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TOURNIQUET LYRICS
"Where Moth and Rust Destroy" (2003)
1. Where Moth and Rust Destroy
2. Restoring the Locust Years
3. Drawn and Quartered
4. A Ghost At the Wheel
5. Architeuthis
6. Melting the Golden Calf
7. Convoluted Absolutes
8. Healing Waters of the Tigris
9. In Death We Rise
1. Where Moth and Rust Destroy
[Matthew 6: 19, Luke 16:33]
The world is quick to tell us
The media compels us
For me to have and you to not
Is the difference in our lot
If you must compound your joy
Then you must acquire this toy
Just remember this - a kiss is just a kiss
A smile is just a smile
The things you own will not atone
Or spare you from the life you've sown
Where moth and rust destroy
A land of tears and sadness
When those who put their faith in things
Find out it's only madness
Enjoy all that He gives you
But make sure you can see through
The haze that blocks the clarity
Of seeing the eternity
Of things that last and things that don't
Of choices we should make, but won't
If you will just incline your ear
There is something you must hear
Heed his words and you'll be free
From loving more than Me
Where moth and rust destroy
A land of tears and sadness
When those who put their faith in things
Find out it's only madness
Choose - you must choose
You must choose
Who you serve
Just waiting in the darkened wings
The voice that says to trust in things
Aspire to acquire - aspire to acquire
Light the sacrificial fire
Death to things
2. Restoring the Locust Years
[Joel 2:25, 1 Peter 5:10]
The path to healing forks too many times
The road to contentment is hard to align
Out of the anguish - the quiet voice is mesmerizing
Great God Jehovah sympathizing
Manifold is misery - symbiotic history of trials
Soon a yard turns into miles - a day becomes a year
No path set before me presents itself as clear - confusion without peer
The cudgel of forlorn dreams - hits me square and final
Restoring the locust years
What you cannot do for yourself
There is One who is able
To restore the years the locust ate
When sorrow has it's grip on you
Giving you no reason to submit to any other
Manifold is misery - symbiotic history of trials
Soon a yard turns into miles - a day becomes a year
No path set before me presents itself as clear - confusion without peer
The cudgel of forlorn dreams - hits me square and final
Restoring the locust years
3. Drawn and Quartered
Deliver to me the thieves, the murderers
And those with whom I find no fault
Just give me bodies - and the means to kill
It matters not who is guilty, who is innocent
It only matters where my fancy leads me
I live to please myself as you blood spills out
When you expire - there's a hundred more:
All who came to see - the curious, the morbid
Nero decides their fate - the arena becomes an assorted
Spectacle played out en masse
You soul means nothing, your pain even less
As your loved one plead for my forgiveness
Not an ounce of mercy will I give out
Bind the ropes, set the horses afoot
Wailing crise, limbs torn out by the root
Entertaining drunken guests as the Christians are martyred
Crimes so petty - the result - drawn and quartered
The result - drawn and quartered
How can it be, as my own death is imminent
That you, oh Lord, still love me
A life in the pleasure of torture and murder
I can't understand it - I can't understand
4. A Ghost At the Wheel
You finally noticed
Did it dawn on you slowly
Or was it a blast of cold air
You're adrift on an ocean of silence
You've lost track of the last time there was anyone here
You sought the silence
Scuttled any and all who didn't see things the same
Your actions turned quickly to habits
You slipped your moorings
And soon you were drifting away
Swept with the tide
Pulled out to sea
No course or sense of direction
Swept with the tide
Pulled out to sea
A lost ship adrift
With a ghost at the wheel
To some you're a memory
Others choose to say I do not remember at all
Some wait and pray and scan the horizon
Hoping that one day they'll see you come home
Swept with the tide
Pulled out to sea
A lost ship adrift
With a ghost at the wheel
5. Architeuthis
There is a beast that does exist
Not just a myth - the facts persist
Known from the dead that washed ashore
From modern graphs to old folklore
Not yet one ever seen alive
Though scientists and divers strive
Architeuthis - show yourself to us
