[Intro - Spoken/Hook] Step right up, step right up... Witness the tragedy wrapped in glitter The smile's the lie that keeps you bitter... [Verse 1] Painted face in the spotlight's cruel arithmetic, Smiling wide but my mouth tastes like carcinomatic, Red nose clicking, tongues clicking, crowd's addicted, To the tragedy I peddle, the circus where the sick get fixed quick, Tent poles bending under weight of all these broken promises, Ringmaster screaming through his megaphone with hollow rhythms, I juggle contradictions - happiness and horror in the same skin, Bells are ringing, but it's not for celebration, It's the sound of my consciousness corroding in degradation, Haunted by the echo of the laughter that I'm forcing, Mascara running lines like tears I'm diverting, distorting, Every step I take on the wire is a calculated risk, One wrong breath, one wrong beat, and the whole illusion flips, They paid for fantasy, so I give them carnival salvation, A smile so wide it splits across the architecture of my patience, The tightrope's thin, the stakes are high, the crowd is getting restless, And I'm the jester spinning plates while the world corrodes, relentless. [Chorus] Under the big top sky, nobody hears the jester cry, Smile painted on, emotions gone, performance after performance, Under the big top sky, the laughter's a lie - I'm dying inside, Glitter and dust, crumbling trust, theatrical torture. [Verse 2] They call it entertainment, I call it psychological warfare, Masking these sores with sequins, making anguish feel so glamorous, The carousel is spinning, but it's going nowhere fast, Horses painted gold while the stable's burning down, amassed, With every trick I flip, I feel another piece of me calcify, Becoming the monster that they pay to crucify, Cotton candy clouds dissolving into ash and acid rain, The audience is screaming, but they're calling it entertainment, I'm trapped inside this mirror maze of my own exaggeration, Every clown has a breaking point, a limit to the smiling, I've been grinding my teeth so long I forgot what peace feels like in silence, The fireworks were never celebrating - they were signaling my surrender, Exploding colors masking the decay of a performer going vendetta, They want the grin to widen, want the laughs to get erratic, So I twist and I contort until my skeleton turns plastic, Welcome to the show where the price of admission is your soul, And the jester takes the fall while the ringmaster walks on coal. [Chorus] Under the big top sky, nobody hears the jester cry, Smile painted on, emotions gone, performance after performance, Under the big top sky, the laughter's a lie - I'm dying inside, Glitter and dust, crumbling trust, theatrical torture. [Bridge] [Spoken, slowed, gritty] ...And when the lights finally dim and the crowd disperses into the night, I'm left alone in the center ring with no one to hear my plight, The makeup won't wash off the stains that it left on my spirit, A permanent reminder that I gave them all I could permit... [Building] But here's the trick, the ultimate jest that I'm proposing The audience is performing too, and the whole world's decomposing, We all wear masks, we all dance on the wire above the void, The jester's not just me - it's everyone who's been destroyed... [Outro - Final Hook] Step right up, step right up... Everyone's a clown beneath the big top's dying sun, Smile while you suffer, perform until you're done, The circus never ends - it just changes who it's feeding on... The circus never ends...
