From the forthcoming album by Zao "The Well-Intentioned Virus".  Out 12/9/16 on Observed/Observer Recordings.

The fire burns, the fire burns 
As leaves they fall and twist and turn 
Gather thoughts to be unlearned 
Wooden cribs to marble urns 

Metallic paralyzed teeth rejoice 
At the sound of the spectre’s voice 
Alas the masses seek the answer 
Some grow rich some rot from cancer 
Despair to stillness, all is revealed 
Life is chaos, a spinning wheel 
We all are one and nothing’s real 
Nothingness is real 

The fire burns, the fire burns 
As leaves they fall and twist and turn 
Gather thoughts to be unlearned 
Wooden cribs to marble urns 

Oneness revealed 
Observed/Observer

Conscious carbon from a dying star 
Living, breathing searching for a cause 
Everything around us observes itself through us 

The fire burns, the fire burns 
As leaves they fall and twist and turn 
Gather thoughts to be unlearned 
Wooden cribs to marble urns 

Oneness revealed 
Observed/Observer

The Well-Intentioned Virus

Observed/Observer

Apocalypse

I was born behind these eyes
Sewn into this skin
One with the flesh machine I’m embedded in

I hold my children’s breath
Feel their mother’s pain
Share my brother’s blood
Within my sister’s veins
Cry my mother’s tears
Through my father’s eyes
Tethered to this realm
In consciousness’ disguise

A promise unspoken, for it could never be kept
Offering passages of safety so the host won’t disconnect

Yet the mouths of our graves sing songs of unknown places,
And laugh as we struggle to escape

I have lived behind these eyes
Existed in this skin
Defined by the flesh machine I’m embedded in

The mouths of our graves call these bodies home

I will die behind these eyes
Shed away this skin
Detach from the flesh machine I was embedded in

Separate perception conscious separates

Jinba Ittai

Come back to us
Please return to your body
Turn in place to see it
Lying motionless below you
Witness yourself from above
Quiet as a winter night
Still as a photograph
It’s time to return or pass on

So scratch and crawl and climb your way back to us

When a life is fading
The fire dies, behind its eyes
Staring cold and flameless
The blood begins to digitize
Unnaturally the pain dies
Leaving one’s true self erased and cauterized

When a life is fading
The fire dies, behind its eyes

If you can hear my voice
If it can find you in the void
In a place between life and death
Focus on the source of projection
Follow it back to yourself

Scratch, crawl, and climb back to us

Come back to us
Please return to your body
Turn in place to see it
Lying motionless below you
Witness yourself from above
Quiet as a winter night
Still as a photograph
It’s time to return or pass on

So scratch and crawl and climb your way back to us

Broken Pact Blues

Anger casts shadows of doubt
Inviting them in has hollowed you out
The purest disgust one can ever feel
It lives in our voice it guides our eyes
It’s forcing us to realize
We’re born from the fear, the fear of death

Proven designs crush weakened minds

Exceptions to the rule and anomalies
Stir up violence with silver spoons
Cries of persecution
From the persecutors tongue
The medium agitates the hive

Frothing hordes of true believers
You are right, yes you are right
You have been chosen to ruin countless heathen lives

Our path of sight through perception is soiled
As our sanity turns spoiled
Commands sent down by light and sound
Imaginary generals lie tired from the war
They will become what they abhor
A well-intentioned virus posing as a cure

A Well - Intentioned Virus

Woe to the vessel
For it couldn’t compose
The igniting spark

Oh, it shuddered
And collapsed
Beneath the weight of it all
Slowly it is reassembled
As a wound not seen but felt

No sense of presence
Oh, again it shudders
Oh, again it collapsed

The vessel
It wept
And crept behind the door

Echoes dripping down the walls
Crawling underneath the floor

Procession to a grave
Unknown is the one we mourn

An entity lost on its way
To this our physical plane

It was a shadow
Cast from a flame
Indestructible energy that still remains

The Weeping Vessel

Never cut by thought or thesis
Evoked by hollow, rabid speeches
That clot up and fall to pieces
Turns into birds that spread diseases

