The quickening is an ephemeral thing
That only happens in the dark
Like catching lightning in a jar
And the pain that it brings
Is just the promise of spring
It’s madness on the way
Oh, what does it mean…
To come alive
To come alive
To come alive
(To come alive) To come alive
To come alive
To come alive
The entering is soulful conjecturing
Oh, lost and by the wind-grieved coast
Please come back to me again
Because the way that she bleeds
He’ll sit alone when he reads
Confusing words and deeds
So what does it mean…
<chorus>
To pierce the fame of the sacred and profane
For science, in service of the faith
But who will bear the mark of Cain?
et's gather 'round the carcass of the old deflated beast,
we have seen it through the accolades and rested in it's lea,
syntactic is our elegance, incisive our disease,
the swath endogenous of ourselves will be our quandary,
we've nestled in it's hollow and we've suckled at it's breast,
grandiloquent in our attitude, impassioned yet inept,
frivolous gavel our design, ludicrous or threat,
excursive expeditions leave us holding less and less,
so what does it mean?
when we tell ourselves it's only for a while we have been deceived
and it's only for a moment that the treasures of our day
make life easier to complicate,
the treasure thrown away,
I'm so tired of all the fucked up mind
of all the terrorist religions and their bullshit lines,
of all the hand-me-downs from all industrial crimes
and the weeping mothers and those who are led so blind,
from the plastic protests and the hands of time
and the pursuit of mirth and all hating kind
How do you know what you can be
if you can't see where you are going?
What breaks the silence?
Misery can make you see where you belong
It's a dangerous stage but the show must go on
Why do you lie? Why do you lie?
Would you betray your soul?
Why do you lie? Why do you lie?
Don't let your weakness show
You just might be the last to know
Freedom is such a loaded word,
so full of hurt and such aplomb
Loneliness saunters in its breeze
like a disease it drags along
The time of your life can't be had for a song
Why do you lie? Why do you lie?
Would you betray your soul?
Why do you lie? Why do you lie?
Don't let your weakness show
You just might be the last to know
Oh, Why do you lie? Why do you lie?
Would you betray your soul?
Why do you lie? Why do you lie?
Don't let your weakness show
Why do you lie? Why do you lie?
Only the meek follow
Why do you lie? Why do you lie?
Trample the fear below
You just might be the last to know
Oh me oh my
Get out of your 1950’s fantasy,
Your face shines with misery transparently
Spew out that sobering
Half-assed victim rhetoric
Make ’em all squirm
While they chew on it
It’s a secret handshake
And a passing wink of the eye
As the witches bridge club weekly
Meets to pen the tail on the sly
But they never ask
"why oh why don’t we raise our voices to the sky? "
Instead you’re mute
And fawn just waiting to die
Like some kind of hopeless housewife
But you can change while you’re alive
And let ’em all know
At least you tried
To kill the demons inside
Oh me oh my
Damn your transcendental paralysis
We can work together
And make sense of this
Don’t be so sure
You can chuck it all away
You’ve got to proceed
No matter how bad you want to stay
It’s a natural cause
And a comfort zone
There in your head
And the world turns away
As you tap the snooze button in bed
But nobody can hear a word you said
Your history was never read
Instead you’re mute and fawn
Just waiting to die
Like some kind of hopeless housewife
But you can change while you’re alive
And let ’em all know
At least you tried
To kill the demons inside.
Our apocalypse 1981 / Teenage vagrants lookin' for some fun /
A renewed promise of prosperity / A vulgar platform for the
world to see / We were / The hippy killers
Busted refuse from broken bones / Pocked flesh and
malicious bones / Creatures sustained by desire, heart, and
soul / Nothing to leave and nowhere to go / We were / The
hippy killers
Good days during horrible times / Overused bodies, neglected
minds / Shoulder to shoulder we formed as one The next
miserable generation / We were / The hippy killers
every time you shake someone's hand and it feels like your best friend,
could it be that it's only superficiality?,
without regard to well-being, without an inkling of compromise,
handshakes are nothing but a subtle "fuck you",
contracts determine the best friendships
this is the way of the modern world, everyone's vying for patronage,
this is the way of the modern world, and something has gotta give
every time you shake someone's hand,
and you share neither color or creed,
you gotta overcome the obstacles of history,
there is restrained passion, mistrust, and bigotry
and these have created the new foundations of society,
there's no harmony just class and race
this is the way of the modern world,
everyone's fighting for dominance,
this is the way of the modern world,
and something has gotta give
now I believe in unity, and I am willing to compromise,
but I'm not gonna lie or sell my soul
every time you shake someone's hand,
it determines where you stand,
and if you won't uphold your side then it's better to
fend for yourself, and shun the handshake,
someone's gotta give
the framework of the world
is black and white
the infrastructure builders
flex their might
turning true emotion
into digital expression
one by one we all fall down
the gray race shrivels
trapped inside the world it creates
it's black and white
the perputual destructive
motion machine
began to chart a course
never before seen
turning raw compassion
into fields of plus and minus
one by one we all give in
the gray race shrivels
trapped inside the world it creates
it's black and white
I'd swear there were times when I was someone else
a person with determination and knowledge of the self
but you flattened me to rubble and now I can see that I'm
just faded negative of the image I used to be
If I could only get the tools, the stimuli and
Molecules, frozen moments in time
I could be the archetype, a credit to the
Genotype, re-program your mind
But the storybook sages fill their pages
Hiding from the warming sun
Limitless distractions give no pause to distort a
Precious delusion
Did you see the moralist retort and raise his fist
"You can't make man a machine"
I can see the edifice crumbling in foggy mist,
Razed by discovery
But the storybook sages fill their pages
Hiding from the warming sun
Limitless distractions give no pause to distort a
Precious delusion
We strike first
and we're unrehearsed
here we go again
to stage the greatest show on heaven and earth
come on, get your money's worth
don't wanna live
(can't live)
don't wanna give
(can't give)
don't wanna be
(won't be)
Em-P-I-R-E
don't wanna live
don't wanna be
Em-P-I-R-E
We're comin on fast
and we're built to last
we struggled once in 'Nam
now we're glad to finally say
those days have passed
tell me how long can it last!
don't wanna live
(can't live)
don't wanna give
(can't give)
don't wanna be
(won't be)
Em-P-I-R-E
don't wanna live
don't wanna be
Em-P-I-R-E
We just started out
you don't need to be afraid
yeah you deserve two minutes hate
well, we split and we cursed and our bleeding hearts burst
but even ten million souls
marching in February couldn't stop the worst,
couldn't reverse
don't wanna live
(can't live)
don't wanna give
(can't give)
don't wanna be
(won't be)
Em-P-I-R-E
don't wanna live
don't wanna be
Em-P-I-R-E
don't wanna live
don't wanna give
don't wanna be
Em-P-I-R-E
don't wanna live
don't wanna be
Em-P-I-R-E
hey did you find the pieces your mentor left behind?
and did you care, did you trade his genius for your dispair?
did you walk the line?
did you see the mongrels on either side?
did greasy finers grasp for pieces of your mind?
