The Extinction Paradox

by Elephant

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1.	The Arch of Entropy's Fire 05:04	lyrics	buy track
To those who now listen, how did it come to this? At last I have arrived at truth and all the noise has ended Refusing my destiny by choosing to suffer Welcome this victim's legacy Changing perceptions of an infected past Constant exile became thundering lunacy Perfection and perversion, dystopia and decay There is no future, only this life The minutiae of emotion crystallised to memory Ephemeral moments of a paradigm shift The tremendous density of a critical point Early conditions of a fundamental cause The most important illusion to sustain is that I matter Interests and prospects damned by my own words Everything I do seems to remind me of a failure All trouble is permanent, an end in itself After the final blast disfigured the landscape Born from above like a bomb I hid beneath the magnitude of trauma Most in fear of that which had already happened The march of progress and paranoia Toward my doom with a beleaguered smile Practicing for my suicide No speech nor language for such a change All who live shall die alone Says the embittered to the idealist Hopeless, worthless, internalized A self-defeating gangled wretch The archers beyond death with no enemy Impotent as their arrows broken Bows bent by age and muscle warped to fat Ability unchallenged reduced to complacency A shiver in the basement as I emerge from hibernation Time will not slow down for me Gasping as the soft rains fall I am the only human being to survive
2.	Sparks of Humanity 04:09	lyrics	buy track
What else can I do but stay alive? As a vagrant I wander the wastes Unhealing wounds upon my scarred heart A victim bearing the brands as trophies These are the years of transformation Of savage decisions and necessary cruelty Running out of a habit of danger Crushing beauty as if to feel beautiful I wish I had not rejected the few who cared I miss them now like an echo of gratitude How I wept as those sparks were extinguished Still I dream of their faces through the dust Night upon night, afraid to share my pain Ashamed to even ask, learning to be helpless Moonlight is harsh and full of memories Still the scream remains inside I am the pallid light of pressure without grace Blank with despair, heated and weary I am a pale beast tamed by a lamb Mouth stretched like the stupid yawn of chattel Treating myself as fragile, shattered by the wind A crawling, cringing, daunted coward Degraded by inveterate fear and retrograde guilt And the sudden tragic end I am a blasted husk in this scorched landscape None remain to cry for the dead, no hope for what I once was I am this fallen earth of utter loss and barren spirit Dark emotions beneath an arch of hatred Still I feel rhythms in the empty streets As vultures circle in missing man formation Searching this planet for the secret trove Eager to hear the voices of the ones I loved Harshness, desolation, coldness, survival Stalked by disease, hunger and scarcity The stubborn reek of leprous stink What remains does not live Likely, I will not see tomorrow Yet worrying about the future is another way to change it Tenacious, determined, and adapting As character is chiseled between extremes Every child is the only child A universe of individuals - each alone A warrior without weapons is a warrior still Shifting, growing, improvising destiny
3.	The Mythmaker 04:07	lyrics	buy track
Why now am I reminded of my lost humanity? Scents of familiar music upon the grieving wind My seething mind is a questing razor Memories come unbidden in the shadows The miserable shape of the bottomless past Empty with shock and the stress of thinning emotions Eternity is but another season And it too shall pass away This timeless void of running seems like sullen stagnation Spans the self-imposed tyranny of loneliness Poignant impressions of each moment The burning path is the one of change Absorbing the pain as if to defend my confines Personality conditioned by changing behaviors The indefinite ways the cosmos might conform Framed by doubt and dreams of the end There are no miracles, there is no resurrection Prescience is the result of a drug The holy land is a violent place Sweeping visions shall reap heavenly crusades Denying variety and time without parallels Demanding that all follow a predetermined pattern Reducing all to absurdity to justify my fear Control is another illusion - Let go of the universe! Still they marvel at the light from stars long dead All is transient, forever scattering Still they revel in the bloom of youth Yearning for the touch of another human being Still theories are accepted as immutable laws Wizened by lore yet ignorant of life A consequence lost is another lesson lost I know it in myself The mistakes of chance and heredity The recessive undesirable traits The madness of singularity The foolishness of certainty and precision I am not a rebel, but a closet aristocrat Cynical, depraved and in denial Vigor has fallen to paradox No longer can I strive or grow for I am now god I am the living trigger and the framer of thoughts Killing and reforming the archetype The futility of megalomania Looking back, I resent everything
4.	The Hypnotist Of Hypercube Transcendence 04:19	lyrics	buy track