It turns to chemical meditation,
It turns to paranoia and frustration,
It turns to gray rotting teeth,
It turns to entitled, hateful beliefs

Implant a thought, sow the seed
Groom xenophobic racist steeds
Loud and dumb without folly
Shouting, “Stop evolving Uber Alles”

Logic and compassion regress to selfish superstitions

It must be hell to live in fear

Xenophobe

In a fevered dream
A code was shown to me
By disembodied
Tongues clear and clean

You’ll see it, but not with your eyes
Obscured through our mortal disguise

The maze-like depths
Of the haunting pools

If one were to arrive
Below the line
Pulled by the tide
One can’t come out

This code the tongues have spoken
“It was broken when we found it
(We found it like that)”

You’ll see it, but not with your eyes
Obscured through our mortal disguise

The maze-like depths
Of the haunting pools

If one were to arrive
Below the line
Pulled by the tide
One can’t come out

Haunting Pools

The sun, it orbits around flat earth witch trials
Blood letters penned by leech collectors

Against the grain
Burned at the stake
Deities fill the cavities
In our mouths

A well-worn path, future morphed into the past
A ghost stuck in the cycles, lost in the infinite
Haunting the house of rational thought
Collapse while converging

The past is fiction, forgotten and rewritten
The present, now past, countless moments lapse
The future, lost teacher, a looming callus creature

The sun, it orbits around flat earth witch trials

Crushed and maimed
While shifting the blame
Disfigured social disdain
Again and again and again and again

The Sun Orbits Around Flat Earth Witch Trials

I was a child when the fear found me, 
It’s cursed thoughts coiled around me 
Alas, I sought a path, to escape its sadistic reality 
My senses flood, with fire and blood, 
Presented in such simplicity 
The clean line quakes, splits and breaks, 
Liken to roots beneath a tree 

The one divides 
Before my eyes 
Spreading out like veins, the imposters now ingrained 
The golden streets will flood 
With warring siblings blood 
An endless strife to prove, their pathway is the truth 

As their battlefield burns, I walk away 
On one another they turn, I turn away 

Splintered by survival’s self-serving feral jaws 
Accompanied by its prideful, non-lamenting claws 
You’ve created and summoned 
The Destroyer of Mercy 
And 
The Maker of Lost Ways 

Detached I am drawn into the empty, expanding horizon as it is 
slowly unfolding itself 
My vision is fixed on the smoldering sun, sitting low in the 
formless hands of space 
Rays of light not unlike glowing swords ride in strange 
patterns through the skies 
Violent waves of hiltless blades shift and shake, turning calmly 
from gold to white 
They sever all that is within their grasp until this world bleeds 
soft and quiet before me 
In the void I hear the whispers of long dead stars tell tales of 
order through disarray 
They say behind the veil of chaos lies peace 

Possession triggers change into tangible signs to see 
Barren of the fruit to bear, they’re all strangers to me 

I wish them peace 
Respectfully
credits

I Leave You In Peace

From the 2015 Limited edition 7-inch single "Xenophobe/Fear Itself"

Never cut by thought or thesis
Evoked by hollow, rabid speeches
That clot up and fall to pieces
Then turn to birds and spread diseases
 
It turns to chemical meditation
It turns to paranoia and frustration
It turns to gray rotting teeth
It turns to entitled, hateful beliefs
 
Implant a thought, sow the seed
Groom xenophobic racist steeds
Loud and dumb without folly
Shouting, "Stop evolving Uber Alles"
 
Logic and compassion regress to selfish superstitions

Implant a thought, sow the seed
Groom xenophobic racist steeds
 
It must be hell to live in fear

From the 2015 limited edition 7 inch "Xenophobe/Fear Itself"

