Black Rites

Leviathan devours all

Nameless agents haunt the shadow world
Stateless numbers plan clandestine deeds
To the ranks of the long disappeared
They become your whole reality, your silencer, your lonely God

And across the Styx you'll ride
When torture angels come to take you home

Simulated death endured, rope tears into wrists
Swollen head in blackened hood, blinded blistered face
Hung upright, puking blood, routine torture test
As minions of the State have their way with you

Beaten, drugged, broken limbs
Burned, drowned, dissidents
The work of death, carried out, in all our names again
Rendition is not a problem (until it's you)

By what circumstances do we justify these means
To codify barbarity in practiced policy?
On pious, preached morality we're fed until we choke
Our rhetoric, so righteous, rings a joke to the world

Power thirsts, power spreads, like tentacles from God
Secrets, inquests, illusions and facades
Talons lock, as vultures flock, spreading from DC
Dropped on black sites, erased from memory