Am I an individual or just a pattern of behaviors? A frustrated observer unable to control I am this monolith - impressive and solitary Lingering without being perceived The crux is corrupted, inadequate, illusory Assumptions in the center, a point of blindness I built this model around a flaw So failure can never confront me I am a machine of heat, entropy, and friction Simplified into a drone of fear, hunger and lust A critical period of social development Being is motion and I stand still Purity is a symptom of waste and neglect Only a stylite would be so proud From atop a tall and narrow pedestal I shall be toppled by my own pretensions The fallacy of regression, cause where none exists Once I believed then was betrayed Friends are still alive and unchanged in my thoughts And I can never forget because I am alone An eye of contradiction in the core of stability Absorbed within myself, all is elusive Barriers I created, the arrogance of secrecy The altered state of memories is now my existence Calculate the imponderable for the thrill of possibilities To avoid facing the harshness of the present An instant of fulcrum and quiet privilege Becomes the slow sinking into insanity Beauty is vanity, says one embittered soul Without companions, obsessive and hateful Desperate for others, I surrounded myself with mirrors And grew to despise the sincerity of my reflection Clues, codes, and mysteries - a sea of irrelevance Ambitions pale beside the remembrance of those I loved The questioning child weaves uncertainty Because not one answer will suffice From a brave man I've become a whimpering creature Initiative to inertia through inexplicable disillusion At last in a dream I see her and I speak And she turns her back on me - she doesn't remember It is always too late and it is never too late Dying and birthing in constant flux Voices surround me to join them in life Circling and mocking like my wounds agape A palindrome while clever is still an enclosed system Emotions collide until stagnation and freezing Momentum and intent defeated by indecision It's all my fault, I could have been
5.	Sunken Shores Of Fatal Symmetry 04:47	lyrics	buy track
What naivete could have caused such desecration? One autumnal night I detached and buried myself I drove out the sun and killed all growth And worshipped the trauma that scarred my destiny I became guilts, phobias, neuroses, compulsions Gifted with wings yet lacking knowledge of their use Mundane expectations and the sheen of despair Potential ruined by terrible circumstance Almost a year is lost and there are more days ahead Whilst my own limbs become cumbersome and weary Delusional, pathetic, spastic, and limp Repressing conflict and ineluctable meltdown Denying emotion, pleasure becomes routine Sweltering, stifling, blighting decrepitude Disguised by layers of useless humor My laughter is hateful to deprecate the optimist All my heroes are dead if they ever existed Retreating into patterns of defensive isolation The narcotic apathy of daydreams and fantasy And the pain is overwhelming I am not a philosopher but a narcissist in a fugue state Vapors of the past normalize into my ghosts I framed the walls and mountains that enclose my sanity Suffocating the senses and the instincts of power Adapting to the dark I became anxious of the light Movements slow and fragile, eyes dull as a mask Reacting to abandonment by abandoning myself A derelict child upon gargantuan shores Submerged within a delayed mind, alone with my hostility Only to guess at the depths of the caldera Hiding in hurts, using them as an excuse The cringing incongruity, the victim on display Incapable of even sleep Memories of joy are forgotten Embalmed by my own lies Driven to the point of honesty, I surrender I can no longer suspend my disbelief No one touches me to validate my existence I'm sick of living underwater I want my humanity back!!! This is not my paradise Creativity channeled into madness Frozen on the critical moment Reliving failure in quiet rot This should not be happening to me Insane because I turned my back on her All I can do is exploit my wounds Dying in a vacuum of loneliness I must not drown in my own intellect Tides of extinction below the psyche Dreams of genocide fade as fear dissolves Capable of more devices than destruction I want to stomp and prance in affirmation Spiders at the gate of an inner world Damaged, broken, obsessed I will be with her again
6.	A Wizard's Destiny 05:23	lyrics	buy track
Why is pain so compelling to me? Through the night I've crawled, hateful and ashamed Drowning powerless in the despair of my worst memories Confronted with and tortured by my own secrets I cannot choose not to believe, I need to know Stay close to me as this story comes to pass A momentary glimpse of the ones behind the net And the twinkling eye of the maker of the wands Running down a slope of recollections The descending mist of a gaunt and silent spectre The coiling of nerves and the tightened hush The bowstring tension of anticipation I have become the abyss that reflected me Sympathy or apathy if the dead could speak Holes in the heavens like the gaps in myself Crying as fantasies breed frustration The sunrise has not come, drained of all hope Absence, nothing, a child in the dark Hearing the screams of my dying parents Witnessing the killing, touching the cadavers A flash of sickness and the rush of speeding death The shrill high laughter of a merciless voice A murderer crushed by protective love Seven mutilations of a single soul The pure lust for inflicting hurt A pitiless gaze atop a lipless mouth Images of my friends weaken and fade Each doubt reopening miseries long suppressed As every promise abandons me Excruciating loss is transmuted into iron resolve I am the spark before the blaze Beyond all restraint in an instant of fury Beads of light vibrate to the timbre of joining wills The brothers meet and the cores sing in recognition The synchronicity of two minds equal in strength Now it is I who calls you by name Father and mother are gone and I can never be whole again Every fibre bore the pressure contorting every wound I will not die crouching, hiding, kneeling in supplication Straight-backed and proud I am the stone of your defeat For all the times I feared to speak For all the days I dreaded the dawn For all the years I fought alone I shall give you the obliteration of the curse that disappears you like the words you have spoken!!! As a dream of distress fades upon awakening Agony is reconciled over the creeping of time Healing tears of vindication and wisdom The graceful retribution of maturity The boy who lived is now the man with the lightning scar The one who survived as the other diminished Beast being and spirit shall endure to testify He was a master of spells.
