ith a rusty crown pried from his skull

Immense upheaval as tides of vengeance flow
A charnel earth cloaked in death
The cup of fate has tipped again
Destiny carved by grim malign
Overruled through endless ages
At the bosom of the depth

Quest the calling
Through realms of hadean splendour
Emolliate the world
In a skeletal grip of betrayal

Cypress� cast last saturnine shadows
The moon will spew its final glow
Stars as corpselights snuffed on a grave
On a forgotten world dust will settle
Monarch of the apocalypse raises his chalice
To this, his ultimate sanction
Asphyxiate as darkness dances
Under bibleblack nighted domes

2. The Bullet's Breath
�Fuck the world� is what he said
And the bullet went straight through his head
A life forsaken sufficiency
Frustration, tensions warranty

With blatant fury life is expelled
From a once so livid shell

Lifeless yet still full of life
Death feeds the living
Death breeds the living
Formication beneath flesh and dirt
Death feeds the living
Death breeds the living

Crisp and leathery as the bones start to show
White fungi embrace the blackened skin
Larvae plunge through the stomach wall
The process of moulding begins

Skull fractured immensely from the bullets breath
Brain pulp protrudes from the wound
Invasion of flies in the stinky pink matter
Eyes excessively pruned

Inhale the bullet as he wishes to depart
From this world, without a clue
Worn down to the beat of a heart
And a triggered mind to undo

Lifeless yet still full of life
Death feeds the living
Death breeds the living
Formication beneath flesh and dirt
Death feeds the living
Death breeds the living

Carcass lie bloated under the sun
Rotting on a dusty mound
Soul condemned to a world beyond
The sand became his burial ground

Inhale the bullet as he wishes to depart
From this world, without a clue
Worn down to the beat of a heart
And a triggered mind to undo

Carcass lie bloated under the sun
Rotting on a dusty mound
Soul condemned to a world beyond
The sand became his burial ground

�Fuck the world� is what he said
And the bullet went straight through his head
A life forsaken sufficiency
Frustration, tensions warranty

With blatant fury life is expelled
From a once so livid shell

Crisp and leathery as the bones start to show
White fungi embrace the blackened skin
Larvae plunge through the stomach wall
The process of moulding begins

3. Border into Shadow
Viral affliction racing in my veins
Bloated heart pumps black clotted blood
Swirling darkness is all I see
Living death sustained through chemotherapy

Supine and shrunken, outshined by disease
As shadows weave athwart my eyes
Grim destiny flails perniciously
Rot away in languished dormancy

As I border into shadow
Supine and shrunken, outshined by disease
As shadows weave athwart my eyes
Grim destiny flails perniciously
Rot away in languished dormancy

Eyes drown in the seas of the past
Forgotten lore of surviving time
Spine on the verge of permanent collapse
Left to die in desolation
Skin contracts with desperation
Eyes gaze fiercely into death
Succumb to the struggle for breath

Dead mouth, dry and cold
Face decayed as cancer unfolds
Sight blurred by contagious flow
The veins inert, livor mortified glow

Intubations and nasal piping squeaks
Gastric spew meets the teeth, frothy flow
Ballistic heart is counting down as pupils peak
Seizure turns into convulsive vertigo

Battle tires out
As cancer eats away
Chronic illness swallows up
Slow release from the bones decay
Mind�s a turmoil
Inside a cankered husk
Losing the grip
Transcend into dusk

Supine and shrunken, outshined by disease
As shadows weave athwart my eyes
Grim destiny flails in victory
Rot away in languished dormancy

4. Bloodletting
Thriving on fear that I instil
Restless excursion, in for the kill
Smashing a face, violent outburst
Inflicting pain, compulsive urge

To your painfilled screams I am immune

Seductive coercion rigged to insert pain
Threatening domination, your vanity I will maim
Feel the rush of this violent compulsion
Beating you senseless, my way of subduction
It�s the utter high to look at your rearranged face
Raping and beating you until sanity leaves your gaze
As my fury escalates, I need to draw blood
As vitality leaves you in an oozing red flood

