Pay the Feeling Tax

[Verse 1] They sold us peace in a chrome white room Put a price on tears, put a lock on doom Every wrist got tagged, every throat got scanned If your pulse runs hot, they revoke your hand No rage in the hall, no grief in the square Just pale little smiles and a vacant stare If you feel too much, that collar hums Then the dark goes soft when the medic comes They call it mercy, call it clean A debtless heart in a machine routine But my mother cried once, saw her face go blank Like the room ate her name, like the system drank [Pre-Chorus] I saw my brother reach for the edge Got cut to white before he said the pledge A flash of pain, then a missing page Now he laughs on cue in a padded cage [Chorus] Pay the feeling tax Pay it in your chest Grief gets erased Anger gets left to rest Pay the feeling tax Smile for the blast If you break the rule They erase you fast [Verse 2] The ruler on high don’t blink, don’t sleep Reads our heartbeats like sheep, like sheep Calls it order when the sirens fade Says a little numbness keeps the world well-gauged Kids learn young, keep the storm inside Bite down hard when the dead don’t rise Don’t say why, don’t ask what for The collar hears doubt through the apartment door In the morning line, they trade in dread For a spoonful of calm and a dreamless head My neighbor forgot her son by noon Still she fed his chair and hummed his tune [Pre-Chorus] A tear got caught, then the lights went red A tender thought and the thought got dead They scrub the hurt from the edges of time Then sell us back the lie in a straight white line [Chorus] Pay the feeling tax Pay it in your chest Grief gets erased Anger gets left to rest Pay the feeling tax Smile for the blast If you break the rule They erase you fast [Bridge] But I keep a scar where the silence hit A dead little spark they forgot to strip When they tell me to kneel, I remember rain And the cost of a soul they can’t contain One day the grid will choke on the fake One day the blank-faced calm will break We’ll rip off the gold from the throat of fear And flood that clean machine with a human tear [Final Chorus] Pay the feeling tax Pay it in your chest Grief gets erased Anger gets left to rest Pay the feeling tax We were born to last If we break the rule We break right past