Swollen, it swelters in its veil of flesh
Contagion restrained by a trembling crust
The stench of our failures, confined under pressure
Fermenting in darkness, awaiting a rupture
Liquid debasement perverting the body

And when our old cells can hold back no longer
And the murmur of sepsis grows too loud to smother
Our sins will burst forth for the whole world to see
Our ocean of pale, sickly sweetness flowing free
Fluid confession consuming the city

The rush of our pus will bleach the cruel streets
For when all is corruption, no act is obscene

Down at Liberty Ashes
The rigs run thousand-store routes
That take 14 hours if the trashbags ain't bladed
Or belching out flames from the stow
The drivers chomp pills to push through without stopping
They're hiring more help out of pocket
If those flunkies get bodied by garbage or wheel, well
This business got costs, ya know

And hey, they all had a choice
Anyway, they all had a choice

Down in Okie, the judge gave God a hand
Snatching up cons from jail for the plant
Where their work would make them free
From addiction, mincing chickens
On the state's dime, chained to the line, stricken
The work's grisly, but the profit's tidy
And they chose those mangled hands
Over prison

Out on the plains, he slams booze and weed
To smother remembrance of rancid sliding grain
Compressing his lungs, like industry's crumbling teeth
In that dire silo where they pulled him free
But lost both his friends, still in their teens
Submersed in the corn, crushed out of shape
Like his Busch cans, their livid limbs
Twisted and washed out with the feed
Hours later, the fruits of subsidy
Still studded their cold skin, like a golden plague
They'd just listened to their managers
They should have chosen better

They always had a choice and they made it
They got the contracts
They signed on the lines that were dotted
And they couldn't read the fine print
But even so, they knew this:

This big machine eats everything
And the only way out's
Through a hole in the ground

[Instrumental]

The old days look so rich
Resplendent in retrospect
Your milky lenses reflect, refract
Glinting with the sweat of the lean years
When you're sliced up whip-thin
No more marbled fat, just gristle and fear

You were swollen with moments to lose, when
The digits dialed up their demand: "Choose:"
"Trade time for our tender or fade like a bruise,"
So you fed yourself in, you fed yourself in

And everything's efficient now
You praise the daily miracles
That tumble from each slice of blue
Light that models, fosters fools

Oh, you know it felt just fine
To live surveilled, revealed inside
Each thought coded and catalogued
To hide nothing, nothing at all

And what a subtle price you paid
Grey flab strip-mined like clay
For canny chips to carve away

And those artfully arbitraged wounds
Seeped spirit into the gloom
Where sieves abide, unseen by your side
Discerning the churning, confined lusts that drive you

And when your flensed focus ran thin
Your shameful suckling began
With thirst unslaked, you'd take and take
The patent cures and devil's bargains

So in the end, those fatty folds
Weren't worth so much at all
Just another flipped commodity
One more thing your old self owned

But God, you were so rich
In the head, way back
Not broke, blind, or slack
Like the lean years

Rise and praise the hungry sky
Another day in paradise
This pantheon franchises dreams
Potemkin zealot, you ain't guaranteed
Endless sainted light

Your rented cell's a trap to feed
A hallowed spot you barely keep
So get them swaying, draw a crowd
Seed your word inside their mouths

You're praying smarter
You're praying harder
You're spieling your blessings
Like a street-corner barker
'Cuz you can't be shy, seeking favor divine
It's a victimless sin to build your schtick a shrine

And there's no percentage in heaven
Knowing your woes
In the pros, you've got peers
Who'd give up a limb
To shiv and supplant you
So buck up, heed those better angels
Offer bland benedictions and false cheer

And with a little luck
Plus some real proselytic talk
You'll ascend above the muck
Gain traction in the empyrean
Meet the gatekeepers, grip their grease
Exalt the flock you plan to fleece
Preach pro bono, damn the costs
Enrich your soul before your grace is lost

So whenever your account is down
Look on the bright side
Until the jig's up and you're cast out
You can still bathe
In every dawn's fanged limelight
Here in paradise