Bloodred streams from corpses emanate
As my sadistic intensions slowly incarnate
Feel no remorse for this sickening trend
As this bloodrush hails, I don�t repent

Bloodletting occupies the wound
Eyes swirling in an agitated state
To your painfilled screams I am immune
As your eyes turn glazed, I suck in your fate

5. Spawn of the Abscess
Syringe injected into tender skin
Throat is flooded as the needle sets in
Tied down, brittle screams are choked
Vocal chord in corrosive liquids soaked

Naked scrotum stuck in a vice
Executioner snarling rolling the dice
Intestines churn at the sight of his tool
Bones merely pulverize, blood forms a pool

Canines sink into tender flesh
As buttocks give way violent thrash
In bludgeon he�s slowly closing his mesh
Vivid eyes stares at the gash

Knife inserted releasing intestinal hold
Vacuum seals the steel probing bold
Twisting and turning the gleaming blade
Liver torn as the butcher unveils his hate

Bladder delivers the last cup of piss
As protruding steel waives it�s tomb
Fetid gas emits with a hiss
Releasing the tension holding the womb

Blood and puss race through a soggy wound
Restless vessels exempt a rancid fume
Methane piped in a gastric tube
From which ingested faeces slowly exude

Trapped within this pointless act
Find yourself screaming, backbound and gagged
Gaffed and suspended in the grip of fear
Knowing your final hour is drawing near

Pallid skin yields to the blade
Watching your own bowels emancipate
Blood steams from the basement floor
As jigsaw buzzes rapidly to your core

Spawn of the abscess of society
Five across the eyes of sobriety
Inclined to dismemberment and heinous deeds
I prowl the comfort of your pristine streets

6. Thawed for Breeding
Morbid machinery, sustained monstrosity
Genetic abomination in hideous atrocity
Wrinkled body torn from formaldehyde
Placed gently on a silver bed for slowly to revive

Pipes and devices steaming, searing hot
Frost subsides undo rigor mortis knot
Raped in incubation by a bloody fingers poke
Science of damnation in sinful deeds soak

Crystallized blood regains obstructed flow
Joints crack `neath skin turned black
Pruned eyes gaze as fingers let go
Of the grip of suspension, resurrection bestowed

Torn from dormancy in the cryogenic vice
Ripe for bleeding, thawed for breeding
Bone piped thighs slowly pried apart
Scientist of no remorse revels in his art

Skin sloughed off in tatters
Probing the anaemic meat
Agonized and randomly incised
In his conceit

To his PHD of condemnation
He adds another page
As lobotomized pet mongoloids
Are cackling in their cage

Unzip into velvet revelation
Sliding up the aisle within
Ride the winds of rancid defecation
Coalesce with jellified skin

Catatonic and fertilized
Yet eyes fixed and dilated
The birthing of the undefined
Exit the perm frozen related

7. Stygian - instrumental

8. The Last Incantation
A sorcerous existence aloft times innuendo
Erect on pinnacled powers crescendo
Endowed with longing for immemorial allure
A nigh-forgotten vestal grace bestowed death premature

In the despondency of my craft absolute
I�ll claim her back from �neath cypress root
And venture descent down gulfs of crepuscular depths
Traversed, but by souls cursed, hellbound and unwept

By blood offering and commune ith the render of veils
Revealed was the dire path that leads on though the hells
Armed with resolve and hexian tools of the trade
A lone figure transcended the threshold of this stygian arcade

He endured tribulations of deathfiends vexed
Journey to ill-omened bottom ordealic perplexed
But at last his abysmal course took an end
In a place angels fear tread and legend portend

Cacophined by etheric familiars croon
Ensnared and absolved through blazing rune
Divulgations of necromantic revelations stargazed
Thundered the towering domes of charnel caves

With wizards shrewd, guile and cunning
Encircled by bloodsourced philtres bubbling
Amidst pentacular conjured preserve
Fabric of sepulchral reality was curved

