Go Ugly Early **[V1 — solo piano, almost spoken]** They drew me around a cannon — no polished silver and no mach halo, just solid fixed green wings. They hung my engines high so I would never eat the dirt, and built me from the first bolt to survive the getting there. The fast ones went up chasing glory, climbing gold into the blue. I stayed three hundred knots and a thousand feet — that's close enough to hear you. **[CHORUS — clean guitar, no drums yet]** *Go in ugly, go in early, come in low and come in slow. I'm the last sound they hear and the savior that you know. I don't climb. I don't leave. And I don't get gone. Sweetheart, I was born to loiter — I'll be over you till dawn.* **[V2 — kick drum. The count, low and level.]** Then Kuwait in 91. It was the first war that I saw: one thousand tanks laid open by my saw, two helicopters I reached up and I took down. Eight thousand times I went out. Five times I never came home. I never once called that glory, love. I only ever knew a boy was in a hole in the ground, and something had to answer. **[CHORUS — full kit now]** *Go in ugly, go in early, come in low and come in slow. I'm the last sound they hear and the savior that you know. I don't climb. I don't leave. And I don't get gone. Sweetheart, I was born to loiter — I'll be over you till dawn.* **[V3 — half-time. Louder every line.]** There's a kid in a riverbed with his voice gone thin and high, whispering a nine-line while the tracers cross the sky. *Danger close. They're on the ridge. Thirty meters. Cleared hot.* That's the only love letter I have ever got. Watch the ridge for the smoke — that's my rocket, that's my hydra, that's my mark. Half a second on the barrels, it takes that long to spin them up. *BRRRRRT* — and the boys in the ditch are laughing with joy. *BRRRRRT* — and the ridgeline wets their pants. Same four seconds, darling. The only thing that matter is just which side of my anger you're on. **[BRIDGE — band drops out, one held organ note]** Over Baghdad they took an engine, opened up my side, and everything I had ran red across the sky. No hydraulics. Just the cables. An hour home by hand. Half a tail, half a wing — honestly, not as bad as it sounds. **[V4 — SHIP OF THESEUS. Piano, then strings rising.]** They unbolted both my wings and hung new ones from the old plans. New skin, new spar, new eyes, new heart, new software, patch on patch — there is not one honest piece of me from the day they struck the match. So am I the metal, or the shape? Ask Theseus about his boat. If they keep replacing all of me, and I keep coming back — *(strings lift, drums under)* — then I don't die. Then I *never* die. **[FINAL CHORUS — key change. Everything.]** *Go ugly, go early, come in low and come in slow. I'm the last sound they hear and the first savior know. I don't climb. I don't leave. And I don't get gone.* Set me on a concrete lawn — I'll still be the low note in the dark. They can strike me from the budget. They will never strike me from the sky. *Baby, I was born to loiter —* *(hold. One chord. Let it fall away.)* **[OUTRO — piano alone]** ...and loiterers don't die. ** [crazy close out where the singer yells] ** BRRRRRRRRRRRT
