Tragic Kingdom

Here sat Babylon Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong Like a curse upon This tragic kingdom Dusk descended like a final curtain On this stage only death was certain Singing through the turrets Like a velvet serenade Played near a grave Sentries and gentry, afforded the bloom Of a red setting sun and a bloodletting moon Applauded, then accorded them Portents of doom Almost too soon... They pissed upon the winds That rocked the cradles Laughing over those hovels grovelling to wolves They kissed and sinned Under overstocked tables As the world outside grew sodden and mauled Here sat Babylon Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong Like a curse upon This tragic kingdom Gilles sat sipping absinthe From a goblet made of bone As lightning ripped and danced upon The flagstones Wayward fantasies marched on home Now the treetops bowed to whisper In a thin Disney veneer They knew the howls so exquisitely honed Were those of children, disappeared They'd listened to the winds Heard the murdered Abel Re-christened in the stone jaws of Tiffauges Where the list of sins Grew beyond a fable They now roared abroad, restless with debauch Restless with debauch Restless with debauch This tragic kingdom Would see God's Angels walk... Satanic, enigmatic His black magic was ecstatic Megalomaniac in titanic displays Dressed in the best Wicked britches of the West He cut a mourning figure in glorious swathe But all his nightmares would come true Drowning in a stream of conscious pleasure. Here sat Babylon! Fattened by the purses of the worst and wrong Where the decadent tastes of Hell grew strong Like a curse upon This tragic kingdom Like a curse upon This tragic kingdom The moon bleared through the skeletal trees Averting her face from congenital deeds Thus eves grew murky, haunted, grieved About this place laced with demon seed Blanchet, a priest, his book of lies, Exonerated him from Gilles' crimes Announced his fears, one night of sighs A night for cursing nursery rhymes In the light of the fire wrestling feckless shadows (The tracks get blacker for this tragical kingdom) Gilles' frightening wealth, his tightening grip On the weak and the rubies that his coffers let slip Steered to near ruin in successive years Of the most of excess and the best of it here In the light of the fire wrestling reckless shadows