Among the largest of the planet
The giant squid - the architeuthis
How can this massive creature
Escape the hordes of searching eyes
Escape the wisdom of the wise
Escape the sonar, the bathyscaphe
Returns with countless plotted graphs
Architeuthis - show yourself to us
I know God I've never seen
Not merely just a wishful dream
Alive, nut not for us to see
But living in the hearts of men
So great is His love for us
Yet many seekers look in vain
If you will set aside your pride, your arrogant facade
Then you can enter into grace
Architeuthis show yourself to us
Let us gaze at your haunting frame
We know you're real - no longer conceal
What bloated corpses already revealed
The last of the giant living mysteries
Architeuthis - show yourself to us
6. Melting the Golden Calf
Bring us your trinkets, your baubles of gold
Join the debauchery, the young and the old
Let us bow down to his great golden calf
Darken our spirits, as we dance and we laugh
The golden calf takes shape - the idol of black hearts
The whole deed, from the sum of its parts
From the healer of sorrow came a great molten blast
With holy tongue of fire, the commandments were cast
Down from the mountain with two tablets of stone
In countenanc white, Moses walked down alone
Instructed by God to bring the people His word
Intoxicated by evil, their judgment obscured
Why should we listen to his set of his rules ?
Deeper in sin sinks the assembly of fools
Though shalt not make graven images
Visiting evil in the land of the dust
Though shalt not have other gods before Me
Then only then can you truly be free
Let us bow down to the King of kings
Melt down this idol and the evil it brings
7. Convoluted Absolutes
[2 Chronicles 1:11, Ecclesiastes 7:25]
I feel numb
And think we're half asleep
Our collective sense of outrage
Has gone the way dodo birds and Model T's
We're being trained
We tell them what they want just to appease
It's the end of absolutes
Welcome to the death of meaning
Mice will run a maze for cheese
Koko signs her A - B - C's we think she's talking to her kitten in the corner
Pavlov's dogs would drool if they could hear their chiming cue
Just like them we've been conditioned
We're going dumb
Have we forgotten how to speak
Would mute cries fall on deafened ears
If we could get ourselves to give voice to our pleas
We're so well trained
That's the way it is and so we'll let it be
If there are no absolutes
Our objections have no meaning
Birds will learn to talk for treats
Flipper laughed and danced to please and avoid electrocution
Pavlov's dogs would drool if they could hear their chiming cue
Just like them we've been conditioned
Feeling numb
Half asleep
Being trained
We're just like sheep
Going dumb
We never speak
So well trained
The truth we never seek
8. Healing Waters of the Tigris
[Genesis 2:14, Revelation 7:17]
Through famine, flood and choking mud the ancient river flows
Bringing life and death, transporting friend and foe
To build their cities by its banks the hopeful people chose
Fortify the walls - the fortress grows
Secure within the confiness of the stone
But what awaited them they couldn't have known
Healing waters of the Tigris
Ever flowing and all knowing
Healing waters of the Tigis
Washing over me
612 BC the Tigris floods and builds in turbulence
Pagan land of Nineveh - self-righteous over confidence
The rising torrent crushed stone and the courses on it's way
God's judgment on that fatedful day - a terrible price to pay
The greatest city of all - Nineveh - with a towering city walls
The awesome power of the swollen river Tigris - caused that massive city to fall
Healing waters of the Tigris
Ever flowing and all knowing
Living water of Jehovah
Balm of Gilead
9. In Death We Rise
[Luke 23:43, Matthew 11:29-30]
Fear not, the grave has no power
For you will be with Me this hour
Through myriad eons of lost time
In sea of coal black sin
I was there - I am now
I have been there - I have been there
Through dark medieval ages, and biblical invasions
The lonely sea - tranquility
The still reflection stares at me
Is broken by the sullen tears of loss and grief
Or loss and grief
Come to Me, who are weary
And I will give you rest for your soul
My yoke and burden are light
To free you from your own plight
The sea of grace will separate your sin from Me
Your sin, your sin, from Me
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