Mariners at Perdition’s lighthouse
With bludgeoning smog raised
From slumber, to yet more grinding hours
Discord's in the deep
Immiscible holy oil
A glass of tar to a drowning man
Welding soul and iron, the shipyards
Will make arsenic eaters of us all
Swallowing blight to bear its burden
Broken mariners, building
Arks from whale’s rusted ribs
Stolen ores from slaves a world away

As pretty as syphilis; there’s no vindicating this

They, the crucified, on ferrous beams
Rivets pounding into arthritic palms
And a thousand years of cruel, ringed fingers
Grasping in earnest at saline rags
O, Morningstar! Sing in dissonance
To lightning coils at the beacon’s head

As infants to scale the peaks of refuse
To scrape the last threads of life
The pitiful dregs of flesh that cling
To bones cast off from Zion
O, Morningstar! Sing in dissonance
A verse for an onerous dawn
An aria in an oppressive key
Atonal ringing in their sodden void
They see the lecherous twilight, that
Daily, caresses the sanctimonious
The voluptuous paunch of the pious
Who gorge on doubt and faltering faith
Who sell their extortions as sins forgiven
And crack every bone for the marrow

To elucidate the thought of industriarchs
And to set their gears a-churning

Innumerous days spent
Dredging the catarrh
From the larynx of the Clyde
The strings of its voicebox
Bind Hephaestus by his hair
Club-foot cripple
Caught in cacophonies a-pounding
Crucified on ferrous beams
With rivets in his palms

Spines under lock
Binding the aberrant and the orthodox
Spiral staircase, sickly pale
As pretty as syphilis
There’s no vindicating this
Give me strength
Give me strength