The Briar Fields: Are You Pleased With Your Creation?

Are You Pleased With Your Creation?


I ran through the test tube cornfields
Past the old headhunter’s lodge
I was running for the shelter
Of your familiar satin mirage
Their kind of world, it ain’t meant for me
Their sensations, they are not pure
They got me feeling like a devil’s child
Somebody told me you had a cure

Well you nurtured my perversion
Fed from your pictorial spring
And you looked on with your sadist pride
As I sprouted my black wings
I can’t think of anything else now
Identities become objects in my view
And when extremes become the everyday
Will you show me something new?

(Chorus)
Are you pleased with your creation?
You have taken all my grace
These brass hooks for my fingernails
This barbwire on my face
Will you ever be at peace?
I do wonder... as I hang

Well I gave you all of the keys
And you opened up my mind
Then you shackled me with these chemicals
And you taxed me every time
By the shore you milk the newborn moon
With your crystal, studded leech
And I watch you, from the tide pool
The student that you teach

I see you now with very different eyes
You’re not the savior I first perceived
A long shadow seems to follow you
Out from a past life that you can’t retrieve
Your wisdom now, I can no longer trust
My grand ambitions, they poison my mind
I plot my coarse for the land of the dead
With all your shackles trailing behind

(Chorus)
Are you pleased with your creation?
You have taken all my grace
These brass hooks for my fingernails
This barbwire on my face
Will you ever be at peace?
I do wonder... as I hang

All your paintings now hang crooked
Before your greatest masterpiece
Your castle’s pillars, they start to buckle
You seem unstable, to say the least
You’re short on change and your wishing well
Like a hungry baby, it cries for more
The moon hangs low like a withered rose
Your empty classroom: the howling shore

***

And by the desecrated tombstone
I saw you lay your hammer down
And you wailed out like a tortured bird
And your diamonds stained the ground
Your great vision now all full of holes
Like a prion ravaged mind
You held so tight the grains of sand
That now you cannot find
You said: father I – I have played your game
And once again, the house has won
My students now share the face on the stream
So give me peace; my work is done

(Chorus)
Are you pleased with your creation?
You have taken all my grace
These brass hooks for my fingernails
This barbwire on my face
Will you ever be at peace?
I do wonder... as I hang

As I hang…
As I hang…
By the umbilical cord, from this tree
As I hang…
As I hang…
Saying Lord, it’s so good to be free!
As I hang!
As I hang!
Like a vulture with pierced feet
As I hang!
As I hang!
By the lamppost over the street!