Polished Faults (radio) (1)

[Intro] [fingerpicked acoustic guitar, soft vocal harmonies] [Verse 1] [melodic male vocals] Yeah, street level lobby floor Camera above reception Rules drafted upstairs By people who never stand Where consequence lands Polish above fault and grain [Verse 2] [rhythmic spoken-word flow, boom-bap drums enter] Lobby law, polished floor, tailored fraud and wool Hands draft exceptions, trap doors and claws Blame who falls through 'cause gets quoted, clause gets buried Punctuation shifts burden, one signature shields millions One misstep gets terminated, B47 number overhead Mother folds the same prescription twice beside a leg Not covered, one database field flip, now breathing ash Too much cursor click, coverage stripped, no speech, no gavel Decision crosses fiber 'til a body has to handle it Patience weighed, payment drains the patient [Chorus] [melodic vocals, bass enters] Harm changes hands Clean hands stay clean when harm changes hands Who signed? Who gained? Who became the math? Polish holds 'til the fault talks back [Verse 3] [spoken-word flow] Permission leased, firewall wrapped around participation Terms and conditions turn to terms of habitation Click agree, fee concealed, three screens past attention Rent jumps 47 while the lift awaits inspection Unit 3B, administrative adjustment Grocery list slash milk goes bad, transit card survived That's economics, not the graph and the briefing The thing she leaves behind so she can get to work Monday One side owns the exits, one side bargains with removal Calling that freedom doesn't make leverage mutual [Bridge] [intense rhythmic delivery] Market value markers, remarketing margins Widen profile pars, purchase path private Habit atomized, scroll, stop, tap, watch Attention split the fractions, behavioral bids hit auction Before the thumb completes the action Rent search cross-reference, lender slot selected 241 rent extension, 242 payday lender First ad slot, thumb above apply, grease crescent On the protector, knee gets priced in real time Customer becomes inventory, inventory predicts customer Prediction nudges activity, measure, model, modify, measure Sell the forecast, shape conduct, call the forecast better Cut track, price, remove four blunt verbs Now somebody owns what happened Committee room 906, timer arm 90 seconds For the work, a lobbyist gets lunch, boot heel squeak Paper creased in his fist, daughter needs insulin Hours got cut, rent rose, timer flashes red Before medicine, a hydro, transit or the meal Thank you for your testimony, next item, decision division Consequence distributed, signature, six officers From the household it depleted, no one writes ration or insulin In the minutes, someone set 90 seconds, somebody signed the limits Power loves nouns, cut becomes reduction Remove becomes displacement, price beyond reach Becomes market adjustment, a sentence has no subject The rent rose anyway, I used to write empire, corruption, regime Control, convenient enemies, then I watched a woman slide One prescription back, watched a father weigh cereal against transit Watched 90 seconds expire while a man tried to explain Why his daughter's dosage became negotiable Who drafted? Who approved? Who profited? Who rationed? Don't give me market forces, give me the meeting Don't give me efficiency, show me who stopped eating Don't give me shared benefit, name the bodies in the room This is complicated, complicated for whom? Nothing personal, I look down at the invoice Somebody's surname survived the abstraction [Chorus] [melodic vocals] Harm changes hands Clean hands stay clean when harm changes hands Who signed? Who gained? Who became the math? [Outro] [acoustic guitar, drums fade] Lobby closes at six, buffer crosses the floor under reception The fissure passes the first tile by morning Cosmetic at 8:03, she rolls her chair back One wheel catches, grout beside her desk Has lifted barely a millimeter Upstairs, the meeting starts on time The meeting starts on time