Chasmal Fires

How wise the God who trades his son for lesser men
 Who seek no temple, only avarice and permanence
 Judge not the heart, but thy devotion
 Keep those who remain
 As close to salvation as to destitution
 I can't explain what it means to be whole
 You took that virtue away from me
 A kingdom adorned with the thorns of thy idol
 Who scorn the breath of truth and reason
 We cannot pretend
 That the rules are the same
 For the blasphemer and the saint, the blasphemer and the saint
 We cannot pretend
 That the rules are the same
 For the commoner and the priest, the commoner and the priest
 The toils I've endured are so far beyond meaning
 There is no greater voice, only tenets and blood-stained stones
 Your archaism dies this day
 You are but the shadow of a lie
 Feeble and brittle like silence
 Bending the fear of earnest held faith
 You took the world from us
 From cracked and sullen hands
 As hope slipped through our fingers
 And sank beneath the sands
 Fire sows the fire
 Wrath rends retribution
 Effigies casting shadows
 Likening tyrants to deities
 Befelling monuments
 To prove hence from this day
 What's written in stone
 Can crumble to dust
 To what end was I made this way
 If my nature is a transgression
 I cannot build myself up again
 To watch myself fall apart at the seams
 I cannot walk if I'm destined to fall
 Through trials by design of cruelty and hate
 You are so frail
 You hide behind your fear
 Your faith is a mask for your insecurity
 And you wield it like a sword
 Summoning the flood, the call of the raging seas
 Apollyon's wake before the world
 We ache, we fear and we suffer for naught
 Undue and unjust is the the folly of Christ
 Transient echoes from a long lost era
 Cannot conceive my fate
 I suffer the want for a better world
 And the need for compassion in terrible times
 Great is my weakness to punish myself for
 A love forbidden by those who bore me
 Behind the weight of this cage of bones
 Is a heart that sinks at the sights of greed
 Of a Lord who damns his beloved creation
 For sins he determined his sons to commit
 I cannot pretend
 That I am the same
 As I once was
 As I once was
 If dreams lie in tatters
 And a soul knows no purpose
 What can I hope for
 What can I live for
 There was a time where
 I could forgive
 But I've lost so much
 So fucking much
 I hate that I hate
 As it brings me closer to you
 I am not what I am
 I am not what I am
 I am so lost in this place
 These vast surroundings compel me to dread
 As I sink within myself
 Forging an irrepassable path
 I can't regret what I feel is just
 I am one with the sword you held to me
 Reflection in the steel
 I am not what I am
 Forged and contorted
 I am what I am
 Forged and contorted