[OVERTURE — "FALL OF THE REPUBLIC"] [Martial snare dissolving into howl] The country split like kindling and I picked the losing side— Surrendered at Chattanooga with my captain dead beside me in the mud. They didn't take me prisoner. A prisoner has rights, Has a treaty and a timeline and eventual discharge. No—they walked me to a platform in the Memphis Friday lights And they sold me like a tractor. Lot Fourteen. Sold at large. The auctioneer said Strip him. Said Rotate him. Said Begin At fifteen thousand—look at those teeth, look at that skin. Forty thousand to the dandy with the diamond on his pinky and the grin. Forty thousand for the sergeant. Wrap him up. Truck him in. [REFRAIN v1] [Driving, syncopated] Burn the name right off the shoulderblade and file the man to bone— I'm the thing you bought on Friday, I'm the flesh without the throne. But a brand is just a scar, sir, and a scar is just a sign That the body heals around it. And the body, sir, is mine. You can own the deed and not the land. You can hold the leash and lose the hound. I'm already halfway gone, sir— I'm already underground. [VERSE 2 — "THE STUD FARM"] [Dirty blues swing, slow, aching] They liked my face enough to keep it clean. Too handsome for the quarry, that's what Master said— So they put me in a locked room with a woman in between Her husband's wishes and her conscience, and they told us: go to bed. She cried the first time. Hell, I cried too— We held it in our throats like swallowed glass. I said I'm sorry. She said Hush—this isn't you, This isn't me, this is something we'll get past. By the fifth time we had learned to leave our bodies on the sheets, Float up to the ceiling, find the watermark, and hide. She'd whisper Meet me in the stain—I'm the blue part where it bleeds— And I'd find her there, two ghosts just treading tide. They watched through mirrors. Took their notes. Compared the rates. They bred me to eleven different wives that year. Nineteen children I have fathered. Nineteen different fates I'll never know. Nineteen faces I will never see from here. [REFRAIN v2] [Slower, grief rising] Use the body like an engine, like a plow, like a pen— Every coupling is arithmetic, every touch a dividend. But the part of me that feels things, that remembers what a kiss Used to mean—that part is elsewhere. That part don't exist In this room. In this arrangement. In this economics test. That part's in a house in Maine, asleep against my mother's chest. [VERSE 3 — "THE ARENA"] [Stomp-clap, gladiator drums, visceral] When the bedrooms got boring, they found another use: Fifty thousand cheering for a different kind of juice. Handed me a sword and said You kill or you get killed— And either way, we're entertained, and either way, we're thrilled. I learned the geometry—the feint, the lunge, the roll. I learned that victory tastes like rust and burns a hole Right through your conscience. Seventeen men I've cut down. I remember every face. Every gasp. Every frown Of confusion—wait, this wasn't how it's supposed to go— And then the light leaving. Quick or slow. Quick or slow. We survivors found each other in the tunnels after dark. Slept in piles like wolves. Made warmth where there was none. Marcus—broken nose, quick hands—he'd kiss me like a spark Catching tinder. Whisper: One more day. Get through this one. What we built down in those tunnels wasn't romance, wasn't pure— It was wreckage finding wreckage, two sinking ships made sure They'd go down tangled, at least. At least we're not alone. That's the thing they couldn't sell. That's the thing we learned to own. [BRIDGE 1 — "MAINE"] [Solo guitar, open tuning, breath and ache] There's a house on Penobscot Bay where the pines come to the shore, Where my mother hummed off-key and my father knew the tides. If I make it back to Maine—if I make it through this war With my memory intact—I will find that door. Walk inside. Lie down on the kitchen floor where I was five years old. Close my eyes. Pretend that none of this was ever real. Be small again. Be warm again. Be something to be held. Be the boy before the sergeant. Before the brand. Before the deal.
