~ Memory Lane ~

Abandoned on a hillside at a journey's end disguised
Stands a cottage at the mercy of the brutal summer sun
The outer shell is covered in a pleasant veil of lies
That it wasn’t built to be what it’s become

’Cause hidden in the walls behind a rusted, broken loom
Is a lone concealed staircase reaching deep into the dark
And lost there are the echoes from a slaughtered baby's tomb
That are chained inside the silence torn apart

And here a young boy, shivering, controlled by endless fears
Holds a candle casting silhouettes of helplessness and pain
As somewhere in the dungeon at the bottom of the stairs
He returns into its corridor of frames

A place where cursed reality enfolds on faded dreams
And where scenes of death contain much less than what they first appear
Each image tells a story that is quietly revealed
As it changes in the light that’s drawing near...

The first one shows a baby with his mother yet unseen
Passing by the house of horrors on an inner city street
A silent phantom takes her hand and pulls her through the wall
As her newborn slams the frozen road beneath

The next is of a lonely toddler learning how to walk
As he glimmers into view again, but not for very long
’Cause no one’s there to hold him when he falls and hits the floor
So the cold embraces him until he’s gone

Another traces moments on the terrace of a home
Where a winter storm is bleeding through the sunlight in his hair
The snow becomes his blanket and he's never seen again
But it seems that no one knows he isn’t there

And then appears this child upon a bed of solid ice
Where he cries himself awake in fear and reaches for his knife
’Cause all alone he wanders down the road to Paradise
But his dreams reveal a demon by his side

And late one night he’s aging though he’s only eight years old
'Til the moonlight paints a symphony of rainbows in the sky
He tries to smile, enraptured by the promise there foretold
Then he turns and runs away, not knowing why...

In every frame thereafter spins a shaded swirling void
Where the blackness overpowers art and suffocates all faith
Where clouds of crows enshroud his final resting place unknown
'Til the candle leads him back the way he came

Then falling in the dark behind him all that still remains
Is the overwhelming sorrow that comes out when he’s not there
A row of empty mirrors in their scarred and broken frames
Folding visions of the depth of his despair

But one small flame was glowing through these windows of the past
Where a hated baby’s heart was ever crying to be held
’Til finally his destiny was burned into the glass
To be cradled in the arms of someone else

And now he holds an angel's hand who brings him to the dawn
Through the entrance of the dungeon where a peaceful change awaits
To save him from this place where neither one of them belongs
Then she disappears from view without a trace

He hears his mother's cruel echo cursing him once more
As his tears begin to seep into the scorched unholy ground
He leaves the snuffed out candle just inside the closing door
Then he lays down in the dust without a sound

He feels the warmth of healing rain descend from far above
As the colors of an artist's palette flood the morning sky
Where someday he'll awaken in a world of endless love
In a garden filled with Milk, in robes of white...

And now his spirit rises from the place it cannot stay
As his lips release a painful sigh then gently cease to breathe
His dead decaying body that the wind shall blow away
From the gravestone no one else will ever see

At rest from wretched tragedy with memories untouched
Of a dream forever ended but remembered just this once,
“I tried in vain to wash away your hatred with my love
As I died alone, all covered in your blood”

He's waiting now to be reborn, his tortured mind now frozen
In the long forgotten hallway of this godforsaken place
Where all these haunted mirrors are the teardrops gone forever
From reflections of his mother's darkened face