In a recent IRC chat, Mike said the following:
[Portnoy] starting with SFAM, we kinda layed down a new lyric rule….if you are going to present lyrics, they must be properly formed, phrased, constructed, etc. to go with the melodies
[Portnoy] JM’s lyrics were always kind of presented in a more free form poetic manner and it was up to us (Kev, JP or myself) to kind of shape them to the song
[Portnoy] to be blatently honest, we wanted everybody to kind of “carry their own weight” when writing lyrics, and since then John has kind of backed off
[Portnoy] the door is always open to him to contribute again if he’d like…
When Portnoy left, there was a hole to fill in the Lyrics contribution department, so we finally got a John Myung penned track in Breaking All Illusions.
