Endless, bare salt plains, tilled to dust by blister-smeared hands

Slavers, crack their whips, tearing bone-etched backs asunder

Meek thralls, lift their heads, hear the cries of distant thunder

Verse

Midnight veils the land, screening forms that stalk in silence

Creeping, through the plains, hell-forged hearts consumed by violence

Lost souls, march in file, armies raised from death's cold slumber

Demons, sweep the skies, led on by their tainted hunger

Interlude

The blackened skies tremble. Cracks cut through the layers of smog and ash, and blazing light reaches through the chasm, cradling the lifeless soil in it's embrace. The demon's shriek in terror, knowing that their unchecked slaughter has reached its final end.

Chorus

Motes of light burst through the blackened shrouds of pain and havoc

A million voices from each orb, a sea of golden planets

Weapons fall as men renounce paths that bring life to perish

Ego bonds dissolve into a unified awareness

Unbounded love pervades the earth as hate burns down to embers

Our world subsumed in Tara's womb to dwell in endless splendor

The Fall of Pistis Sophia

Introduction

The radiant glow of the heavens plunges into the black depths of Saklas' material realm and the lion serpent rages, coveting the distant light. The swirling fog of iniquity trembles as a plan takes shape in the pitiless, malformed minds of the Demiurge and his children: Athoth the sheep-headed reaper, Sabbataios of the raging fire, and Yao the seven headed snake. Imbuing bowers of reflection into the waters of their physical domain, they distort the illimitable brilliance, seeking to lure a mighty Aeon into their kingdom of misery.

Verse

Deep in the waters

Radiant light

Beyond her borders

Entrancing sights

Beckoning visions

Gyrate and flow

While dark apparitions

Pace the shadows

Pistis Sophia

Can't look away

Consuming idea

Draws her to the flame

Unknowing Aeon

Led to their lair

Innate inner light drawn

A pure essence snared

Chorus

Flee from the serpent

With eyes toward usurping

The spark that blazes within

Desire will guide you

His matter will bind you

Its hooks digging deep in your skin

The world where we're pinioned

Is his flawed dominion

He'll feed off your soul til he's gorged

To break from this bondage

Seek weapons of knowledge

That ancients before you have forged

Verse

Sophia the faithful

Cries out for aid

Proclaims her betrayal

And an answer's relayed

Tricking the demons

To yield stolen gifts

Into clay wrought beings

With wills to resist

Then from divine teachers

High Gnosis is sent

To strive against these creatures

And guide towards ascent

Trapped in this mire

The humans must fight

To break from the lion

And enter the light

Chorus

Flee from the serpent

With eyes toward usurping

The spark that blazes within

Desire will guide you

His matter will bind you

Its hooks digging deep in your skin

The world where we're pinioned

Is his flawed dominion

He'll feed off your soul til he's gorged

To break from this bondage

Seek weapons of knowledge

That ancients before you have forged

A Hero's Journey

The Threshold Guardians

Guardian 1:

Watch towers, blotting the horizon

One soul, a speck beneath the spires

Standing, before the wind forged titans

Bearing, just wheat seeds and a lyre

Guardian 2:

Come tender worldling, stand before our brazier

Face the collossi, the champions of the gate

Pick up your lyre, do not cringe or waver

Sing little child, rise to meet your fate

The Call to Adventure

Endless hunger entombs me within these walls of dread

My soul ripped out and tilled across the mounds of dust-grey soil

A rotted plow lays toppled near the fetid heaps of dead

It's crimson stains the only monument to my life's toil

Day by day, I move through cold routine as in a trance

Night by night, my tortured dreams snapped loose by baying jackals

Yet though this darkness strikes my heart I feel I must advance

Strain at fate though every move just tightens up my shackles

The Return

Swords flash

Clouds tremble

Dissolve and reform anew

Sharp spears

Of sunlight

Piercing the endless night through

Sea winds

Advancing

Ash fields thrown up in rout

Beneath

Bleached bone mounds

Earth splits and young tendrils sprout

The Call to Adventure

Blazing light disintegrates the flickering shades of dread

Life spilt from my veins imbues the arid, hungry soil

Shoots of grain spring out from reborn barrows of the dead

Tear blurred eyes reflect the choked-down dreams of fruitful toil

A thousand souls subsumed within one wild ecstatic trance

Slavers ripped out from their beds and driven to the jackals

A rising swell of liberated souls drive my advance

In their wake lie scattered heaps of whips and broken shackles

Jets of Blood Coiling Up the Muddy Needle

Verse

A shattered car shields a broken soul

Waiting for the man he called to cure his fear honed sickness

His bare existence enslaved to the hold

Of theft and robbery an altar to his soul-forged weakness

Hysterical, desperate, beyond control

Dragging thoughts drawn to the needle and the crack stems quick bliss

Chorus

Blindly groping for a fix

A maddened charge to the River Styx

Starving, frenzied, bound in chains

Led to damnation by the endless pain

Compressed needle the lodestone of thought

Burning stem now the seal of ambition

One more flailing soul is caught

Abandoned ululating at the gates of perdition

Verse

A thin glass pipe with a crown of chore

Alluring smoke glides down the tube to softly caress my lungs

The foil prepped, from the bag I pour

The soft brown powder put to flame and I breathe in the poison

Interlude

The midnight winter's darkness

Lays down it's frost breathed stark kiss

Upon a refuse heaped abandoned Hartford street

The wheeling smog veiled stars

Sketch out a battered car

And within, a young man trembling in his sheets

A thousand biting winds

Strip bare the toll of sin

Endless crimes spurred by the bloody whip of addiction

And from the cloudy murk creeps

A sea of ashen flurries

A dopesick addict staring out in transfiction

Chorus

Blindly groping for a fix

A maddened charge to the River Styx

Starving, frenzied, bound in chains

Led to damnation by the endless pain

Compressed needle the lodestone of thought

Burning stem now the seal of ambition

One more flailing soul is caught

Abandoned ululating at the gates of perdition