Scala Paradisi
The jaws of Apollyon drew nigh Clenched with the fury of undone retribution A terrible shade coiled the sky above Gripping those who gazed upward with fear 'Twas a wretched, beguiling tumult Inducing the beleaguered lost to dance Spinning in a maddening frenzy To a dionysiac rite long since forgotten The sun, cloaked in red, set on the horizon Resplendent with primeval majesty This ancient crimson luminary Once more taking its bow
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Life smells sweet in the groves of joyful Spring The warm air drifts over birth and rebirth A sleepy, slow moving display of mirth Yet a dark conceit doth this season bring Its cruel naïveté veils dearly well The on-rushing finality of death The cold, harsh loneliness of Winter's breath Which, once realized, break the contumely spell Now the luster of the landscape is gone For this wary traveler sees with his eyes That the thin, green veneer no longer hides The barren earth visible in the dawn
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Smoke billows in the small valley below: The woods are alight with a blazing fire As the seeds of vengeance evermore grow; Nature's destruction doth our deeds require And so, Through the black leaves Does the ashen wind come On eaves before midnight Are hopes objects to shun Near the thick roots' grip Is the earth succumb to Hell Before the black dawn Sounds an ominous knell Within the wooden deep Is knowledge withheld And in this black forest Is death beheld
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Instrumental
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
The wolves are out for prey Searching in the acid rain The pale damp corpses Of those who've lost their way Hunting the sodden land Muddied and demure Their eyes pierce like daggers Watching the folly of the damned Man is a wolf to man A beast like no other Man is a wolf to man
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Behind the world of illusion Lies the primordial substance An immeasurable, starless menace Gleaming from the light Of its own doomed creation The self-activity of a blind drive Silence bores a hole Into the wall of Maya Yielding as it crumbles The shiver of mental disquiet; To know is to feel To feel is to fear Witness, fellow wanderer, In the shadow of a fading light, Oblivion's antechamber, The kernel of existence A rapture of unending conception Cursed and alone Nature is bashful, its teeth unseen Resign, lest its fangs reach you And devour you For oblivion's shadow Cannot reach into the calm Abode of resignation
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Heavy limbs And the impression of guilt The marks of an old soul To move without wanting to To speak without meaning to To hear without caring to To see without wishing to To taste without craving to Serving the sentence For the crime of Adam: To exist without needing to
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Hope and purpose Ephemeral, slip From the grasp Of mortal man; Forever sent to The fires of despair But still he yearns For the flames To be quenched; His life in parts A comedy resembles; The whole a tragedy All however is Vanity, senseless And most obscure; Thence is laughter Without arrogance The levity of despair
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Instrumental
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Scale the ladder of the divine And images born of knowledge Sink ever by, the slow fading Of past desires now quieted Divine it is called by the ancient Pilgrims, but there are no gods To aid this climb, for above hovers The thick cloud of unknowing Below lies a tumultuous expanse Churning in every direction An aimless kaleidoscope Of patterns mirrored eternally Life, effervescent in its squalor And hubris, hurriedly spurns This advance, clinging to Its empty temples of deceit
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
Before the precipice A chill was felt And questions heard: 'What means all this? From what arose such A calamity? I venture To know,' said a man Sitting atop his crystalline Pillar, with a conch in One hand and a lotus in The other; quoth the man: 'From savage conceit do these actions spring, Affectioned men who to power must cling; Yet their arrival is not a surprise As these analogies hope to devise: The cycle of life doth the planet's reflect: For ne'er can it wander from nor neglect Attending its course to the letter; So life's history repeats forever, Just as around the fixed, lutescent Sun Has the cerulean Earth always spun; So too in the snow one leaves prints in vain, For Winter's storms shall e'er come again; Thus in the future it may come to pass That our fragile dreams will shatter like glass'
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026
We are each one of us born in darkness And thence shall we disbelievingly go When life's delicate flickering brightness Ceases finally and for all time to glow The world presents itself as a riddle The somber solution to which is will; Life withers away and mountains shrivel As it seeks only its desires to fulfill Never is it totally satisfied, Leaving pain and misery as its mark; To overcome willing some have tried But none can halt the march of the Long Dark
Submitted by Iron_Wraith — Jun 06, 2026