Shadows of Death, Pt. 1 Lyrics

Shortly after Angelina died

She dropped by unexpectedly

To remind me what it was

To be in love

That inspired, sacred feeling

Effervescent and indestructible

She didn't return to remind me of her cancer

Her pain, the failed dream and broken home

Only of love and the grand promise

To transform any landscape

Inspiring the music that she had lost

Conjuring kingpins for monetary mastery

Over admittance to the one percent

Her ornate lobby of opulence.

But even all of Steve Jobs' money

Couldn't save his life

Nor can the comforts of technology

Guarantee love's survival

Speeding privileged hard-working

Failing on a grand level that few even knew

Most only envied while enduring limitations

Of their age, Surviving

In an allergy-free balloon

With artificial limbs and only

Determination and composure

Lest it all be too late

As that beautiful smile succumbs

To mounting surgeries and failing relations

Paid for by the hardening ruthlessness

Of self-preservation

Angelina revisited to reclaim all she

Had lost in life. To erase the image

Of who she was from her deathbed

Who she had become but not who

She was when she was young

And I had to look away

As she drives off down the alley

Look away as Republics spin their scene

Look away as airplanes fall from the sky

Look away from another's nervous eye

Wondering

If we're all prisoners

Of love, of greed

Prisoners of social media and TV

Credit cards, smartphones and SUVs

Prisoners of doctrine. Prisoners of art

The work, the grind that grafts our souls

Turns molds to stone. Earth to ash

Humble revolutions for what they're worth

Arms and bullets, bombs and gas

Prisoners of responsibility alas

The values that we share. Arguments we wear

Choices we appraise. Children that we raise

Destiny encumbers aisles walked in supermarket mazes

Surreal dykes protecting irreverent foundations

An addiction counter of strange ambitions

Nagging on the radiated marrow, fidgeting

In painfully bright hospital light

I had to look away

Towards a soft candle flickering

In a room mostly void of furniture

Long ago. A simple meal. A satisfying

Cheap bottle of wine

Taking for granted

That the future would all be built

Upon this hour of foreplay

That proved instead to be

The crowning jewel.