What Lye Beneath

The burning of cigarettes sculpt
  The dream clouds above our heads
Darkening the silver lining a charcoal black
  While the silhouettes of strangers dance on the smoke

Ashes fall like dead stars in a tray of night
  Where nothing is meant to shine
But we'll wish upon them anyway
  And chant our nursery rhymes as psalms of salvation

Prayers pile up like debt on the shoulders of God
  We've made a Titan out of Him
A prisoner bound to His own creation
  A slave for the pleasure of mankind

Our values and beliefs are buried alive in dust
  They scream from their graves like the blood of Abel
But the deaf can only hear so much
  The blind can only see so far

And so the hands we use to hold our children
  Are stained with the blood of those we've slain
The lips we touch to our lover's brows
Are chapped from shouting slander

Clutching on to the idea we are merely human
  Like children grasping to their quilts during a storm
Caresses our minds into a steady stream of thoughts
  And the weight of the world grows slightly heavier