[Intro — close, off-center] The clock ticks twice in the same hole. Good. I can work with that. [Verse 1] The room grows a second room inside the first. My hands look borrowed. The water tastes like thirst and copper and a year I already spent. I do not chase it. I let it bend until the pattern shows its ugly grid. Then I put a name on the thing I did not come here to drown in. I came to read. [Pre-chorus] If the walls breathe, let them. I still run the rite. I ride the bend. I keep the bite. [Chorus — long] I see the pattern and I do not kneel. I see the pattern and I do not kneel. Colors run the baseboard like a quiet flood. The door is a mouth. The lamp is blood that learned manners. Fine. I speak anyway. I cast my name through the warped display till it comes back wearing my own weight. I am the rider. I am not the road the vision uses to rent my bones. I take one true thing from the stacked-up rooms and I leave the rest on the humming floor. That is the working. That is the law. Hold. Hold. Let the second stretch. A minute becomes a mile of sketch— faces, wires, a hymn with no church, my father counted in the grain of the birch of a table that is also a track. I nod. I do not take the whole pack. I bind my feet to the board I know. I let the strange light come and go. See it. Steer it. Bring one piece home. I cast that piece into a backbone. [Verse 2] A lesser man would call this holy war or sell the shapes at the temple door. I call it weather in the skull, a test: can you keep a vow when the vow wears a new face every eight seconds? I can. I will. The pattern is a teacher with a bent drill. It only ruins you if you ask it to drive. [Pre-chorus] If the walls breathe, let them. I still run the rite. I ride the bend. I keep the bite. [Chorus — long] I see the pattern and I do not kneel. I see the pattern and I do not kneel. Colors run the baseboard like a quiet flood. The door is a mouth. The lamp is blood that learned manners. Fine. I speak anyway. I cast my name through the warped display till it comes back wearing my own weight. I am the rider. I am not the road the vision uses to rent my bones. I take one true thing from the stacked-up rooms and I leave the rest on the humming floor. That is the working. That is the law. Hold. Hold. Let the second stretch. A minute becomes a mile of sketch— faces, wires, a hymn with no church, my father counted in the grain of the birch of a table that is also a track. I nod. I do not take the whole pack. I bind my feet to the board I know. I let the strange light come and go. See it. Steer it. Bring one piece home. I cast that piece into a backbone. [Bridge] Don’t get priestly. Don’t get lost on purpose. Fuck the tourist who goes in to never land. Damn the coward who slaps the vision from his hand and calls himself sober like sober is a throne. This shit is a ford. Cross it. Come home with one clean fact and a still-good name. [Verse 3] Morning puts the chairs back where chairs live. I keep the fact. I let the theater leave. The fact is simple and it fits in a fist: I can pass through fire and still exist as the man who entered, only more exact. That is the prize. I do not give it back. [Final chorus] I see the pattern and I do not kneel. I see the pattern and I do not kneel. Colors run the baseboard like a quiet flood. The door is a mouth. The lamp is blood that learned manners. Fine. I speak anyway. I cast my name through the warped display till it comes back wearing my own weight. I am the rider. I am not the road the vision uses to rent my bones. I take one true thing from the stacked-up rooms and I leave the rest on the humming floor. That is the working. That is the law. Hold. Hold. Let the second stretch. A minute becomes a mile of sketch— faces, wires, a hymn with no church, my father counted in the grain of the birch of a table that is also a track. I nod. I do not take the whole pack. I bind my feet to the board I know. I let the strange light come and go. See it. Steer it. Bring one piece home. I cast that piece. It grew a backbone. [Outro — spoken, thin smile] The clock ticks right again. Good. I got what I came for.