Once we made our home in the trees
Lived innocent, vicious, free
'Til our souls hung thick on the boughs
The rent went up, we got squeezed out

Fanning out on empty russet plains
We scored channels into the clay
Scheming to siphon the rivers and rains
Longing for lushness and somewhere to stay

Then bodies of martyrs swelled the headwaters
Then dust bloomed where our lifesblood once guttered
Then black rot hollowed out our crops and our daughters
Then the land's lords made their offer: bondage or slaughter

So it's time to move house again
Hauling our memories over the mountains
And seas, to some other benighted land
For space to subdue, a new life at a bargain
Where we'll take whatever we need
To live is to lust; progeny demands greed

But by time's cruel hand, we're reborn again as lessees
On farms, in cities, in factories
The settings keep shifting, the gentry's names change
But the tale and our role are always the same
Tomorrow's eviction: the price we're born to pay
Possession's iron law, the timeless tenant's way

And now the ground shifts under our feet
And our debts shadow us into our sleep
So that we never rest, we just slave for a seat
At the table of gold, as if we're not the feast
Like cattle we are butchered, like kings they will eat
For the landless and luckless are such easy meat
And the cost of our living will only increase

[Instrumental]

Despised are minds that sweat their debt
Spill their guts with bitter breath
Buck against the work harness
By the bottom line

Stow your tired sorrow; everyone's depressed
And no investor favors assets in distress
You'll get froze out if your drive is in doubt
So stand up straight, clean up your mess

It's time to recoup what you owe
It's time to make some margins grow
You joined the portfolio at the moment of birth
Time to cover your cost, time to yield your worth

Become your best self
Persist to produce, deny yourself rest
Maintain, by false health be blessed
For every pain repressed, a palliative caress
Keeps you by wealth possessed
Laboring for change, straining to impress

The market is cornered
The future is clear
You'll serve with a smile
Or die of despair

Wounded and weak
But still dangerous
I'm hissing and spitting
With my back to the precipice

No hope for a clean escape
Violence will have the final say
Adrenaline floods bloodied limbs
For the dance of the desperate

With my last breath, I'll make you pay
Rely on primal instinct
Until silence displaces pain
I'll greet the end with claws and teeth

[Instrumental]

We mourned you
Before you were born
Shed tears for all you'd never know
The quiet bite of fresh snow
The cry forlorn
Of insects and sparrows
Wind in the trees, harvesting
Drained leaves, splendor-worn
Or scattering dew, in the dregs of spring
An August sun that hangs warm
And nurtures the earth's largesse
Not some fatal furnace
Suspended in darkness
For these, we mourned

You inherit the dust, sons and daughters
Perfect silence, endless summer

And you'll live, live, live
Fierce and hardened
By the end, forever nigh
You'll scavenge fat
From the land's shriveled carcass
But never thrive, never forgive
Us, who drank the world dry
And thirsting still, poured you in
Whose same spasms blind
Bind you by the brainstem
And so you'll strive
Through the heat and the stillness
With a strength we could not teach
For it was nature's to give

You inherit the dust, sons and daughters
Perfect silence, endless summer

You're gonna begin
The way you will end
Among your brothers

You'll grow low cunning
Stretch scrabbling limbs longer
Twitch your greedy whiskers
Make a friend of your hunger

You'll learn to aspire, eye the climb up the ladder
Master the tunnels, subsisting on refuse
Keep tabs on your rivals, picking off the weakest
Take the old pleasures from flesh that runs slower

Gonna swim deep in the sewers
'Cuz you're built for oiled waters

Sometimes your coarse mind will wonder
Why the spoils ain't sweeter
Why you can't quell your yearning
What's hollow in your nature

Later you're larded, a royal weight-thrower
Nestled in your cortege of suck-ups and betas
Tails tangled up; common filth brings you closer

Gonna go greyer, wonder why you're so tired
Bound to your bootlickers while the flooding creeps higher

No longer seaworthy, the knotted clan's squirming
The rain is coming down, the gutters are bleeding
No crown will spare your kind from what you've got coming
The final instinct will be recursive gnawing
Among your brothers