Ashes of Babel

### “Ashes of Babel” **Intro / whispered spoken line** *Life could be beautiful…* **Verse 1** I’m small and inconspicuous, a smudge on the stairwell, back pressed to the night while the neon streets swell. From cracked kitchen windows I hear ledgers and screens— the clicking of coins, the chant of “more,” “more,” unseen. **Pre-Chorus** They oil their towers with promise, climb on the backs of rust, every child born with a basket that never knows “enough.” **Chorus** *Life could be beautiful,* *life could be beautiful,* if we weren’t so consumed by the endless pursuit of more— more names on the glass, more fire to crown the shore. *Life could be beautiful,* but we raise our Babel on a fractured floor. **Verse 2** I hide in the dark where the lanterns won’t spill, a moth-witness counting each spark we try to kill. Our species threads lightning into its veins, calls it godhood, then chokes on the bright, broken chains. Like Icarus dreaming the sun was a throne, we melted the myth and called the ashes our home; an ancient story re-sung—stone, ash and pride— the gods we forged watch us fall from inside. **Bridge** *(half-spoken, softer)* If silence had verses, they’d taste like the night: water, a breath, a neighbor’s porch light— small things not bartered, not sold, not enthroned, beauty that waits while we’re digging our own. **Final Chorus** *Life could be beautiful,* *life could be beautiful,* if we un-learned the hunger, the worship of more. I stay inconspicuous, still at the door, watching the epic end like it’s always been told: a people who touched heaven and turned it to cold. *Life could be beautiful…* **Outro** *(fading hum, single drum like a heartbeat)* And the night keeps the small, and the small keep the night. ---