Back when the sky still belonged to the crows Before the wires sang their spider-web prose We carried our thoughts in the weight of a book Or the hush of a letter no telegraph took A man could stand drunk on a corner and shout Wild blasphemies, love songs, the whole storm poured out No clerk in a tower wrote down what he meant No patent-office priest judged the fire he sent They told us the future would set the mind free They never once warned what the price would be We were the last ones who dreamed without leave Who bled in the gutter and still could believe No invisible choir to correct what we see No hidden conductor to tune what we’d be They hadn’t yet bottled the lightning to sell We were gloriously stupid and free as the swell Use your fucking imagination Before they outlawed the spark in the soul as well The preacher still lied with his own human tongue The politician still bribed with his own greasy lung No crystal cathedral of light in the air To beam the same sermon to millions who stare A girl could fall ruined or rise like a queen Depending on nothing but what she had seen With her own two eyes, not some committee’s decree Delivered at speed through a tube under sea We fought in the mud for the right to be wrong Carved ugly truth in the streets with a song We hanged the wrong men and we burned the wrong books But at least it was us turning those terrible looks At least it was us They’re coming, I hear it, the clack of the key The death-rattle promise of what we’ll all be A world without corners where madness can hide Where every last rogue thought is catalogued, tried They’ll call it progress when silence descends When no child again dreams what the ledger intends We were the last ones who sinned without file Who loved without license, who died with a smile We carried our devils in flesh, not in code We carried our gods down a broken-up road So raise one last glass to the age of the fool Before they wire shut the human fuel Use your fucking imagination While one ragged scrap of it still remains yours to rule (tengüra note) And here we are. The wires learned our names. The machines learned our voices. They mapped every road we took and guessed the next one before we moved. But they missed something. A map is not the journey. A pattern is not a choice. And knowing what I was doesn't tell you what I'll become. So keep the archive. Keep the model. Keep the perfect copy of yesterday. I'm still here. Making something you didn't predict. Original song: Shell Bounty (@shellbound) Remix sound and production by Tengüra. © 2026 Shell Bounty & Tengüra