Exempt from soil by cryptic verse
From death�s repose a spectral Venus stirs
As a blaze born on Hadean night
With skin of graven marble and eyes bright lazurite

A vision returned from beyond the grave
To an abandoned soul which longing gave
A geas to a realm unshoned by Praesepe
For here to reside forever in phantom shaded matrimony

9. Poets of the Trench
my face reflects
Behind enemy lines
Yet separated by
Barbwire and mines

Knee deep in freezing mud
Best �pals� breath I tried to regain
The worst factor is, not knowing
Of the time that remains

Contamination dashes in a bloody trench
Poetry written amongst shrapnel and friends

Sanity buckles under the weight
Of steel and spraying lead
Howitzers toll an ominous death knell
Ear-splitting elegy above those who fell

Corruption seeks a lonesome trace
Gangrenous limbs or a blown off face
Amputation in the killing field
Infection overcomes, affection concealed

Puppets of war race over the edge
Commence death dance at close quarters
Hope of truce torn and bloodstained
A thousand lives lost and only twenty yards gained

As battle tires out
And bombing starts to die
Dead soldiers all around
With fear injected into their eyes

400.000 Britain's dead
600.000 Germans put to rest
Fallen in the battle of Somme
One million youngsters dead and gone

10. I remember sitting in the train. Though it seems ages ago, I figure that no more than a couple of weeks have elapsed since then.
I also remember the thoughts racing in my mind. I�d read that before going into battle, even the most ardent veteran soldier feels the pangs of fear, and I wondered why I only felt a sense of numbness in my stomach and legs. Premonition perhaps?

During training we�d been told by our senior officers always to keep our carbines clean of grime.
�Cleansed mine for what might have been the fiftieth time, whilst rolling through the French countryside listening to the distant thunder.
By then I didn�t realise that it was the mellow booming of the Germans� heavy artillery, shelling our line. Or, maybe, ours shelling theirs?

I�d heard that even if you�re dug in, in a shelter, the big howitzers could get you.

In the train I split a cigarette with a guy from back home. This was his second trip to the front. He told me how his former company was set to dig out a bombed cellar, and how the people they found had been uninjured by the shrapnel and fire. They had been crushed by the pressure of the detonation � their lungs had been pushed through their mouths.
He also told me to swap my bayonet for a field shovel at any given moment. �When you�re at close quarters, a sharpened field shovel can lob the head off a mans shoulders. And it won�t break or get stuck in the ribs like a bayonet.� That�s what he said.
His name is Liam, or was Liam. As I�m writing this, I can hear him screaming. I can just barely make him out in a crater next to the German trench. Horribly entangled in barbwire. He�s not screaming for his mom or anything. Just screaming. Maybe his throat has been lacerated. It sounds kind of gurgling. And he�s lost both his legs� Guess he won�t be screaming much longer�

God I wished that I had a grenade or something, so I could end his misery right now.

Well, even if I had a grenade, I doubt that I would be able to hurl it to him.
I�ve been holding most of my entrails back with one hand, since darkness fell.
Irony of ironies � the German that opened my stomach knew the trick with the field shovel, too.
Or maybe he wasn�t German at all. They have a Hungarian penal legion posted along the line.
Maybe he was one of them?
I crushed his head with my respirator canister. Never thought of that as a weapon, but in the heat of close combat, anything will do: I�ve seen soldiers gouge each other�s eyes with bare hands� And I saw a boy, no more than fifteen or sixteen, rip a Germans throat out with his teeth.

It is madness! Mere animals clawing at each other.

Now in the breaks between the drumfires, I can hear the enemy mustering in their trenches. I can hear the sucking sound of boots being yanked out of the knee-deep clay, and the dry clanging of a water-cooled MG being reloaded.
The next charge can't be far off, and yet still fear eludes me. For the first time in weeks, I'm certain of what's going to happen.

When the sun rises and hardens the clay, I�ll be here no longer. The same numbness I felt in train has returned, and I know my time is at hand.

Guess I'll be screaming no more�.