[Intro: The jangly, somber acoustic guitar enters alone. A 3/4 time signature.] … [The frame drum joins—thump-thump, rest, setting a beat] … [Verse 1: Intimate, nostalgic but fearful.] I remember the dust on the dashboard of the Buick Seven years old and the world was a fluid State of panic and static, my mother was praying To a dashboard saint with the paint decaying We crossed in the night with the fear in our throats Wearing three layers of shirts and two heavy coats To look like we were tourists or just passing through But the border agent’s eyes were a pale, icy blue He looked at the papers, he looked at the sweating On my father’s brow, and without forgetting The shape of that gun or the weight of the sun We passed through the gate and the new life begun. [instrumental break: acoustic guitar and hand drums] [Verse 2: Rhythmic, mechanical, duty-bound. The enjambment drives it forward.] Then came the schools and the rules and the hiding The pledge of allegiance, the constant abiding By laws that were written in ink I couldn’t read But I learned how to labor, I learned how to bleed Into soil that I tilled, into floors that I swept I kept every receipt and the promises kept I filed the forms in the triplicate stack With the fear of the flashing lights watching my back I paid all the taxes, I worked on the line I was told if I worked I would turn out just fine I was the Dreamer, the exception, the kid with the grades While the foundations cracked and the memory fades Of the home that I fled, of the village, the stream Now I’m thirty years old and I’m locked in the dream. [instrumental break: acoustic guitar and hand drums] [Verse 3: The noise increases. The anxiety spikes. The realization that the rules have changed.] But the ink is dissolving, the seal doesn't hold The judges are bought and the rhetoric’s bold They say I’m a phantom, a ghost in the machine That the life that I built is a fraudulent scene I have a number, a card, and a name on a lease But the knocking at midnight causes the cease Of the breath in my chest, now the papers are torn They say I’m a criminal since I was born Not for the things that I did or the crimes I committed But for crossing a line when my memory was knitted By the hand of a mother who just wanted peace Now the gears are all grinding, there is no release! [Verse 4: The shift. The vocals drop to a frantic, terrified murmur. The "show" of hiding. The "Dream" is inverted.] So I draw down the shades and I bolt up the locks I put all my life in a cardboard box I burn the degree and I shred the ID There is no land of brave, there is no home of free Just the sound of the tires on the gravel outside And the hollowed-out feeling of nowhere to hide The dream was a fever, the dream was a lie It’s a cage made of stripes and a star-spangled sky I’ll go back to the shadows, I’ll go back to the start With a ghost in my house and a hole in my heart Don’t look at the window, don’t answer the phone We are tragic and magic and completely alone. [Outro: The industrial noise swells to a deafening peak—a harsh metallic screech—then abruptly cuts to silence. The acoustic guitar plays two final notes, unresolved.] (Spoken, flat and resigned) Wake up.