7.	Quest Of The Timelord 04:05		buy track
8.	The Philosophy Of Suicide 04:41	lyrics	buy track
What went wrong today? Everything is so controlled Ideals were abraded by reason Impotent dreams on an overcast day Out of the depths I have cried and no one has heard Gods and heroes and imaginary companions Unrequited promises no longer suffice Rhythm to repetition, perseverance to insanity Just because you're alive doesn't mean others should want you Knowledge is temptation, I repulse myself On the borderline between neurosis and psychosis Dissecting my actions instead of being in the present I dissociated my fear and allowed it to advise me I am not a messiah, I am a man in trouble An unbearable waste with no excuse Pathetic and scared by grotesque loneliness Morality wasted in isolation Tomorrow's smile never comes for me Ambitious but incapable, weak without direction Another spring prepares me for another summer alone And there is no return from the killing hour To be honest it is not this world I hate But the circumstances which shaped my mediocrity Fading in an abyss of inaction, said the mirror This is not a work of fiction - this is my life Rape the children for their own good Scars awaken a tragic sense of destiny Hope is deception born in alienation To the frantic throbbing of my own heart Sorry does nothing, objectifying me with pity Removing yourself from blame, feigning innocence If those who find me claim to love me, where were they when I needed them? Some friends would have been nice Always anticipating, never receiving, I wait I may see her soon and I will never leave her again Perhaps next year, perhaps one day, perhaps never I am not a child yet I am so inferior At last I reach out, but am I too late? Ideation of a choice as I pace in agitation I just wish I could go back and reverse this mistake I wanted to dance with her one last time Denial, anger, bargaining, depression Anger, depression, bargaining, anger Depression and anger in a cycle of envy I did nothing to deserve this, I did nothing Stop this please - I'm in pain Why doesn't anyone care? And who will tell her that I've died? And how will she know how I suffered? At last I surrender to tears As I trace my veins All I can think of is her And how much it hurts HELP ME
9.	The Extinction Paradox 06:11	lyrics	buy track
What little have we learned from this perfect accident? Everything makes sense and everything is real Who am I? Who was I? Who will I become? Existence in extremis as the rim of this plane melts Who can say what is impossible? Who will be by my side? Should the victim forgive or curse them all? Is living that simple? Who knows but the dead? What is the fulcrum, what is the lever, and where do I stand? A shiver in the basement then the falling of birth Running, accelerating, scattering, progressing The capacity of memory without stricture or cause A creator who rested after the foundation was finished I am just another sparrow passing through the stream Of an obscure continent moving through the heavens The day is late and this will be my final sunset Crushed between the membranes of opposing times The lovers behind the net considering the dance and the silence Through heroism and adventure I've arrived at myself Snap the bonds of paradox and swallow the wheels of fate Sequence shifts and the only truth is the present There is one world, there are many worlds Reflections and echoes confused beneath the arch Leaves lose their pigment and hair drains to grey Are there any who dream of me? Was I ever destined? Anadigm, paradigm, anadigm, paradigm How can anything be obsolete if it exists in every moment? Conception to execution, extinction to renewal The mantle burns, the crux corrodes, all will pass and fade Utter endless havoc, gravitational unbinding As another universe dies, a lost and lifeless generation The machinery of the human body stagnates at maximum entropy And all I see are ashes ashes ashes ashes Matter cannot be created or destroyed, all one needs is already available Absolute failure is just another illusion, the world will not end Uncertainty breeds more questions, more questions breed more quests, more quests breed more life, more life breeds Change, collapse, reinvention, the last enemy that shall be destroyed is fear In your hour of triumph, those who failed before you will not spite you But rejoice in your success, for you have fulfilled their lives The smallest mote, halved until infinity, can never reach zero Intrinsic value can never be eradicated - quantum immortality!!!