It’s here again 

A black mist that creeps into the air 
Hangs like a veil and turns off the stars 
To the thoughts in the halls of my mind 
Softly it speaks… 

ARISE ARISE ARISE 

I let go and fell into the sky 
Unable to blink or close my eyes 

The world is torn apart 
and reality rearranged 
In a soft voice it speaks… 

DESCEND DESCEND DESCEND 

I fell from the heavens 
Into the sea 
The hands of the water wrapped chains around me 

Placing fear in my heart 
and death in my eyes 
In a soft voice it speaks… 
OBEY OBEY OBEY 

I wander the earth apart from the rest 
Their eyes and laughter dance on my back 
I am filled with their pain 
Till just numbness remains 

The mist hovers 
Dark and quiet 
In a soft voice it speaks… 
DECAY DECAY DECAY

Xenophobe/Fear Itself

Fear Itself

I cannot disjoin the lucid from the unsystematic cognitions
I lie trapped outside, forced to spectate my very own existence
And somehow at the same time locked inside and intertwined
Pieces that will not fit together
 
Forced into place they bow then break
 
Spiraling waves of confusion
Purity and pollution
Clarity and delusion
Interaction and seclusion
 
Hunted like a witch by the tireless hounds of a faceless parasite
The cold sour moon gives up its seat to the suffocating sunlight
I try not to breathe as I hide beneath the bleeding, crawling ground
I can smell their breath, I can feel their eyes, I am so close to being found
Pieces that will not fit together
 
It was dark when I fell apart
I walk in between what is real and what is a dream
It was dark when I fell apart

Pyrrhic Victory

Drifting Shadows In Walking Dreams

You exist, dead star vacuum
Dismembered progress
Subliminal public display
 
You insist, it reawakens
A phantom floats behind you
Its breath falls cold on your neck
 
You can never bring it here
You can never will yourself back
The harder that you try
The more your mind will crack
 
You enlist, raw nerve rotting
Control the herd
Through light, image and word
 
You resist, tasked to suffer
Self-made martyr
Drunk on tears of sympathy
 
You can never bring it here
You can never will yourself back
The harder that you try
The worse your mind will crack
 
Kick against the pricks
Reach into the past
Through the thorns and glass
Grasp onto the nothingness
 
You dismiss the systematic
Deny your evolution
While acting like an animal
 
You are the hands of Mammon
Shape-shifting mask builders from planes of sterile trust
Non-phototactic spoon-fed narcissists that keep clawing
(never cutting through)

Clawing, Clawing, Never Cutting Through

Bring it to life so it may suffer
Make it alive and feed it pain
 
Feed it pain
 
Innocence dreams beneath the rubble
 
Bring it to life so it may suffer
Make it alive and feed it pain
If it gets back on its feet
Then we’ll cut it down again
 
Innocence breathes below the waves
 
Give it eyes to see the horrors
Give it ears to hear the hate
Give it a voice to beg for mercy
Give it hands that tremble and shake
 
Once it arrives
Abandon your fight
Abandon the light
Cast it down
 
Bring it to life so it may suffer
Make it alive and feed it pain
If it gets back on its feet
Then we’ll cut it down again
 
Innocence warmed within napalm fire

Feed It Pain

Lyrics:

I saw the devil
In the woods when I was a child
Alone on a path
Of brittle trees who whisper and sway

Then it appeared as a mirror
It appeared in the mirror

The sun felt cold beneath their shadows
Creeping in beside me
Paralytic disruption
Manifestations exit through the eyes
As a projection
That will inhabit a reflection

Fear is the one who makes us do terrible things
Fear is the old one untouched by time
Fear twists and turns carving lines in the mind

You can’t look away, as it draws in close
You howl out in pain as it rips your flesh from your bones
They crack and tear, they snap and break
Trembling, as you plead, “I see through it”

I see through it

Zao

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