Calamus Will Animate
Archspire
[Intro]
Calamus, taken to the pen to relive
Every identity we replicate
Without will they live again within our intimate collective
Animate
All the dead we bring into it
A burrow
Of human
Memory
The pen, the feather and the needle are alike in death and life

[Verse 1]
Looking back on what had happened when the feathers had arrived
I realize I was not alone
I can recall the men had got infected by it too
Having contact with the foreign components infected them
Before, the factory was known to make the highest quality of bedding
Cutting, filling, stitching fabric with the finest down from all around the world
Yet this down flew through our death dream barrier
Intact
[Chorus]
Calamus will animate
Its contents are hostile
The A.U.M. will kill everybody not in this compound
The dead I bring to them awake
And join in flight above my head
Calamus will animate
Its contents are hostile
The A.U.M. will kill everybody not in this compound
The dead I bring to them awake
And join in flight above my head

[Verse 2]
When the ink coating the wings made contact with the workers' skin, it crept into their blood
Turning them inhumanly violent
They grabbed and tore and bit and clawed at one another and themselves
Gravity and death from loss of blood had no effect on any member of the crew during their frantic battle to relieve their bodies from the ether lifting them into the air

[Verse 3]
Die, then elevate
Fusing remnants of spent bodies
Weaving bones and organs into an inverted nest dug in the ceiling
The black sludge casting out from the center as a starving bird of prey
I heard its voice and felt its need to find the child made of teeth, and begin the human murmuration

[Chorus]
Calamus will animate
Its contents are hostile
The A.U.M. will kill everybody not in this compound
The dead I bring to them awake
And join in flight above my head
Calamus will animate
Its contents are hostile
The A.U.M. will kill everybody not in this compound
The dead I bring to them awake
And join in flight above my head
[Bridge 1]
Its banshee wail demanding feed
I hear its pain and become its keeper
I rip the living from the night
Like pulling worms from soil

[Bridge 2]
A.U.M. watches these sky burials
Calamus will animate
Calamus will animate

[Guitar solo]

[Verse 4]
The boy lay like a wet mound of dust on the rotting factory floor
I knew the black fluid hid itself in the deformed corpse of this child
Finally, after hours into cutting, lifting, pulling, sawing, crunching, clipping, I had found it
My crude autopsy revealed
Bounty nesting in replace of the marrow in the young one's bones
The second I saw it, it saw me
I knew its face, changing relentlessly
It was The Drip
I had it contained as instructed
Filling up many clusters of hypodermic needles with the matter
I administered it into a new subject each night, a new life
One with every full rotation of the clock
I've seen those hands meet then disengage a thousand times
[Chorus]
Calamus will animate
Its contents are hostile
The A.U.M. will kill everybody not in this compound
The dead I bring to them awake
And join in flight above my head
Calamus will animate
Its contents are hostile
The A.U.M. will kill everybody not in this compound
The dead I bring to them awake
And join in flight above my head

[Bridge 3]
Its banshee wail demanding feed
I hear its pain and become its keeper

[Verse 5]
A.U.M. allowed me to live off the organs once the people took flight
They do not keep me against my will, yet I refuse to run
Every day I climb the stairs outside this door and view the horde of lifted dead that they conduct behind the factory walls
I must hold on to the final tier of focus
I still have to scribe these happenings in hopes that someone will know what went on here
I can feel the pressure of their unified, unscripted flight pounding air down on the floorboard, just a plank's width above

[Outro]
I rip the living from the night
Like pulling worms from soil
Write the lyrics for a rock song made in 2017, titled "Calamus Will Animate", by artist "Archspire".